The Marsha Warfield Show

Marsha Warfield, a stand-up comedian and a regular on Night Court (she plays Roz), is a rookie talk-show host. Her half-hour program, The Marsha Warfield Show, debuted earlier this year and it has already settled into a comfortable groove. Many daytime talk-show hosts strive for an air of relaxed unpretentiousness, but only Warfield has a basketball hoop on her set; she could out-slam-dunk Sally Jessy Raphael any day.

Warfield tends to book a couple of celebrity guests whose senssbilities wouldn’t seem to gibe, like Valerie Harper and Della Reese, or Dudley Moore and 227‘s Marla Gibbs. Then she gets them to talk and offer opinions. The results are usually amusing; even when her guests are inarticulate stiffs, the contrast is interesting.

Warfield can be a bit too touchy-feely-when Smokey Robinson was on, she put her head on his lap as he serenaded her — but in general she’s fast-witted, and occasionally outrageous. What other host would venture this theory: ”I’ll tell you why people are nuts over Kim Basinger — you don’t usually see white people with lips that big”? B