It is a genuine shame that this show was canceled. Since that was over ten years ago, I am mostly over it. Mostly. Fresh and original, Almost Live was loaded with talent. Tracey Conway, Nancy Guppy, Pat Cashman, Bill Nye, John Keister, Steve Wilson, Bob Stainton and Bob Nelson were the main players that I remember. At least Joel McHale made it (Community, etc) and most people deservedly know Bill Nye (The Science Guy) by now. Pat Cashman reminded me very much of Phil Hartman and I felt could have done just as well given a national stage.Yes, much of the entertainment is localized, but this isn't a bad thing. You may miss on a couple of the jokes, but it's simple enough to get and you'll likely relate it to your own area. Most of the cast would have been a good augmentation to the SNL cast and many of the sketches were far funnier than SNL was cranking out during that period. Pound for pound, AL offered us much more rib-shaking funny material. Billy Quan is one example that just cracked me up. YouTube is a good source for this.If you reside in the Pugetopolis, You can catch the reruns (two of them) on the local NBC affiliate (King-5) after SNL. I just add the extra hour to my DVR and watch it after I have skipped all the commercials from SNL.

I also would like to take to task the user comment that claimed that the humor of the show "Almost Live!" was too Seattle-based to appeal to people that lived outside of the area. I live in British Columbia, Canada, and I found the humor of the show hysterical. You did not have to live in Seattle to understand the jokes. For example, there was one sketch called "The Streetwalking Lawyers Of Aurora Avenue", which depicted out-of-work lawyers making a living by offering their services on the side of the road. From that sketch, I could conclude with confidence that the real Aurora Avenue in Seattle was plagued with prostitutes. Further proof that the humor on the show could appeal to outsiders was the little-known fact that the scripts for the show were sold to a German TV show and recreated there for German audiences.It was a sad day when this show was cancelled. Though part of me would love the show to be revived, the cast is now probably too old. Though maybe they could mentor a new cast and writers.

I remember being a small kid and seeing all of Billy Quan's antics, and I was in San Mateo, California. So this show obviously was going strong there. It was part of the great series of shows we would watch on FOX. Including Get A Life with Chris Elliott, and the Simpsons. For years I thought Billy Quan was on the cult show Night Flight, airing on TV in the same year, but I guess I was confused. ALMOST LIVE ROCKED!! I remember it now!! I remember my sister and me used to imitate the Billy Quan routines in our own tape recording with sound effects and imitating the dubbed voices. OH THE MEMORIES!! I have got to get this series on DVD!

I have grown up in the Seattle area, and my daddy weaned me on "Almost Live." Consistently funny, great timing, and some truly inspired skits make for great Saturday evening viewing. I have been known to leave parties to come home and watch it, then go back. The local NBC affiliate that shows it, KING 5, airs "AL!" at 11:35pm, then "Saturday Night Live" at 12:05am. In my almost 15 years of watching "Almost Live", I have never seen it resort to the 'dick and fart jokes' that I saw on SNL time and time again. There are so many things in the Seattle area to make fun of (Kent, Lynnwood, Ballard, the entire east side of Lake Washington), there's no reason to fall into toilet humor as the more recent years of SNL did. I guarantee that any way you can get ahold of an episode of "Almost Live", it will be worth it, a million times worth it.