Sunday, March 1, 2009

Guests of the Week: March 2-6, 2009

This week, it's all about the debut of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon." Now, you may remember that back in January, Craig Ferguson challenged the nation's TV critics to "give Jimmy a month before you review him." You think that's actually gonna happen? No way -- so watch this space Tuesday morning, when we'll present a roundup of the opinions of Jimmy's first show.

David Letterman presents U2 every day this week, and we'll definitely be tuning in on Thursday when Jon Stewart stops by. Leno's most promising show is Tuesday's, with comic legend Bob Newhart, liberal talker Rachel Maddow and 63-year-old soul powerhouse Bettye Lavette on tap. We love the contrast of Ferguson's lineup: Paris Hilton on Monday, Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Wednesday. You can't get much more rangy than that. We've already covered Fallon's first week of guests. Jon Stewart sits down with Sandra Day O'Connor on Tuesday, while the "Colbert Report" guest we're most looking forward to is Wednesday's: Carl Wilson, who wrote a book about Celine Dion for the music-geeky 33 1/3 series. We couldn't imagine why he was going to appear on "TCR" to plug it, until we were informed that the book received the "Franco Bump" on the Oscars red carpet when nominee James Franco plugged it in an interview.

Over on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," Bonnie Hunt drops by on Wednesday. Jimmy will also feature a post-finale interview with "Bachelor" Jason Mesnick on Monday, while franchise fan Ellen DeGeneres has the first talk show appearance by Mesnick and his chosen lady on Friday. (The bitter runner-up stops by "Ellen" on Thursday.) We don't know who he's picked yet, but based on the series' track record, we give them 4 months.

Talk Show News loves "Dancing with the Stars," and we eagerly await the contestants and pros making the talk show rounds. A taste of things to come, if you will, on Tuesday, when the Ballas Hough Band (that's Mark Ballas and Derek Hough) tries to prove that they can sing and play as well as dance on "The Bonnie Hunt Show."

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