To watch live:
- US East Coast viewers with a cable subscription that includes truTV can watch live as it airs.
- US Non-East Coast viewers with a cable subscription that includes truTV can watch live on the website or through the app.
- Non-cable subscribers can watch live through Sling TV, Hulu with Live TV, Direct Now and Playstation Vue.
- Come to a taping! The show films in midtown Manhattan at 11PM on Thursdays. Ticket requests for each week will go live 8 days before the episode airs, and can be found here.
Things you’ll be able to see if you follow us on social media:
- Pre-show with Connor Ratliff
- Post-show full music performance & interactive dance party
- Behind the scenes exclusives featuring internet liaison Bethany Hall
International viewers, we are incredibly sorry to tell you that at this time you will not be able to watch the show live. Canadian viewers will be able to watch the recorded version after the fact, though we are still waiting for word on how long it will take for those episodes to air. The recorded episode will also run on truTV in the US.
International viewers outside of Canada will not be able to access the show on TV at all at this time, but we are working as hard as we can to get you information about possibly purchasing the show digitally. We will let you know as soon as we have any new information for you.
We also have plans in place to provide you with as much behind the scenes content as possible on social media - we may not be able to get the live show in front of you, but you’re still an incredibly important part of our community and we want to give you as many ways to stay involved as we can.
WAY PAST YOUR BEDTIME
Wednesday, 2/22 11pm at UCB Theatre Chelsea
A new show! Featuring me with a bunch of other super talented people, plus Special Guests Aparna Nancherla & Don Fanelli!
For tickets and more info, go here: http://www.ucbtheatre.com/performance/51482
[Show logo illustration by Maëlle Doliveux]
Season II of The UCB Show is now available on Seeso, and I’m the guest host of Episode V, as “George Lucas”!
This was a dream come true, getting to be Lucas on a show like this, each episode stuffed to bursting with talented & hilarious people.
[SOAPBOX: I was a Seeso subscriber from Day 1, since this is a channel that might as well have been designed specifically for me. It’s great! They have a fantastic library of classic titles and an ever-growing selection of new original shows that are terrific. I’m biased now, because I’ve been hired to be on both this and Debate Wars, but I was all-in for the measly 4 bucks a month the second Seeso ended its “beta” phase and would let me give them my money. I actually just do it as an add-on channel via Amazon Prime, which is easy to do. If you love Comedy, this shouldn’t even be a question, vote with your dollars and get Seeso!
XMAS CONTENT FOR YOUR HOLIDAY VIEWING/LISTENING PLEASURE
Last year, at the age of 40, I went from someone who obsessively consumes XMAS content to someone who obsessively creates it.
Every year, I go nuts for Holiday entertainment: music, movies, TV specials, rituals, decorations– it’s all fun to me! Every year there is something new to add to the list of classic things I will want to return to each XMAS. It gets bigger and bigger, even as the Universe works as hard as it can to take things away from us each year. XMAS is a happy time when it’s also okay to be deeply sad, because life is hard and terrible things never stop happening, even at XMAS.
In 2015, J.D. Amato and I did a special XMAS special episode of our long-running improvised detective show at UCB, The Terry Withers Mysteries. It was an emotional episode that ended with a surprise XMAS miracle that genuinely made the audience feel joy. One year later, that show is gone, because Terry had to move to Baltimore in real life. It makes the memory of that holiday show seem even sweeter, because we didn’t suspect that one year later, the show would be over and done with .
I don’t have a video of that show to post here but a few weeks ago we did a Terry Withers Mysteries holiday spin-off special featuring beloved TWM character Frank The Snitch, and I think it is magical. (It went so well, we already have another Frank The Snitch New Year’s special, Jan. 2 at UCB Chelsea. Hopefully, 2017 will see several more Frank specials, TBA!)
The other thing that happened during the 2015 holiday season was that Rob Malone and Keith Haskel asked me if I wanted to make a Xmas special as a kind of follow-up to their Spirit Of Gethard TCGS specials. They had done 3 with Gethard, and I think they had decided to let that trilogy stand now that Chris is increasingly busy with so many big projects. I took this as an opportunity to write a soundtrack of Holiday songs with my pal Mikey Erg.
The special is weird and fun, and the 7 songs we wrote led to 11 more songs this year, including one brand new Xmas song about what Xmas feels like now that a short-sighted 25% of the country has delivered America into the hands of a selfish and petty billionaire.
Now that I have acquired the taste for creating Holiday content, I don’t think I will ever stop. Or maybe I will and these things will be the end of it for me! We shall find out next year, I suppose. In the meantime, I hope you will check out at least one of these things if you have some free time this XMAS weekend and you want to try something new in the Holiday Spirit.
1. A FRANK THE SNITCH XMAS SPECIAL - one hour of some of the funniest and most talented UCB performers, delivering a heartfelt and hilarious improvised hour-long holiday special. Sebastian Conelli stars as Frank The Snitch, joined by Anthony Atamanuik, J.D. Amato, Moujan Zolfaghari, James III, Noah Forman, Caroline Martin, Lui Vega, Alex Song, Alexandra Dickson, Ken Beck, Matt Barats, Patrick Keene, and Wes Haney.
2. THE SPIRIT OF RATLIFF - 45-minute holiday special with music and fun in New York City, as filmmakers Rob Malone & Keith Haskel follow me around from Times Square to Central Park to my apartment, where I decorate my xmas tree.
3. THE SPIRIT OF RATLIFF Soundtrack EP - 8 tracks by me and Mikey Erg, written and recorded in a matter of hours. Featuring at least one song that I am determined to turn into a Holiday classic, “No One Wants A Pizza On XMAS Day.” (All it will take for this to happen is for one MAJOR SUPERSTAR to record a cover of it. Mariah Carey? Springsteen?
Bublé? If you are friends with a major music superstar, please send them a link to this song and tell them “you should record this, friend.”)
4. ERG & RATLIFF LIVE AT ROLLING STONE - Mikey and I visit the offices of RS for a 35-minute Facebook Live session. We play five of our songs and I talk a lot. Many controversial things are said.
5. “XMAS Next Year” - the 2016 holiday single, written with a sense of urgency and sadness. I think this is a fun song about very dark fears. Makes a perfect XMAS gift for the Trump-voting relative you only want to spend a dollar on this year.
A FRANK THE SNITCH XMAS Holiday Special
(61 minutes, 2016)
WATCH THE ENTIRE SPECIAL ON VIMEO!
After spending years in NYC as a “homeless drug addict,” Frank The Snitch moves to Seattle to host a radio “advice” program and take care of his aging father. When some old friends come to visit, Frank attempts to discover the true meaning of XMAS in this improvised Holiday Special.
STARRING
Sebastian Conelli as FRANK THE SNITCH
Anthony Atamanuik
Moujan Zolfaghari
James III
Caroline Martin
Ken Beck
J.D. Amato
Matt Barats
Wes Haney
Patrick Keene
FEATURING SPECIAL GUESTS
Noah Forman
Lui Vega
Alex Song
Alexandra Dickson
Performed LIVE at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre Chelsea 12/7/2016
Filmed & Edited by Tom Levin
Associate Producer
Alex Adan
Executive Producers
J.D. Amato & Connor Ratliff
ERG & RATLIFF: 11 new songs in 2016!
After writing 7 songs for an 8-track XMAS EP in 2015, Mikey Erg & I didn’t know if we’d be making any more music together this year. I’m glad that we did.
My big goal was to SOMEHOW convince a small record label (or a big one– we aren’t picky) to agree to put out our Spirit Of Ratliff Holiday EP on vinyl for Record Store Day Black Friday, preferably in a festive green or red colored edition.
I had no luck. I contacted a whole bunch of labels but not a single one even wrote back to me. This is still our goal for 2017, and for every year after that until we make it happen!
Mikey & I ended up writing 11 new songs this year: six for our anti-Summer EP (Summer Is Not XMAS), 3 for our Halloween EP (Orange Monster) and then one final song which we wrote because we felt like we had to (our XMAS single, “XMAS Next Year”)
Our other big goal for the year was to play a few Holiday gigs. We only ended up doing three, but they were all super fun and special.
We performed at City Winery as part of Wesley Stace’s Cabinet Of Wonders, on a bill alongside people like Brinsley Schwarz and Guster’s Ryan Miller. I have been a fan of Wesley Stace since I was in high school, and he was a guest on The George Lucas Talk Show in 2015, but the idea that I’d be performing songs in a show hosted by him is something that never would have even occurred to me.
And if I ever had any doubts that our song, “No One Wants A Pizza On XMAS Day” was destined to be a crowd pleaser, this was the performance that put those doubts to rest. Mikey had to leave early for another gig, but as he was on his way out the door, Brinsley himself began regaling Mikey with stories from the time his band opened for Paul McCartney & Wings. I’ve never seen Mikey faced with more of a dilemma as he made the agonizing choice to tear himself away from an anecdote of what it was like riding in the tour bus with Macca in order to make it to his gig on time…
Our 2nd 2016 gig was on the podcast REPEATER, where guest Christian Finnegan picked one of his favorite songs by Elvis Costello to discuss, and then Mikey & I performed it, followed by a handful of our Holiday songs and our first ever live performance of our new XMAS single.
We wrapped up our “New York City World Tour” with a Facebook Live event at the offices of Rolling Stone, thankfully archived for all eternity on social media. We played 5 songs and I talked a lot, and I think it turned out to be a pretty fun thing to watch.
I hope some people will listen to “XMAS Next Year” over the next week. It’s fun & sad & political, very much of the current moment, so who knows if this song will have any kind of shelf life.
And Mikey & I are already making some tentative plans to maybe write & record some more songs in 2017. As it is, I think we have recorded about 43 minutes worth of music, so maybe we will ultimately end up trying to put out some kind of LP compiling all or most of it, a full album of seasonal & holiday songs. The goal is still to get some label to issue a limited edition vinyl release for Record Store Day Black Friday, one way or another. I know we can make this happen, somehow. It just might take a while.
Oh, did I mention that Mikey also put out a long-awaited solo LP, Tentative Decisions, that BrooklynVegan said was one of the 20 best punk/emo albums of 2016? You should buy it!
