‘Rosie Live’ to Treat Viewers to Spectacular Liza Minnelli / NeYo / Kathy Griffin Collision

NBC began teasing Rosie Live in prime-time over the weekend, alerting viewers to Rosie O’Donnell’s Nov. 26 variety-show experiment by touting a slate of America’s most well-recognised holiday-season talent. Alanis Morissette! Kathy Griffin! Ne-Yo! Acrobats! And, in a booking coup loaded with potential for grandeur, onstage collapse and/or both, Liza Minnelli, herself the host of one of TV’s all-time great variety specials and a showstopping Rosie idol from way, way back. What to expect? O’Donnell defies you to wait and see:

Will Ms. O’Donnell perform a duet with Ms. Minnelli, whose 1972 variety/concert special Liza With a Z won multiple Emmy Awards?

“Of course! What, are you kidding me?” Ms. O’Donnell laughed. “This is the dream for every girl from Long Island who ever sang in the mirror to Cabaret. This is as good as it gets for me.” [...]

Ms. O’Donnell is keeping specifics of the musical number under wraps for now, though she hinted that Ms. Minnelli will sing “a song you haven’t heard her perform in over 30 years.”

That narrows it down — we haven’t actually heard Minnelli perform any song besides “New York, New York” in over 30 years. And frankly, if the show is to have any chance at cultural traction, it would be wiser to trade Minelli’s stagy, Oscar-calibre musical theatrics for a revival of her more spontaneous talk-show performance art that so captivated our hearts in recent years. O’Donnell may have Long Island, but the rest of us will always have Larry King.

• Can NBC, Rosie Revive Variety? [TV Week]