The Jackie Thomas Show

The Jackie Thomas Show
From left to right, Dennis Boutsikaris, Tom Arnold and Alison LaPlaca
Created by	Tom Arnold Roseanne Arnold Brad Isaacs
Written by	Tom Arnold Roseanne Arnold Lawrence Broch David Fury Elin Hampton Brad Isaacs Joel Madison Sid Youngers William Lucas Walker
Directed by	Michael Lessac Peter Segal
Starring	Tom Arnold Alison LaPlaca Martin Mull Dennis Boutsikaris Michael Boatman Paul Feig Maryedith Burrell
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	18
Production
Executive producer(s)	Tom Arnold Roseanne Arnold
Running time	30 minutes
Production company(s)	Wapello County Productions Lorimar Television
Distributor	Warner Bros. Television Distribution
Release
Original network	ABC
Original release	December 1, 1992 (1992-12-01) – April 30, 1993 (1993-04-30)

The Jackie Thomas Show is an American sitcom that aired on the ABC network from December 1992 to March 1993. The series received widespread attention due to its creators Roseanne Arnold, then starring in the fifth season of her comedy Roseanne, and her husband and Roseanne co-producer Tom Arnold. The Jackie Thomas Show starred Tom Arnold as a misanthropic sitcom actor.

As Jackie Thomas, Arnold played a former nightclub comic and slaughterhouse worker now starring in his own sitcom (a show-within-a-show), also called "The Jackie Thomas Show." As described in one review, Arnold's character was "an obnoxious, loud-mouthed tyrant who fires writers, producers, actors, even the show's caterers, on the slightest whim." In the premiere episode (written by the Arnolds with Brad Isaacs), Jackie demanded that the child actor portraying his sitcom son be killed off, due to Jackie's jealousy over the amount of fan mail received by the boy.

"He's unbelievable," Tom Arnold said of the Jackie Thomas character. "It's a guy you love to hate. He has his own reality and it's different from the people around him. And you go, 'Gosh, the guy is such a jerk.' But you have compassion for him, especially as the show goes on, because you learn where he came from, what's really going on with him." The character was named in tribute to Arnold's two favorite comedians, Jackie Gleason and Danny Thomas.

From the beginning, The Jackie Thomas Show was intended to be an ensemble production, as Arnold "didn't feel [he] was ready" to support a show on his own. The cast included recurring Roseanne guest star Martin Mull as a network executive, Dennis Boutsikaris, Michael Boatman, Paul Feig and Maryedith Burrell as writers and Alison LaPlaca as an office assistant.