LETTERMAN UBER ALLES

By Richard Zoglin

The host, a tall, bespectacled fellow with a wry expression and fidgety body language, bounds onstage to the beat of the house rock band. He grimaces when jokes don't work, makes small talk with the nerdy bandleader, obsessively repeats words and names that strike his fancy. Sitting at his desk, a nighttime cityscape in the background, he stops periodically to take a sip from a glass of tap water. Each time, he offers the same exaggerated show of pleasure: "I say yes to German water!"

It's as good an impression of David Letterman as you'll find outside Saturday Night Live. And this one is way outside. The Dave clone is Harald Schmidt, host of a German late-night talk show that runs four days a week on SAT 1, a channel seen not only in Germany but also in several other European countries from Switzerland to Slovakia. His references to the American talk-show host are sometimes obvious and self-conscious: in one recurring bit, a postman drops off letters and Schmidt greets him, "Oh, look, the letterman." More often he simply copies Letterman's style, from the slicing hand gestures to the comedy sketches featuring crew members to the overelaborate jokes based on the day's headlines. Schmidt on a senior-citizens home for gay people that has just opened in Amsterdam: "It's fantastic. When an 83-year-old is admitted, the word goes out [switching to an effeminate Dutch accent], 'Oh, fresh meat!'"

Letterman may be having problems in his home country--his ratings have fallen well behind those of both Jay Leno and Ted Koppel--and he seems as sourly distracted as he's ever been in his 15-year late-night career. (A longtime fan might be excused for thinking that the guy doing Letterman on CBS right now is an impersonator too.) But overseas he has never been hotter. Replicating Letterman for the locals is the most popular gimmick in international television since the invention of Baywatch.

In Russia, Igor Ugolnikov, host of a popular late-night show, Good Evening, appears on a set modeled after Letterman's (a nighttime view of Moscow in the background), banters with his bandleader and keeps a mug full of pencils on his desk. In Argentina, Roberto Pettinato is host of Duro de Acostar (roughly translated, Sleep Hard, a play on Duro de Matar, the Spanish title for Die Hard), which features yet another bantering bandleader, city backdrop and, in a variant on Letterman's trademark, a nightly Top 5 list. Dan Borge Akero, host of Norway's RiksDan, used to do a Letterman-style Top 6 list, but dropped it in 1996 when he ran out of material. Peter Jan Rens, host of a Dutch show called Late Night, which debuted in September, is more serious than Letterman (his talk strays to topics like aids and street violence) but admits that Dave was his inspiration. "Until Letterman appeared on Dutch screens, I often traveled to the U.S. to see him," he says.

A pioneer of the faux-Letterman gang was Australia's Steve Vizard, a lawyer turned comedian who was host of a late-night show down under for three years, starting in 1990. He had the Letterman repertoire down pat, introduc-ing bits with the same tongue-in-cheek flourish ("I have in my left hand... "). Staff members would even prep American guests on the show by telling them, "Just pretend you're on the Letterman show." Though critics hooted at the thievery, most Aussie viewers didn't get the references--until 1994, when the real Letterman show started airing in Australia. By then Vizard was safely off the air.

Letterman was also the model for Thomas Koschwitz, a roly-poly German host whose RTL Nightshow copied Dave's bits but not his success: it was canceled in 1995 because of low ratings. Schmidt, 40, a former actor who sports steel-rimmed glasses and designer suits, has done a better job of capturing Letterman's deadpan charisma, and The Harald Schmidt Show is now seen by 1 million Germans a night, a sizable 10% share of the viewing audience. His sometimes off-color jokes and frequent ethnic put-downs have earned Schmidt the nickname "Dirty Harry." For his advocates, however, the dirtiest insult is to call Schmidt a Letterman imitator. "Initially, the producers were inspired by Letterman," admits a show spokeswoman. "But we have left all that behind, and now it is very much Harald's own show."

Let's just say the similarities are hard to ignore. "They have it down beat for beat," says Letterman's executive producer, Rob Burnett, who has seen Schmidt's show. Not that anyone is getting ready to call in the lawyers. "It makes us laugh," says Burnett. "It's like watching I Love Lucy in Spanish." And, of course, there's that old bit about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. Dave may be having his problems in America, but no one is doing Jay Leno in Slovakia.

--Reported by Ursula Sautter/Bonn, with other bureaus

With reporting by URSULA SAUTTER/BONN, WITH OTHER BUREAUS