Television

Nancy Cartwright's work is widely heard and well loved, but not many people know it's her. She's the voice of Bart Simpson on TV's The Simpsons — and in the long-awaited feature film that hits theaters this week.

Al Jean knows Marge, Homer, Bart and the gang better than almost anyone. He's executive producer and writer for The Simpsons, and he's been with the show since it began. The new Simpsons movie, he's been heard to say, is about "what happens when a man doesn't listen to his wife."

Before The Simpsons, Jean worked on TV's A.L.F. and It's Garry Shandling's Show.

Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, aka the folk-parody band Flight of the Conchords, hail from New Zealand and were named best alternative-comedy act at the 2005 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. Now they're starring in an HBO series called, yes, Flight of the Conchords — which is, yes, about two transplanted New Zealanders living in New York City's Lower East side. It launches Sunday.

On TV's Rescue Me, the comic, actor and writer Denis Leary plays a highly strung, highly macho fireman Tommy Gavin, who deals with raging fires and his own raging male ego. Season 4 of Rescue Me starts next week on the FX network.

Leary, who's worked in films including The Thomas Crown Affair and The Ref, sidelines as a singer, too; his comedy CD No Cure for Cancer spawned the provocatively titled hit single "Asshole."

Larry Wilmore, jokingly billed as "Senior Black Correspondent" on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, worked as a writer on In Living Color and The PJ's before getting his fake-news-show gig.

Wilmore also created The Bernie Mac Show.

Documentary producer Huw Cordey helped create the staggeringly ambitious BBC series Planet Earth. The series was five years in the making and was shot in 62 countries on every continent. It was broadcast in the United States on The Discovery Channel, and is now available on DVD.

Michael Chiklis stars as rogue detective Vic Mackey in the TV series The Shield; the Peabody Award-winning show is in its sixth season on the FX cable channel.

Previously, Chiklis starred in The Commish; over the years, he's also made guest appearances on Seinfeld, L.A. Law, Miami Vice, and Wiseguy.

Garry Shandling parodied TV talk shows on The Larry Sanders Show, which ran on HBO from 1992 to 1998 and is now out in a four-DVD box set. It's called Not Just the Best of "The Larry Sanders Show" — in part because it features eight hours of extras, including essentially unedited conversations with stars who made guest appearances on the Larry Sanders sofa.

Actress Bea Arthur may be best known for her starring roles in the TV sitcom Maude (in the '70s) and The Golden Girls (in the '80s and '90s) — but did you know she also played Yente the Matchmaker in the 1964 Broadway premiere of Fiddler on the Roof? The first season of Maude is now out on DVD.

MTV's new Thursday-night sketch-comedy series Human Giant got its start as a collection of Web shorts, and the rise of MySpace and the viral-video explosion helped it develop a big following online. Terry talks with Aziz Ansari, Rob Heubel and Paul Scheer, three of the comics who power the show's alterna-comedy antics.