Stay In: This American Life Debuts on Showtime

Let's cut to the chase: the winner of a This American Life TV series poster signed by Ira Glass is Jessica. Congratulations, Jessica -- email us so we can figure out how to get your poster to you.

The rest of you will have to settle for watching the show itself, which has its Showtime premiere tonight at 10:30. (Actually, we're pretty sure it's on InDemand, as well, but we don't have Showtime so we wouldn't swear to it.) We've seen the first four episodes, and while we weren't blown away -- not like we were at the first promo trailer -- it's amazing that the translation works as well as it does.

The first episode, which reworks two stories originally heard on the radio show, was the shakiest, though we may think that just because we don't think the visuals added much to either story. (About a reincarnated bull, and a band prank that doesn't work out as the pranksters intended.) The camerawork is gorgeous, but don't add fresh insight or information.

But by the third episode, the visuals and audio are working together to create something greater than the radio show itself -- or if not greater, than something that the radio show alone could not achieve.

Our two biggest surprises: the TV show is half an hour, not an hour; and Ira Glass claims not to have seen the Monty Python skits with John Cleese sitting at his desk on location, which were inescapably the first thing we thought of when Glass' own desk is revealed. We didn't realize people were allowed to be young and nerdy in the '70s or '80s without watching Monty Python.

(You can see the entire Chris Ware piece pictured above online. No waiting!)