A solarium is a glass room exposed to the sun, but – more importantly – is also a place where Professor Smedley Drake would be likely to hang out, possibly with his smoking jacket, the morning newspaper, a freshly-packed pipe, and a nice sherry. He’s not a real person, just an image of all that seems absurd but is actually quite conventional, and all that is conventional but can easily be perceived as absurd. The Solarium with Professor Smedley Drake is a sketch comedy show that, like most successful sketch comedy shows, attempts to find the absurdities in conventional life and play them up to a ridiculous extreme. Sometimes it succeeds; other times it gets an A for effort. The Solarium recently won “Best Educational Access Program” at the 2005 Time-Warner PEGASYS awards. The three field-shot episodes will be available on LaserDisc soon.