SHOWS FOR YOUNGSTERS AND THEIR PARENTS TOO : ‘All That’ is comedy, hip-hop and more, namely in a good Nickelodeon slot

Kids looking for a “Saturday Night Live”-styled show that speaks to them have been channel-surfing lately to Nickelodeon’s best-kept secret, “All That.”

Now nestled in the prized Saturday-night Snick block, the sketch-comedy show features a core cast of young comedians and weekly performers from chart-topping hip-hop bands. The show hopes to invoke the spirit of “SNL’s” earliest and funniest days, tailored to a younger audience.

“You’ve got special talent in this show,” explains Herb Scannell, executive vice president of Nick, who had enough confidence in the show to put it in the network’s highest-profile time block. “For us, it was a very upbeat kind of show and we were looking for a show that would fit the block, which is now defined by variety--the shows (in the block) are very different from each other. And ‘All That’ was not only very good, but very funny and fit in well.”

It was, Scannell points out, “created unlike any other Nick show, since they held auditions for kids with characters in them, rather than looking for actors. These kids are like young Martin Shorts and young John Belushis. Hopefully, it’ll be on for a long time.”

Early in the show’s development, creator and executive producer Brian Robbins believed the key to the show would be the performers. Robbins, 30, who starred in the ABC sitcom “Head of the Class,” assembled his dream team: Angelique Bates, 13; Lori Beth Denberg, 19; Katrina Johnson, 12; Kel Mitchell, 16; Alisa Reyes, 13; Josh Server, 15, and Kenan Thompson, 16. He found them in an exhaustive nationwide search.

When another pilot with Nick fell though, Robbins--who recently directed “The Show,” a concert documentary film due out in August on high-profile rappers--was asked by the kid-focused network to “do a show that would be like ‘SNL’ but with kids.” Robbins cites the early days of Fox’s “In Living Color” as another inspiration.

When the “All That” cast auditioned, they were asked to ad-lib. “We asked them to be an old man, a parent, a teacher, everything, so we could to see their range,” Robbins says. “Our sketch ideas evolved from the characters the cast created in their auditions.”

Next month, the show goes back into production on its set at the Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, Fla., where 20 episodes will be filmed in front of an audience.

“Our show is really pure sketch comedy,” Robbins says. “We have franchised characters,” who are “repeated, like Ishbu, the foreign exchange student; Randy and Mandy, who have a cooking show and cook everything with chocolate. We bring characters back again and again, like ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘In Living Color’ did.”

Cast member Mitchell, from Chicago, is pleased that “the producers are always open to our creative input. They let us add our own style to the characters.”

Northridge native Denberg says the show’s “written up to kids. It’s tailored to kids and teens and doesn’t patronize them. It gives young people the credit they deserve with lots of subtle comedy.”

Robbins believes his five years on “Head of the Class” helped him hone his comedic sense. “Every show had to be funny with a message, which is good for that format (sitcom), but we want to be funny and entertaining and not be an education show,” he adds. “We want to be responsible and don’t want to present any negative stereotypes or demean anyone, but our No. 1 priority is to be funny. We’re not going to be crude or offend people, but we just want to be funny.”

“All That” airs Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. and repeats Sundays at 1 p.m. on Nickelodeon. For ages 4 and up.