Competition uncovers celebrities' hidden talents

And you thought you'd seen celebrities do everything.

Dance, sing, skate. Live together, lose weight.

Get arrested, go to jail, go to rehab.

All dressed up, dressed down, dressed in (and out of) their underwear.

But now TV has come up with a new way to feed our celebrity-crazed pop culture cravings.

"Secret Talents of the Stars" arrives Tuesday on CBS, at the too-late hour of 10 p.m., when the little ones won't be able to see the show biz showing-off. Thank our stars for DVRs. Then even the tykes will be able to savor the country music song stylings of "Star Trek" helmsman turned Howard Stern sidekick George Takei. And the stand-up comedy of country crooner Clint Black. And kid star turned DJ turned human train wreck Danny Bonaduce astride a unicycle among circus clowns.

Sixteen stars will compete — ranging from R&B star Mya (tap dancing) to Olympic skater Sasha Cohen (contortionism) and the ubiquitous Ben Stein (dancing the jitterbug) — in a live seven-week talent show, where viewers decide online who goes, who stays and who finally wins the, uh, whatever they win.

It sounds almost too good to be true — a cheesefest cornucopia along the lines of those 1980s network-glory-days legends " Battle of the Network Stars'' and " Circus of the Stars." Add to that the reality competition element and the celeb-crammed lineup, and it's practically a trifecta of pop culture cool.

But Robyn Nash, executive producer of "Secret Talents of the Stars," isn't having any of that campy trashing. Nash, whose previous productions include "World's Most Amazing Videos" and "Stupid Behavior: Caught on Tape," has noble intentions.

"I've always been fascinated by celebrities and interested in other things they might do," Nash said recently. She remembered reading an article about Pierce Brosnan also being a fire-eater — sadly, not a talent to be showcased on this first edition — and thought celebrities must "all have secrets like that. And they aren't always so tabloidy. I wanted to kind of find those and have it be like an old-fashioned variety show.

"Some of them are very good at their secret talent, and some are not so good," Nash admits, "but we're pairing them with really strong backing acts, so they have a chance to really shine. If someone's singing, they're singing with a 20-piece orchestra. If someone's dancing, we're surrounding them with 14 to 16 great dancers. These are big production numbers. We're not looking for anyone to fall on their face."

Despite the new show's title, the fun in "Secret Talents" is unlikely to come from seeing candid new sides of the stars. We already see them everywhere all the time in our fame-fixated world. Back in the '70s and '80s, celebrities were at more of a distance.

CBS is clearly banking on the series' appeal, scheduling it to climax during the May sweeps — precisely where networks two decades earlier aired those previous star battles as ratings magnets.