Okay, maybe Steve Wilkos doesn’t need his own show. But despite the inevitable skepticism that will result from viewers who cannot and will not disassociate Wilkos from his former employer, the brief look we got at “The Steve Wilkos Show” found a show much more rooted in the territory of folks like Montel Williams or Maury Povich. (Okay, maybe I should specify “early Maury Povich”; that guy’s practically another Springer these days.) Wilkos, a former Marine and a longtime veteran of the Chicago Police Department, doesn’t appear to be going for sensationalism; he seriously comes across as a guy who just wants to use his public forum to help people, and it’s hard not to root for someone with such a goal.

Mind you, it was a little disconcerting that the panel seemed to be led much more by the show’s executive producer, Richard Dominick, than by Wilkos himself. Once in awhile, though, Wilkos managed to get a word in edgewise…and, perhaps inevitably, much of that time was spent defining the considerable differences between himself and the show he’s just left.

“There are no similarities,” stated Wilkos, definitively. “You know, ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ was a crazy circus and, believe me, I’m going to miss working on that show because for 14 years…you know, I never considered it work. I went, and I had a great time, and I had fun with the guys. It was a lot of fun. But this is…when you are a policeman, you have to take it more seriously. And this show is dealing with people that are coming to me, calling the show, and asking for help. And we are going to try to help these people.”

But surely people will look at you and say, “Hey, it’s that dude from ‘The Jerry Springer Show,'” yes…?

“Hey, you know what? People are going to say that,” admits Wilkos. “People are going to do that. But (once) they tune in and they start watching my show, then they’ll get it. And some people have gotten it. They’ve seen, when I hosted ‘The Jerry Springer Show,’ especially the last 20 or 30 that I hosted, we didn’t do the typical Springer show. Like, we did this show on a guy where he was abusing his wife, the girl living with the guy in the van. And there was actually a really great
response, where people were like, ‘Wow, can you help me?’ So I think doing the show going forward, when people are always going to associate with me with Springer, which is fine with me, because I love Jerry and I loved working on his show. But my show is not ‘The Jerry Springer Show.’ It’s going to be completely different.”