Bradley Walsh’s Late Night Guest List

The Internet is great because you get to see the best bits of the American shows. Excluding ads the three main networks and Conan on TBS put out about 10 new hours of Material a week. (there are a lot of reruns so that figure might be generous) I would say a Hour is great entertainment, another 4 hours is okay as background TV and the rest can be awful to watch. I would be a big fan of Stephen Colbert but some of his shows are terrible. You see sketches on all of them that would never make it to Air in the UK but they go out because that's all they have and time is tight.

Every once and a while however there is something special that airs and that gives you the youtube gold moment, but there are not as many as you would think.

I think ITV could do the same with someone like Bradley Walsh but it would take real commitment, investment and a LOT of writers to do it. I doubt the bean counters want to take any risk.

Exactly. It's the modern day equivalent of the 'Monty Python' Highlights series. Watch that and you'd think every episode was full of great sketches.

Watch a full show from the first series as broadcast, and even John Cleese said, in some shows there were only a couple of sketches that he'd be happy to include if they were doing that today.

It's like Late Night with Letterman in the NBC days. What those compilations and you'd think every night was stuffed of great comedy and guests. Pick a random edition to watch - and there are plenty on You Tube - and some are really hard going. Skits seemly written in a hurry, gags that don't work, poor researched questions, unresponsive guests.

I've not seen Sam Bees show but John Oliver and The Daily Show aren't really the same genre as talk shows, TDS has a guest an episode but that's not it's primary content. John Oliver doesn't have guests at all.


Bill Maher is a kind of a comedic, opinionated version of This Week with Andrew Neill, it's a discussion show with journalists and politicians as guests

That's quite a new thing, in the past it was always the British stars that pulled in the viewers and made the most memorable moments.

I think part of the problem is the demand for clips to 'go viral'

Yes and some of the lost memorable guests and moments on his show have involved the British guests - Greg Davies and Margolyes being the two that spring to mind. I gave up on it ages ago, I don't even bother looking at who's on. Not interested in Hollywood stars, I've no idea who most of them are.

I think the lack of chat shows might be one of the reasons why Graham Norton has gone this way, for the film distribution companies they only have Norton, Ross, The One Show, or at a push The Last Leg, to get their stars on and their films promoted

Only saw the beginning, but that was enough. Couldn't really work out what it was...chat show, game show? There was a bit like Celebrity Games Night, a bit like Taskmaster, a bit like Michael Mcintyre, a bit like Takeaway. A very odd hybrid.

And the opening was excruciating, especially the bit in the car.

Felt like they'd got a load of ideas with no real direction and they were trying far too hard

The US late night shows are interesting. They tend to leave in mistakes or sketches bombing because there isn't enough time to do something else before transmission. Though of course the reaction to the sketch falling flat might be deemed funnier than the actual sketch itself.

For example, here's a Johnny Carson bit that bombed one night. The sketch is abandoned part way through with all of the reaction afterwards included. However, in the description, it's revealed that the same sketch was done again the very next night, with no introduction or anything, and was a success.

I've personally never liked most of the late night shows except for Conan. I find quite a lot of his comedy bits funny, but I wouldn't be bothered to watch a full edition with the traditional monologue or celebrity interview (which even he has tired of now, cutting his show down to half an hour with commercials).

I can also appreciate some of the more surreal and inventive work David Letterman did in the '80s on his NBC Late Night show, which is getting slowly uploaded bit by bit to this amazing YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/dongiller

I think it's just a different culture to ours where the late night format has become part of the TV landscape. And remember, James Corden's show goes out at 12.35am, which seems incredible to us, given a show like that here probably wouldn't start any later than 10.30pm.

The 2019 ratings for the US talk shows have plummeted but are still popular, especially with their online content. Compared to the hey day of Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and David Letterman, the overnight ratings are pittance, but overnight audience are not really the profit makers for advertisers now.


For example: In early May 2019, the average overnight ratings for The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon was 2.4 million, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was 3.8 million, Jimmy Kimmel Live was 2 million, Late Night with Seth Meyers was 1.4 million, Late Late Show with James Corden was 1.3 million, Daily Show with Trevor Noah was 650,000 and Conan was 340,000.

Real Time with Bill Maher averaged 1.6 million on HBO (full subscription channel). Last Week Tonight with John Oliver averaged 1 million. Samantha Bee's Full Frontal averaged 900,000.

Saturday Night Live is another example of a show that looks amazing to an outsider and full of hilarious sketches - the show itself is very hit and miss. Over here it simply wouldn’t last as we’re a lot less tolerant of comedy misfiring.

Very good point - but do remember that the US has four main time zones, which go as such:

8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.

To translate this into a TV context, it means that whilst James Corden does go out at 12.35am Eastern time, he’ll be seen at 11.35pm Central time, and 11.35 Mountain time (delayed an hour from the East coast feed). The west coast tends to delay programmes three hours behind the East, so Corden and friends will air at 12.35 Pacific time.

I think it’s also worth noting that TV in the US doesn’t really stop at night - you have the late night shows which finish around 1/2am Eastern, then from around 3am you have the early morning news bulletins, which run until the breakfast shows start at 6/7am.

By the way, I note that James Corden copied the format Graham Norton uses whereby all guests come out and sit on the sofa at the start of the show, rather than the traditional format of having one guest at a time.

Jonathan Ross (on BBC and ITV) has traditionally had a green room set-up where he can talk to all the guests at once, but I've noticed in the last few years he has also adjusted his format so that eventually all the guests are sat on the sofa at the same time.

Ross is more akin to Parkinson where each guest comes out one at a time but more often than not stays until the end of the show. Sometimes the guest will say they have to be somewhere, other times they just vanish. I remember Twitter not being very impressed when Peter Kay came on, farted about with some audience members instead of talking to Jonathan, and then he wasn't seen for the rest of the show.

Oh, you're right, that Peter Kay 'interview' was dreadful. On previous occasions he also dicked about on the set but this time he very clearly did not want to sit down and have anything close to resembling a conversation, and it made for awful TV.