The ratings are decent, but is Adrian Chiles's new show about the chat or the gags?
What a troubled presenter, starting a new show after the previous one has been hammered, could really do without is one of the guests responding to a thank-you for appearing with the words: "I'm a media tart. I'll do anything." But so spoke Neil Hamilton to Adrian Chiles during this week's edition of That Sunday Night Show (ITV1). If Chiles was hoping for a late-night success to balance out the early-morning disaster of Daybreak, he has so far been vindicated on ratings ? the show is averaging 3.2 million viewers on a traditional early night for workers ? but the content looks confused.
Chiles's late show has been talked up as satire, with hopeful historical allusions to TW3 and The Daily Show, but the only evidence of this ambition on air is some funny video clips from the web (the tell-tale research tool of the ideas-short format) and Frank Skinner as a panellist, delivering a string of sharp jokes that leave you thinking he should be hosting one of these attempted revivals of satire.
Skinner, like the presenter, is a celebrity fan of West Bromwich Albion and, with another guest being Margaret Mountford, who was part of The Apprentice franchise with Chiles, there was a sense of his gathering familiar talent as a comfort blanket.
They discussed the Miriam O'Reilly ageism case and brought on Selina Scott to join them. Chiles read a long question about her own case against Channel 5, which she explained she couldn't legally answer. Then the Hamiltons came on (but, really, why?) and Chiles asked Neil a serious question about cash-for-questions, which he declined to answer. No one seems sure if the point is chat or gags.
If Daybreak starts doing particularly badly on Mondays, ITV1 will probably say that the audience is simply exhausted from staying up for the Sunday show, but at the moment one of the most natural talents in broadcasting looks stuck with two formats that don't suit him.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jan/20/that-sunday-night-show
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