The US talkshow: late-night, five times a week, with an accessible guy (and it’s almost always a guy) in a sharp suit bringing smooth gags, star interviews, musical guests and skits to a dedicated audience who stay up past midnight to be part of the gang. Every major network has one; some have two. To Yankophiles peering jealously across the ocean, “late night” is an example of the sophisticated razzle-dazzle they do so much better Stateside.
Yet the hottest name in late night right now is… Gavin & Stacey’s James Corden, who surprised everyone including himself by landing the hosting gig on CBS’s Late Late Show in March last year. Since then he’s attracted solid ratings (just over a million viewers for a show that airs at 12.37am) and the Facebook “likes” of millions worldwide.
Corden’s eyebrow-raising reinvention of the talkshow has had international reach because it has happened online. He’s accelerated a trend started by Jay Leno’s Tonight Show successor, Jimmy Fallon, for focusing on shareable content – namely a segment called Carpool Karaoke, in which Corden drives around with stars singing their hits. Adele’s Carpool Karaoke racked up 116m hits, Justin Bieber’s 84m. Other skits, such as Tattoo Roulette with One Direction (in which Harry Styles got inked live), managed similarly huge numbers. These went viral on both sides of the Atlantic, to the point that Sky has bought the rights to air the show on demand in the UK, starting this Tuesday.
The irony is, for decades we’ve hankered after a Brit answer to Leno or David Letterman. Yet Corden took over from Scottish comic Craig Ferguson, and has risen in parallel with US satire’s new English overlord, John Oliver. We’re sending our stars over there, then buying their US programmes back. Why can’t we just make our own?
We used to try. Johnny Vaughan Tonight aired thrice-weekly on BBC3 in 2002, but Vaughan retreated swiftly to radio when it wasn’t successful – just as Danny Baker had 10 years earlier. V Graham Norton was on Channel 4 every weeknight in the early 00s, but Norton now rules the UK chat kingdom with a BBC1 show that’s weekly, not on all year round, and has far less of the japes and audience participation that used to pepper his shows.
In Norton’s career we find two reasons why British late-night doesn’t work. Exciting (and American) guests are hard to access daily: the Norton show might soon kill off its only rival, ITV’s Jonathan Ross Show, for want of enough A-listers to sustain both (the B-listers are on Alan Carr: Chatty Man). It’s also a rare host who can power a live-audience extravaganza, night after night: “I wanted my life back,” Norton said in 2004, explaining why he quit V Graham Norton. We struggle to find anyone who’s hipper than coiffed old-schoolers like Wogan, Parkinson and Aspel, but still a showman. Often, our embarrassment about the format makes us run instead for the ironic cover of an Alan Partridge or a Mrs Merton.
Corden strikes a balance by being an actor and singer who happens to be good at hosting. He has the energy to carry all three off, observing that the punishing schedule is “nothing compared to doing One Man, Two Guvnors [on stage] eight times a week for 496 shows”. Corden’s skits and songs create event television and illuminate his guests, performers themselves, in a better light than any semi-scripted sofa bonhomie. It should be an easy format for UK telly to copy – and yet we’ve nothing like it.
There are other obstacles in the way of a proper late-night chatwagon. In the UK, where channels spend less on a 20-part series than CBS does on James Corden’s nightly hair gel allowance, a new show would be a pricey gamble. Overnight ratings drop below half a million by 11pm and aren’t even recorded after midnight. “The climate of fear, especially on entertainment shows, is extraordinary,” says Steve Regan, Channel 5’s entertainment commissioning editor. Any fresh entrant would be mercilessly scrutinised: “The criticism would be immediate. [CBS] gave Corden time. We wouldn’t.”
Regan is the channel exec behind one British after-hours show that’s sought to learn from how Corden won back young viewers. Up Late With Rylan, hosted by plutonium-toothed X-Factor runner-up Rylan Clark-Neal, ran four nights a week for a month at 11pm on Channel 5 earlier this year. “We knew that, at 11, we weren’t going to get massive ratings,” says Regan. “But we wanted to play around a bit.” Online shares the morning after were deemed more important in gauging success. While Up Late With Rylan didn’t pull up many trees, this new focus looks like the way forward. “Corden feels like the first generation of chatshow host who’s realised how important social is. Reality shows here think like that. Entertainment shows don’t.”
If we’re to get late night right, then, we need to be taking risks and aiming for online. We need our own Carpool Karaoke. Ballroom Dancing On A Bus With Rylan, anyone?
The Late Late Show With James Corden is on Sky Go and Now TV from Tuesday 19 July
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