Late-night talk shows are like entertainment’s horseshoe crab — a televised living fossil. The news and gossip referenced in the monologue you’ve already read online. That the interviews are canned is obvious to even the least savvy modern viewer. The bits never rate with the best humor found in podcasts, on YouTube, and wherever else it is that comedy nerds lurk. But like the local news, network TV’s other useless sop to old people, late night has its enjoyably familiar rhythms, with celebrity, culture, and politics engaged at arm’s length, the news cycle’s grip loosened, as you head off to bed.
(For those of you, by the way, wondering what pleasures affiliate news has to offer, just remember that it has hardly changed in substance since the golden era that “Anchor Man” lampoons. It’s absurd in the best way. And don’t forget this.)
There are gratifications particular to the current late night lineup: Craig Ferguson’s nutty monologues, Fallon’s music, Conan’s collegiate wit, Letterman’s nihilism, George Lopez’s cancellation. (Jon Stewart, by the way, is a shiny teacher’s apple to these oranges, so we’ll leave him out of this.) With this week’s announcement that manic, greasy actor-author Russell Brand will have his own nighttime talk show starting later this year on FX, you can expect that late night will become even less mild and predictable of a pleasure.
Brand’s had some fine turns in movies — he alone makes “Forgetting Sara Marshall” the decidedly watchable flick that it is (in contrast to that Eeyore-slash-eyesore Jason Segel) — but he always plays himself. Which makes him a perfect host. All he has to do is let that ludicrous self-regard, semi-obscene humor, British slang, and SAT vocab come tumbling out, and the show’s made.
Of course, Brand could well suck every last bit of oxygen from the room, leaving his guests floundering. Meanwhile, the apparent plan to involve the audience sounds like a sure way to trip up his flow. But it’s also possible he’ll do something remarkable. Do like Arsenio and introduce the next woof, woof, woof. Put his guests on edge, like Letterman. Or — and this would be the dream — search out interviews along the lines of ones we’ve seen with Joaquin Phoenix, Charlyne Yi, Abel Ferrara, and Harmony Korine. He’s got six episodes to start. We expect at least one brilliant disaster in that span.