It’s been interesting to see the way that comedians from the live circuit have recently dipped their toes into mainstream TV waters. Sara Pascoe, Joe Wilkinson and Joe Lycett are among the acts to have succumbed to the lure of the revived Celebrity Squares and then there is that ITV1 attempt at reanimating an even older corpse, Sunday Night at the Palladium.
Previous hosts have included Jack Whitehall and Jason Manford and guests have included Hal Cruttenden and Romesh Ranganathan. Not acts to be sniffed at, but this series has already been pretty widely written off as a pale shadow of the original version, trying to whip the audience into an X Factor frenzy when there really is nothing to get into a frenzy about.
I wanted to give it a few weeks to see if it had bedded in, so waited until this week’s fourth edition, hosted by Jimmy Carr, before reviewing it. Carr has always had a bit of the Bob Monkhouse about him so I thought he’d do a pretty good job. It was hard to tell at the start, as after a ridiculously old hat sketch in which he was transformed from bearded tramp (or maybe hipster) to slick host he ran on, made one joke about ITV taking a risk booking him and introduced the first act, Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott.
Back onstage after the music Carr had a chance to do a sanitised version of his live act. No gypsy gags, but he did a regional accent routine including lines about Liverpudlians saying “it’s me gran’s birthday, she’s 30.” and another about Geordie women loving a fight. It was as if alternative comedy had never happened.
The show sells itself as a variety show (though since this review went up there's been a bit of a dispute about that). I guess the original version, most famously fronted by Bruce Forsyth, had its oddball speciality acts, so maybe shadow puppeteer Raymond Crowe would have been booked thirty years ago. He could have even done the same act then – Louis Armstrong, a cuddly bunny, two kissing monkeys. Carr joined him and I thought we might get something edgier. Carr did a little dog, which showed how easy it was and rather undermined Crowe’s skills.
Whatever you think of Carr his material here definitely felt diluted. Jokes about Simon Cowell having cosmetic surgery and Louis Walsh looking old were the order of the day. The trouble with Sunday Night... is that it shamelessly panders to the lowest denominators. You can’t blame Carr or the other comics doing this show. Think of the primetime exposure. But there is a degree of compromise involved in being beamed into family homes pre-watershed. Somehow ITV conspires to suck the life out of everything. Remember their version of Live at the Apollo, Comedy Rocks? I have nothing against mainstream stand-up on television, but the BBC seems to do it so much better. Even when it has great acts ITV1 can't help dumbing them down.
Special comedy guest last night was Tommy Tiernan. Great to see him on television. Shame it had to be this show. Tiernan, sporting Roy Keane’s biblical beard, did his terrific riff about Irish drunks on the lash – “girls with new born giraffe legs trying to make it up the street”. He did a similar routine at Latitude this year and there’s no getting away from the fact that it was better there with added swearing. I guess this appearance might introduce Tiernan to a new audience, but the kind of people he might attract doing a show like this might get a shock if they see him for real.
I'm trying to not be snobbish about this. SNATP is an unashamedly lowbrow piece of televison. I guess it takes your mind off staring into the yawning existential abyss for an hour, but not necessarily in a good way. I felt slightly grubby just watching Nicole Scherzinger. I guess the original Palladium series was pretty lowbrow at times, but in hindsight it seems like a great piece of television. I can’t see them saying the same about this in three decades. It’s more likely that Jimmy Carr will get a knighthood.
To be completely honest this was nowhere near as bad as I expected. The new Celebrity Squares is much more of a travesty. The two remaining SNATP hosts are Bradley Walsh and Rob Brydon. I can live without Walsh, but Brydon has always been a bit Forsythian and hosting is in his blood, so brace yourselves, the run might just end with a bit of style.
