David Letterman increasingly looks like he's going to tour in a one-man show as George Bernard Shaw but he isn't…as far as I know. He is however about to debut his new show for Netflix in which he sits around for an hour having a conversation with someone who really interests him. This is in contrast with his old show where he sometimes conducted fifteen-minute interviews with people you got the feeling he couldn't have cared less about.
The show is called My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman and the first one, with our previous president in the guest chair, starts Friday, January 12. It will be monthly thereafter and his guests will include George Clooney, Malala Yousafzai, JAY-Z, Tina Fey, and Howard Stern.
In 2014, around the time CBS announced the date of Dave's last Late Show for them, I wrote here…
Personally, I'd love to see him do a weekly one-on-one interview show. Dave lately seems to average about one guest per week who he seems genuinely glad to have there and is interested in. Have those folks on for the hour and let them just talk: No stunts, no stupid human tricks, just a conversation. Of course, the trouble with this idea is that Letterman is notoriously reticent to be in prime time — and such a low-key show might look chintzy in prime time — and there's real no place to put it in late night. If they put it on Saturday nights at 11:30, it would get slaughtered by SNL.
When I wrote that, he was in talks with CBS about remaining in their "family" so I didn't entertain the notion of him going somewhere like Netflix. I guess he did because CBS had no place to put that kind of show…or maybe Netflix just offered way more cash…or both. In any case, I'll be tuning in.
This has been announced all over the 'net and on the pages where commenting is allowed, one sees much outrage from people who don't like Liberals and loathe the whole notion of an hour where a Liberal host interviews Liberal guests. Okay. I don't like Hannity or Fox and Friends or Tucker Carlson's program but it doesn't upset that they're in my TiVo's Programming Guide.
What's the problem here? I doubt Dave will spend the entirety or even most of any episode bashing Donald Trump or discussing the news, especially since some of these shows are apparently being recorded months before they'll be released for viewing. Trump makes it very easy to write political jokes but they all seem to expire in forty-eight hours when the next insane utterance or revelation hits the front page.
Seems a lot of people are bothered that there is no entertainment show where a beloved entertainer talks, unafraid to reveal right-wing beliefs. In those comment threads, I see the view that the "mainstream media" (i.e., everyone except sometimes Fox News) would never give a show to a Conservative host…and that runs counter to my belief that the folks who run TV networks will put on anything (a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g) that will get ratings. There are programming guys who would dangle their grandmothers naked over a crocodile pit for tune-in and I'm wondering who that Conservative host would be. Kelsey Grammer? Scott Baio? James Woods? I think Dennis Miller has long since had his three strikes and out.
I discussed this a few weeks ago with a comedy-writer friend who's far from me on the political spectrum, though that doesn't stop him from making nastier cracks about Trump than I do. After hearing a flurry from him about Trump's hair, hands, lying, ego and misogyny, I asked him if he would vote for the man again in 2020. His reply? "Absolutely — as long as he's running against Hillary Clinton!"
Challenged by me to name a Conservative who could helm the kind of show Colbert, Kimmel or Meyers does, he came up with Drew Carey but admitted Carey already has maybe the safest high-paying gig in television and probably isn't all that right-wing or interested in pushing any political agenda. We kind of agreed that Liberals ain't good at doing the Limbaugh/Hannity/Carlson act and Conservatives don't excel at the Stewart/Colbert/Meyers kind of thing…so it's kind of a wash.
I don't care if Letterman does or doesn't do a Liberal Talk Show because, first of all, I don't see him as a person who's particularly well-read and knowledgeable in that area. And secondly, what he does best is to be funny…and if he's not going to be that, there's not much point in anyone watching a David Letterman show. I sure won't.