W.Hat Mike Leigh and Steven Bartlett have in common? Very little, determined. I can’t see the octogenary author behind the bafta-winning movie like Secrets and lies and Vera Drake Kicks back after a long day’s shoot with a nourishing glass of huel and a motivational episode of The diary of a CEO Podcast. Their incongruent is so overwhelming that there is only one cultural strength that is powerful enough to bring these two men together on the same sofa. And the cultural strength is That one show.
Since 2006, at 1 p.m. 19.00 Weekday at the BBC One belonged to the TV station’s leading something-for-all-and-no grab bag with a magazine exhibition. The Delirium-inducing theme Melody-trumped Fanfares accompanied by someone shouting “one … one … one!” In the case of increasing volume and pitch-alert warnings the start of a TV route, the chairman of Perma-Chery Alex Jones, along with the reliable BBC-Stalwart has been reversed to be her presenting partner.
Every 30-minute episode is an odyssey through current affairs, uplifting local stories and any possible echelon of celebrity. It is like the children’s TV for adults, an evening exhibition that must be sent with all rights at 1 p.m. 10.30pm. Tonal shifts are enough to give you whiplash and tross all accepted rules for coherent TV spread. The agenda follows the nonsensical logic of a fever dream: Unliked scene follows unnoticed scene with zero explanation. And that is exactly how what should be with all rights is one of the BBC’s most boring programs has instead been unparented. I like to think that is the reason why about 3 million people set every night not only because they have forgotten to turn around after News at six o’clock.
Take Thursday (January 23) Night’s Broadcast, host of Roman Kemp and The Unflappable Jones, A A show Veteran of 15 years. First up, Bartlett had to sit through a short video of Harry from season two of The traitors Participates in an immersive Agatha Christie Whodunnit. Then Leigh and many years of partner Marianne Jean-Baptist ended him in the famous green sofa. All three of them watched when Carol from Isle of Wight was praised for her work with service dogs (then enjoyed a walk in a monster car as a reward).
The paradox of That one show is that every single episode is somehow wildly different and quite the same. And then Thursday’s lineup was at one time the main unpredictable in the details, but completely representative of the program’s classic formula. We begin with a kind of guard topical story with human interest. We are introduced to a star guest who to field softball questions about their latest project. Then it’s time to meet more celebrities. For maximum dissonance, they usually come from a very different strata of fame to the one occupied by their new sofas. Think Tom Fletcher from McFly sitting with Kerry Washington. Strictly‘S Shirley Ballas chatting with Hollywood’s go-to villain Mads Mikkelsen. Or Harry Hill thrown along with Dakota Fanning, a woman who has certainly never heard of Tv Burp.
Next, another VT that may cover everything from flagting to scammers (with the evil guys usually played by a game production assistant wearing a hoodie as a short -lived for dodginess). The celebrities are held hostage everywhere-as AL Pacino found out when he tried to get off in the middle of Broadcast in 2020, and thought wrong that his presence was no longer required. You see cogs moving in the brains of A-lists as they wonder why their publicist has signed them to sit and nodally as they watch Jeff Brazier go down a suburbs High Street. Sometimes they asked what they just saw, as when Dame Judi Dench was asked if she had ever put her feet up on a train seat (answer: Of course not).
This strange is what makes That one show unique. On ITV, This morning Covers a similar eclectic selection of concerns, but their famous guests spirit away during the ad breaks, so they never have to weigh, says Britain’s Pothole epidemic. The Graham Norton show Has a comparable Mish-mash approach to celebrity bookings, but Norton does not force his A-lists to have the indignation or joy of various worldly concerns that never darkened their own gilded lives. Plus, you get the feeling that the Hollywood stars have at least one vague idea who he is and what show they are on (unlike Pacino, who looked completely confused when Jones jokingly asked him if he had “been dreamed of That one show? ”))
The cumulative effect is at the same time banal and bisarr. None of it makes any sense at all – if historians look back on someone random A show Episode for a few centuries, they will be deeply, existentially confused about what British society considered important and/or entertaining at dawn of the third millennium. Comedy icon Mel Brooks expressed it best during his 2017 A show appearance. Moments after he had Jones and her then co-host Matt Matt Baker, who broke up with his jokes, performed the presenters a tonal hand-brake tour and began to tell the story of a woman trying to track her long lost father. “What crazy show is this!” Brooks said and nicely summarized what every guest (and every viewer) had been thinking for years.
Of course, it speaks to shake that shaking from Visedcracking Celebs to missing family members is by no means the show’s most shuddering transition. That honor goes to the time when Jones slipped from a nature segment to an interview with Ozark‘S Jason Bateman using the immortal line: “Now from the transformation of Dragonfly … to the transformation of Jason Bateman.” It takes a real ease of touch to do a tune like the one work – even if her smile and enthusiasm shake your cynical soul, you still have to admit that Jones is very good at her job.
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Outside the screen, the show’s unsuccessful is definitely its talent booker, which clearly has a) one of the most spacious contact books in the British entertainment industry and b) the vision and panache required to kill themselves in putting together some indispensable Highbrow – Lowbrow celebrity pairings. Netflix movies SCOOP was based on the work of Sam McAlister, the producer who organized Prince Andrew’s interview with NewSnightand I would just as happily see a drama about the processing of That one show‘S CELEB CONNECTION PERSONALS. Maybe Sheridan Smith, a classic green sofa guest, could play the lead role in the lead role. She would be able to pull at the time she was stuck in a lift with Stephen Fry moments before they were both ready to appear on the program, in scenes that would have been cut off W1A To be for on the nose.
As the gaffe proved, live tv often goes out of piste, and That one show is no exception. In 2022, actor Dan Stevens, earlier of Downton Abbeyappeared on the couch to promote his new show Gas -litA drama about the Watergate scandal. “What you have is a criminal of a leader wrapped up in a messy war, involved in a stupid scandal and surrounded by ambitious idiots who really had to resign,” he said before being asked he was just Had read “The The Intro to Boris Johnson”. The gasps in the studio were audible.
Nor is it just the guests who go off the script. One of the show’s most memorable moments came in 2011, just as the credits were rolling at the end of an interview with the then Prime Minister David Cameron. In true A show Style, he had been sitting next to an owl and its trades everywhere. “Just very fast, how on earth are you sleeping at night?” Baker asked with seconds with screen time to go. The former Blue Peter The presenter delivered his zinger with a cheerful charm that gave him plausible discrepability. It is completely possible that he simply asked Cameron about his Natrutine instead of referring to the impact of the Tory nuisance -but I like to think of the exchange as a light entertainment -Rojan horse.
When so much TV now feels like it’s created by an algorithm to give a friction -free viewing experience, That one show‘s unapologetic wonders make it feel like a loving outlier. As Brooks said, this program is undisputed “nuts” – but that’s the joy of it. Long can rule as the most confusing thing on the BBC.