Monsters of Television

“And then there’s people like me who are made of tweed.”

I don’t regularly watch The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. It’s nothing against Ferguson, but his show is on far too late for me. When I wasn’t in school, that horrible 7 month period, I would catch Ferguson’s show after I got off my shift at Blockbuster. It’s a captivating little show, deconstructing the late night format in the way Letterman used to do: his 1000th show was done entirely with a puppet, he avoids a scripted monologue, wonderfully eulogized his father and mother on air, and encourages voting. The show can feel like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse but with a Scottish accent.

This past week, Ferguson kicked out his audience and filmed an episode-long interview with a single guest. While Ferguson framed it as an “experiment,” he explained that it wasn’t totally crazy. Larry King does it all the time. Charlie Rose does it all the time. But it doesn’t happen all that often on late night broadcast television. So for the entire episode Ferguson sat down and talked with Stephen Fry.

To be fair, selecting Stephen Fry to headline your purely conversational late show is pretty much the best idea on the face of the planet. Fry is a brilliant conversationalist, talker, and thinker (on top of comedian and actor). Ferguson, of course, due to his lack of questions for his guests (he tears up the question cards as each guest approaches his desk), is also a terrific talker.

The hour covers a range of topics, from Twitter to punk rock to dealing with drug and alcohol addictions to the spirit of the United States to not knowing who celebrities are to Jersey Shore. It’s a wildly fascinating conversation, ebbing and flowing, broken only by the need for commercial breaks. The lack of an audience is hardly noticeable and, in fact, enhances the conversation. There’s no need to pause for laughter or ham it up for the audience. The plugs, one briefly for Fry’s new book about the States and a clip from the upcoming Alice in Wonderland (Fry voices the Cheshire Cat) are barely noticeable, mere asides really.

To be sure, the lack of an audience does alter the interview dynamics considerably, but I don’t know that anyone else on late night could do this. Leno’s interview skills aren’t that great, and I think Letterman (and O’Brien) thrives on having an audience. I don’t know that Fallon could stay focused on one thing for too long, and I haven’t seen enough Kimmel to really say either way. So perhaps like Prime Minister’s questions, this event should happen on Ferguson’s show once a month.

And maybe CBS will start advertising the show, because it’s a real party.