Colin Hogg: Talk-show chitchat, the American way

The Tonight Show may be 60 years old but it's slightly hit and miss

The Tonight Show may be 60 years old but it’s slightly hit and miss.

The idea of a week-night television talk show chit-chatting and making light of the events of the day, yakking with a few famous guests and maybe even fitting in a song by a passing pop star is a great and obvious one. After all, it's the sort of thing TV was made for.

In New Zealand, when it comes to that sort of thing, we're still trying and very trying it is sometimes.

But let's not get into that or the thought that Seven Sharp might be a better and more honest thing if it didn't just become a talk show, starring Mike Hosking. He's the closest thing we probably have to someone who could do a show like that. I'd shout hurrah if TVNZ found the courage to do it, but I doubt there's much risk of that, so don't listen out. I shan't be practising.

Meantime, when it comes to TV talk shows, other people in other countries do it better with bigger budgets and audiences and ad revenues and all that.

In America, for instance, they've been broadcasting The Tonight Show for 60 years and counting.

That's an unusual thing in TV and The Tonight Show is, in fact, a most unusual show, having chewed through quite a few famous presenters in its time, including Johnny Carson and the alarmingly-named Conan O'Brien.

These days, The Tonight Show is fronted by a guy called Jimmy Fallon and, starting last week, it's coming to us, freshly made from America, five (late) nights a week on Prime (with repeats the following evenings at 6pm).

This is both a marvellous and not so marvellous thing. On the marvellous side, I'm going to keep watching, though mainly for the music.

Last night, they had Wilco and on Monday there was Neil Diamond with his dodgy hair, a new song that sounded as good as an old song and a band even more ancient than him.

It was, indeed, marvellous. But to get to Neil, I had to put up with an awful lot of crapolla from the show's presenter Jimmy Fallon, who has a slick style and perfect cheekbones.

In the carnival tradition of the show, there's also a compere guy who does the opening intro and stays on, stage left, to interject with useful yelps of "Hey" or "Yeah" to excite the theatre audience, live in "the heart of New York City".

"Yeah!" shouts the compere, whose name is Steve Higgins and who has the unsettling appearance of an overweight accountant - also something of the style.

Stage right, there's the house band, a famous funky one called the Roots, who mostly only get to do the same thing as the compere, offering musical dashes and full-stops.

The show comes in four parts. The first is a stand-up routine from Fallon bouncing off the news, occasionally obscurely to New Zealand ears, sometime amusingly. Only occasionally. "Hey!"

Then Fallon goes to his desk where he interviews - if that's the word - the famous guest star, who is usually plugging something and often really pleased to be there.

On Monday night, movie star Bradley Cooper was an over-excited giggling fool, diminishing from his landmark work in The Hangover movies, parts one, two and three.

But I'm still slightly hooked. Tonight they've got Paul (Pee-wee Herman) Reubens and tomorrow Gordon Ramsay. Maybe the band will even get to play a song. "Yeah!".