I never watched it with Kilborn. Was it the same format (i.e. satirical news and interviews) or was it more regular light talk show under Kilborn?
The first time I remember seeing it actually was when Jon Stewart was the guest just before the changevoer (all knew he was going to be the new host). I remember doing a “damn!” doubletake when the two men shook hands because it looked like something from LOTR- Kilborn is well over 6’0 tall and Stewart is… not… so Stewart was about nipple high to his predecessor.
The Kilborn version was a less on politics and its coverage and more mock news in general. They parodied local news often. They seemed to make fun of Hollywood people as much as pols and news people. The “Moment of Zen” dates back that far and Colbert I think joined in the second year as he was called the “New Guy” most of the time. A. Whitney Brown was on it and he was usually good. I had liked him from SNL in the Dennis Miller days.
The biggest difference was that Jon Stewart is just much better at humor and recovering from bad jokes.
Really shocked that Mahaloth says that O’Hare was a stage actor. How can you be so wooden and work a stage?
(In contrast to the guest shots by John Schuck (Draal), which were hideously over-the-top and might have worked well on a stage, but were inappropriate on TV.)
Kilborn was more like a real news anchor than Stewart, so he did that part of the parody well, but they spent more time doing “local idiot sees a UFO”-type stories. Stewart is funnier on his own, and he brought a much sharper critical eye and the satire of news media.
And, to the best of my knowledge, Stewart hasn’t been acused of sexually harrassing his female writers or calling his executive producer an emotional bitch.
Stage actors frequently have a hard time transitioning to camera acting. They go into wooden (trying to be smaller for the camera) as frequently as they go over the top.
My suggestion was going to be the Daily Show too, but several people beat me to it.
Kilborn could never recover from a failed joke. In fact half the time, I don’t think he knew it. If by more like a real news anchor, you mean stiff and unfunny, I agree.
I believe you that he did it, but that really did not ever came across on the show.
I actually liked Draal, largely for the contrast between him and every other Minbari character. Moreover, his effusiveness (as jayjay politely describes it) makes a certain measure of sense, both as a reaction to the problems he saw in Minbari culture and as a (clumsy) effort to reassure Delenn that he was happy with the path he was taking. Basically, I chose to interpret it not as a badly-acted portrayal so much as a portrayal of someone acting, badly.
Regrettably, I haven’t come up with such a justification for O’Hare, without whom the show improved considerably.
Actually, the reason for this is much more prosaic. Commercial broadcasters in the UK in the Sixties had the same pressures on archive space as the BBC, and responded in exactly the same way, by junking large quantities of irreplaceable archive tapes. Only two episodes from the first season of The Avengers (“The Frighteners” and “Girl on a Trapeze”) survived; total archive holdings also include the first twenty minutes or so of the very first episode (“Hot Snow”), but that’s about it.
In fact, ISTR that several episodes in that first season never had any archive tapes made in the first place - they were performed and broadcast live from the studio. (An old-fashioned technique even in those days … )
So that’s why Ian Hendry’s stint on The Avengers is mostly forgotten. (Patrick Macnee was pretty much a fixture all the way through, though. Except some of the first-season stories didn’t feature him - “Girl on a Trapeze” being the one surviving example.)
Kilborn’s show was much more focused on making fun of mentally ill non-celebrities. It didn’t really have the political press criticism angle that Stewart does.
Klinger was already an established character on the show. Any storylines involving Klinger had already been used up. They’d have been better off bringing in a new character with new story possibilities.
That’s easy, it’s just a matter of interpreting it correctly. They didn’t mean O’Hare worked on the stage. The meant O’Hare acted AS the stage. You couldn’t really do that effectively without the woodenness.
Yeah, that sounds about right.