I recently got digital cable that has BBC America and one of the shows is SO Graham Norton.
This is quite a show…I can’t believe he gets away with some of that stuff, even on Channel 4!
Is this show still on TV, or are we getting old reruns of a cancelled show, like so many we get over here?
Did Graham Norton do anything prior to this show?
The show here is half and hour, with commercials…in other words, twenty some minutes…are we getting an edited version?
Was/is this show a hit in Britain?
To anyone in the US who gets BBC America, you HAVE to try this show at least once…think Jay Leno as a screaming queen, but with balls to do things that wouldn NEVER be allowed on the major USA channels.
So Graham Norton was a big hit, it won several BAFTAs (British equivalent of Emmys). This year it’s been renamed V Graham Norton - pretty much the same except it is on five nights a week (or was, it’s just finished a run). So was about 45 mins long, including commercials, I seem to remember. Before that he appeared quite often on TV, but was hardly a big name. He was in Father Ted for example.
We are getting an edited version, damn BBC-A and all their children. Up until a few months ago the show ran 40 minutes. We’re missing the opening and closing monolgues and the transitions between segments, plus whatever else is being cut to fit the show in the abbreviated time slot. I really don’t understand why this one show has been subjected to the knife. As far as I can tell none of the other nightly comedies have been.
It’s a shame the version you’re getting is being cut. I wonder if they’re taking all the ‘dirtiest’ bits?
It was an extremely successful and popular show. He gets some really big-name celebrities, along with some cult figures and others who are big names over here. They all seem to really enjoy his approach to interviewing. Just last week, Dustin Hoffman was on and he was doing (very good) impersonations of the UK Big Brother housemates! But it’s the ask-the-audience bits you tune in for really. It was also the first show I saw that used the internet effectively.
Before this show, he co-presented a late-night show on ITV with Davina McCall, who now presents Big Brother and is a major name in showbiz. The show was like a vulgar version of Mr and Mrs, with couples quizzed on their sex lives and other matters. The name slips my mind now though. The funny thing on there is that they pretended Graham wasn’t gay and he flirted with Davina. Other than that he had a recurring role in Father Ted, and does lots of voiceovers. He certainly wasn’t a big star before So, and that show was a surprise hit.
I won’t watch the show because the commercials annoy the fuck out of me. Granted, I don’t know much about it’s content, but that guy seems like the freshman in high school I just wanted to knee in the gut. Mind, I wasn’t one of those guys who hated freshmen for being freshmen, I just hated the Grahm Norton types.
British comedy intelligent? Maybe 3% of it is erudite and witty in a Monty Python way. Excluding most of the truly popular stuff: Carry On, Benny Hill, Roy “Chubby” Brown, Are You Being Served… There’s a vast tradition of sex-obsessed British humour, but I think what Norton does so well, and what no one has done since some of the early alternative comedy performers is (through his audience segments) to talk about sex as it is actually performed in the bedrooms of the nation. No romance and mood-lighting, no coy euphemisms, just the messy, funny truth.
One tends to find that, akin to some other Irish personalities on British TV (e.g. Terry Wogan), he has kind of been ‘assimilated into the Borg’, and occasionally refers to “us” when referring to the UK. This could certainly cause confusion.
I think his program’s hilarious - though 5 times a week was pushing it. Many of his jokes are exclusively to do with the UK media; this (in addition to the filth) might also contribute to bowdlerising of the program.
Based on what I’ve seen I don’t think the program is being cut for naughtiness, unless the naughty bits are very naughty indeed. Some pretty raunchy jokes have aired here (i.e. Prince Charles should be spokesman for a china company because he spends every night licking out Bowles, Posh Spice didn’t get ticketed for drunkenness even though she had a pint of Beck’s in her). The opening bits up until he heads into the audience is cut, along with some obvious edits to cover transitions. Hell, the promos talk about using a Cher doll as a sex toy and those air in the afternoons.
I think Graham got the SO gig after winning a BAFTA for guest-hosting the Jack Doherty Show on Channel 5, beating Jack Doherty himself who was nominated for the same prize (and deservedly so – Graham was hilarious, while Jack was in the “Chevy Chase” league of talk-show hosts).
