Nowadays whenever an elderly celebrity dies – consider the death last month of Gene Hackman as a case in point – one of the first things that happens is that a chunky clip of them appearing on a talk show such as Wogan or Parkinson gets shared on social media.
Before you know it, you’ve spent three or four minutes listening to them regale television-watchers of the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s with a reflective anecdote or a personal story that reveals something important or even profound about their lives and animating passions or influences.
Often there’s even a humorous punchline, too – all the better for the slow, significant build-up – and, if there are other guests present, then you’ll usually see someone like Peter Ustinov, David Niven or Kenneth Williams chuckling good-humouredly along, accompanied by a ripple of polite applause from the audience.
The actor Robert Bathurst shared just such a clip of Gene Hackman from Wogan on X/Twitter the other day – it was brilliant and lasted a full five minutes with scarcely any interruption from the host, who instead made just the right encouraging noises to keep his guest going, like a professional footballer performing a seamless series of ‘keepie-uppies’.
Watching this section of the Hackman interview I was struck by two thoughts – first, what a legend (in the colloquial sense) Hackman was, because the anecdotes he told showed wit, humility, self-awareness and vulnerability. They truly humanised him. Second, I was struck by the complete absence of this television format today – and deeply saddened.
Because there is nothing comparable to Wogan or Parkinson on any of what we might call the main channels any more – no regular interview where a creative, sporting or political heavyweight is permitted to talk, uninterrupted for a minute or two or even longer, in answer to a series of questions, where they can properly discuss what they do and their story and their motivations. Amazingly enough, it’s true. For all the gazillions of hours of broadcast entertainment out there, there are no actual proper television interview shows left.
Instead we have utterly banal rip-off American-style talk shows where either Jonathan Ross or Graham Norton will give guests approximately 25 highly transactional seconds to answer a puff-related question about their latest projects before interrupting them with a smutty observation or two and asking them to perform prat-falls on the stage.
I’m sure it’s not Ross or Norton’s fault – both are capable of significantly more – but this is clearly what the commissioners of such dross think that the British public wants. They may be right, but it doesn’t change the fact that what’s broadcast is frankly demeaning – demeaning for the celebrated guests who are asked to say or do absurd things, but also demeaning for our wider culture because the programmes offer zero or parlously little actual human or creative insight. They’re just vulgar, ignorant extravaganzas that trade on a level of vacuity that is probably mathematically impossible to calculate. These talk shows are creative black holes sucking integrity and human profundity from the world. And they’re probably culturally lobotomising us – making us all collectively more ignorant and more stupid with each vile pivot of Graham Norton’s appalling red chair.
For all the gazillions of hours of broadcast entertainment out there, there are no actual proper television interview shows left
In the unremitting pursuit of ‘fun’ these shows have become abased and offer little or none of the infinitely more sincere and important quality that was available in the earlier iterations, namely that spark of human connection that we could feel with the great and the good because they – for a brief moment on Wogan’s sofa or Parkinson’s second leather swivel chair – allowed us into their minds, into their worlds.
But someone along the way thought they knew better. They decided that truth was less important than triviality. Wogan was axed in 1992 and Parkinson went when the great man retired in 2007, not to be replaced. And it still leaves a gaping hole in our cultural life – for all the efforts of Piers Morgan or Amol Rajan, both of whom are excellent interviewers.
So we need a modern Wogan or Parky. Perhaps now that we live in a more serious world – one where, as in the 1970s or 1980s, armageddon seems a present possibility – this apparently more demanding, seemingly serious format could appeal and hold water. Maybe the pressures of a more serious world will encourage us as a society to begin to take ourselves more seriously too? And maybe the controllers of mainstream television will have the courage or be brave enough to offer us something harder but better, something capable of reaching the parts that Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross currently cannot?
While the great raconteurs of old – the Ustinovs, the Nivens, the Williamses – are long gone, there are others who could carry the torch. Surely appearing on a reborn Wogan or Parky is in some respects Stephen Fry’s cultural destiny? Just as it would be for, say, Sandi Toksvig – or Ricky Gervais, who would brighten our lives with his own brilliant and peculiar humanity.
Which is why it’s time to bring back the proper TV interview show. Because we need it. We need a platform where some of our society’s greatest individuals can share their thoughts and in so doing help us navigate our changing world and explore what it means to be alive.
With the sunny sets, the lilting soapy questions from Terry or Parky, I think we were seduced into thinking that those talk shows of old were a little bit too lightweight. But how wrong we were. At least they could feel the effects of gravity – unlike the banal modern equivalents. We need a proper talk show back in our screens. It would do us the power of good.
American actor Gene Hackman has died, aged 95. In 1986, he was the guest of Terry Wogan, discussing his beginnings in showbusiness and his Oscar-winning role as Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle in The French Connection. pic.twitter.com/IIih9vCOGS
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) February 27, 2025
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