No Pangs Of Regret

There is no possible way to make a successful tonight show in Australia in 2025. It just can’t be done. Tonight shows rely on items we just don’t have in mass quantities here. Interesting celebrities, comedy writers, that kind of thing. Throw in the fact that time is no longer on your side – tonight shows are meant to be cheap and cheerful television that airs late at night, but even the cheapest and most cheerful Australian program has to air before 9pm or there’s no way to get enough viewers to justify the cost – and Sam Pang Tonight was always going to be dead on arrival.

Well, at least to a certain kind of viewer. A lot of Australians say they want variety and live entertainment back on our screens – just not the kind that anyone is going to make in the 21st century. Nothing’s ever big enough or flashy enough or American enough, and where are the big name guests anyway?

Far be it for us to point out that Australia hasn’t generated a home-grown movie star in decades. It’s not like music or television are serving up a lot of name-brand chatty newcomers either. And forget sport (unless it’s a talk show about sport) because the big names in half the country will cause the other half to instantly turn off.

So once you realise Sam Pang Tonight was always on a hiding to nothing, what was the actual show like? Honestly, pretty much what we expected: good, not great. A few first night jitters but nothing catastrophic. Enough of the host’s charm came through to make plenty of the jokes land.

Pang himself is a bit of an old-fashioned comedian – old school laughs, bit retro, decent night out. And that’s the show he delivered. Having your first guest be the 84 year-old Jack Thompson was a pretty solid statement of intent. This is a tonight show for people who remember tonight shows.

So while it wouldn’t have been out of place 30 years ago, it also would have been on at 10.30pm thirty years ago. Which would have been a much more natural timeslot for it, but we’ve already been over the financials. It’s a show almost entirely driven by how much you like Pang himself. If you’re not a fan or were expecting him to break out a new style, sorry for your loss. There’s only seven more episodes anyway.

It was also a reminder of how dated the tonight show format is. The opening monologue was largely jokes about news clips, which is a form of comedy that is pretty much the only comedy we currently have on Australian television because everything else costs money.

The best segment (the one with the doctor) was largely Pang showing her clips from movies and television and asking “how bullshit is this?”. When most of the comedy is clip-based, the only reason left to do a tonight show in 2025 is for the guests. And yeah, we’ve already pointed out the problem there.

(next week features Kitty Flanagan and that kid from Boy Swallows Universe, which suggests they’re making the right move and going to go hard on the comedy guests moving forward)

Asking people to lower their expectations is always a big ask. But this was a perfectly decent example of the kind of show that usually gets crushed because everyone watching has their sights set too high. We’ll say it again: Australia just doesn’t have enough famous faces to make an interview show work on commercial television*. It also doesn’t have enough writers, viewers, interesting guests or money to get a tonight show over the line.

But it does have Sam Pang, and he’s pretty good at what he does.

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*unless it’s doing a dozen other things at once (see: The Project)