Vale Sam Pang Tonight

Few Australian tonight shows of recent decades have made it through their entire run. Even fewer have been renewed just a few episodes in. That alone makes Sam Pang Tonight pretty special.

But you don’t stay on air unless there’s a sizeable audience who likes what you’re doing, and in news that may come as a surprise to the people on social media who think great tonight shows are big budget affairs, dripping with Hollywood stars, Sam Pang Tonight seems to have found a sizeable audience without them.

Maybe it’s because Australians are sick of the 95% of locally made comedies that are either dramedies, panel shows or pseudo quizzes? Or maybe we’re just suckers for daggy gags and Christmas tree-related slapstick? Either way, it worked. And what’s kind of interesting is that the show didn’t change a lot throughout its run.

Sure, the length of the main guest interview got shorter each episode (a good thing) but otherwise Sam Pang Tonight had a plan and a set of segments right from the start, which it largely stuck to. And which we grew to like. Although they’ve probably wrung all they can out of that Christmas tree.

What did change the show each week, mostly for the better, was the guest announcer, who brought a different energy to each episode. Whether it was Tom Cashman’s dorky asides, Becky Lucas never shutting up, or some well-timed barbs from Kitty Flanagan, it was either really funny or we could just enjoy the panicked look in Sam Pang’s eyes as he realised he couldn’t predict what was coming.

And by the way, unpredictable comedy is also pretty rare these days. If you tune into Gruen or The Weekly, it’s heavily edited and you kinda know what’ll happen. But why Sam Pang Tonight feels exciting to watch is that it’s shot as live and feels like it could go off the rails any second.

Sure, Sam Pang Tonight could make improvements. “Yesterday’s News Tonight” wasn’t the greatest segment ever and could really do with some better clip research and some snappier Cheap Seats-esque lines in between. And a higher budget would enable the team to do a few other types of things, although if they can get laughs out of whether that’s a spoon or a fork plunged into a lasagne, maybe they don’t need more money?

Either way, we’ll be tuning in later this year to see what else the team can come up with. One thing we know for sure is, we won’t be able to predict it!