There are few people on British television as beloved as Claudia Winkleman. As the bastion of Strictly Come Dancing’s silly side for the past 15 years and the wonderfully camp host of the BBC’s best show, The Traitors, she’s funny, just the right side of eccentric, and incredibly good at her job. After she announced her departure from Strictly alongside co-presenter Tess Daly, the TV world was Winkleman’s oyster. So why has she opted for a fusty old-school chat show?
Tonight’s first episode (“and maybe the last,” as Winkleman joked) was a struggle to watch. The unimaginatively titled The Claudia Winkleman Show is made by the same production company as The Graham Norton Show, yet – despite the cosier, darker set – this new version had none of the warmth or ease that Norton has earned over 18 years of sharing his famous red couch with A-listers. It was, to be frank, incredibly dull and rather cringeworthy.
Winkleman’s first guests were American actors Jeff Goldblum and Vanessa Williams alongside British comics Jennifer Saunders and Tom Allen. They were all there to flog their latest projects to us, of course, but that’s not the sort of stuff that makes for good TV – or, as these sort of shows increasingly rely on – clippable moments for viral social media posts. You might think that this is where Winkleman would excel, leading the celebs into bonkers conversations they might not venture into with another, less weird (which I mean as a compliment) host.
But it turns out that in the grand scale of celebrity eccentricity, Winkleman is much more demure than she lets on. And so, as Goldblum took over the show with his readings of Allen’s new novel and private chats with Williams about some American novelty that no one has heard of, Winkleman was left to smile and nod, blurting out the occasional “fine” and “good”. At one point, Williams interrupted to tell the couch that Ian McKellen once made her eggs, which led to a five-minute inane conversation about breakfast. “It does feel like sometimes I’m in a nursing home,” Allen said of the evening.
The forced frivolity was cringeworthy (Photo: Matt Crossick/PA)She did have moments of her signature left-field humour, telling her guests that she breastfeeds her dog and that at the end of the show they’re all off to eat salami together. But for the most part, Winkleman was forced into a role that she could not be less suited for – that of a chaos wrangler. It’s the job of a chat show host to keep the train on the tracks and bring a sense of order to the evening. Alas, that’s not why we love Winkleman – we love her because she is usually the runaway train.
The forced frivolity didn’t work either. For some inexplicable reason, producers have decided that – despite having four celebs on the couch – we would want to hear from the in-studio audience. Among them were a woman who designs pencils, a woman who helps toads cross the road, a woman who speaks to ghosts, the woman who designed said couch and a man from Wolverhampton – people more suited to a Radio 2 phone-in than a BBC One primetime chat show.
It really jumped the shark, however, when a dog (the admittedly adorable Percy) was brought on for no reason. Allen had been talking about his reluctance to adopt a dog because he was away from home so much (scintillating stuff!), when Winkleman – who has incidentally been exceptional on this year’s Crufts coverage – introduced him to Percy in an effort to change his mind. Only Percy wasn’t actually available for adoption; he had an owner, and so the entire exercise was rendered utterly pointless.
Winkleman has made a big mistake by side-stepping into Graham Norton’s shoes. The Claudia Winkleman Show is one of her first major flops, ignoring her strengths as an unconventional, even bizarre presenter, and forcing her to fit into a mould that has already been perfected by someone else. As one of our best, most watchable TV presenters, she deserves better than this drivel.
‘The Claudia Winkleman Show’ continues next Friday at 10.40pm on BBC One
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