It seems there are almost no panel shows where comedians and B-list actors come together to chat, answer questions or do stupid things.
like Taskmaster, Would I Lie to You, Wetten, dass..?, etc

29 comments

  3. Late Night as a format has been an established format since the 60s with Johnny Carson.

    It’s historically dominated because networks are going to green light proven ideas first. From like 1962-2017 you could be sure a late night program would be familiar enough that it wouldn’t alienate much of anybody, ensuring the largest audience possible.

    I don’t have a good answer for why game shows and panel shows are so dominant in Britain, but I would imagine it’s the same thing. You keep making the same content that people expect, so a format gets entrenched.

  5. I have wondered this for a really long time. I find the famous-person-sits-in-chair-and-flogs-their-latest-project clones utterly stultifying. Even if it were the US version of _Whose Line…_ would be preferable. Hell, even the test pattern would be preferable.

    On the other hand, US broadcast channels don’t have the evening watershed, so they’d be markedly less funny in any case.

  6. We have had occasional late night panel shows. Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher was an example. CBS is supposedly thinking about replacing James Corden’s talk show with a [panel show](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/james-corden-replacement-late-night-1235285678/) when it ends next year. That article mentions a couple others.

    “Famous people get together and do stupid things” is more of a prime time gig in America. Otherwise you can find plenty of it these days on Youtube.

  7. Real Time with Bill Maher is kind of a panel show, in that he has multiple guests on at once. They just chat, and discuss the week’s news.

  8. Yeah, I don’t know. Late night hosts occupy a prime spot in our pop culture that isn’t really proportional to our actual viewing habits.

    Like, the king of late night right now is… who, Jimmy Fallon? I’ve *never* had anyone say to me “hey, did you see so-and-so on Fallon last night?”

    *Someone* must be watching these shows, or else the networks wouldn’t keep throwing money at them, but I have no idea who these people are.

  9. I despise the late night format. It feels so…Boomer.

    Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, etc. are relatively young guys. Younger than me anyway.

    I get why they agreed to host. It’s a steady gig that pays really really really well. But part of me wonders if their souls hurt every time they have to do their monologues. I wonder if they feel like they are channeling my dad.

  11. Don’t forget about the business case for single host late night talk shows – they’re incredibly cheap and easy (compared to a sitcom, for example) and they fill in otherwise undesirable timeslots.

    You can’t / shouldn’t / won’t put a popular, scripted show on at 11pm or 12am, but you still have advertising to sell

  13. There used to be panel shows like What’s My Line back in the 50s, but shows like that kind of died out. I doubt there’s any specific reason for it happening. It was just a matter of other kinds of shows catching on. Maybe the networks decided to focus more on younger audiences, and these shows were considered a bit old fashioned.

    This is radio instead of TV, but Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me on NPR is pretty popular.

  14. Comedians are leaning towards their own podcasts now. It’s allows them WAY more freedom that TV network shows.

  15. > Why is the Late Night format so prevalent in the US? Where are the panel shows?

    NBC’s *Tonight Show* is why. The many decades long domination of that one wildly popular show cemented the format as THE staple for late night entertainment. When Johnny Carson retired in the 90s the other networks which had tried anything and everything but failed to compete with it saw an opening and all of them introduced or redoubled the efforts of their own cloned version of the same show adopting the exact same format.

    The format is different but as entertainment it’s NOT really any different. It’s still comedians and both B and *A*-list actors coming together to chat, answer questions and do stupid things. Just how they structure it is a little different.

    Panel shows used to be huge in the USA way back when but fell out of favor over the course of time. I think they had gotten a bit stale and probably had a bit of a stigma as being either old fashioned or as cheesy low-effort daytime fair as they declined… At this point that era too is long in the past so probably due for a revival if someone can get the stars to align just right.

  18. Why is the panel show format so prevalent in Country? Where are the late night hosts? It’s the same answer. Things evolved over time. There wasn’t a culture war of late night hosts against panel shows.

    The Tonight Show goes back to the early days of televison with Steve Allen and Jack Parr in the 50s, Johnny Carson made the format even more popular and rival shows cropped up over time as networks wanted to have their own version of it. It’s also rock solid advertising revenue to follow the local news at 11pm.

    Host comes out, introduces the show, tells some jokes, and talks about the day’s events. Guest comes out, talks about thing they’re promoting. Perhaps a comedy bit next. Now another guest. Musical performance. See you all tomorrow for another show.

    It’s a variety show, easy to digest with short segments, with interesting entertainers…the format evolved since TVs became popular in homes. Once they were omnipresent in our homes, the shows were already a part of culture.

  20. We actually have had panel shows. The *Match Game* was a fairly popular panel show. So were early TV standbys like *To Tell The Truth*, *What’s My Line? Hollywood Squares*, to an extent, has the energy and sort of stock cast of a panel show if not the exact format. *Figure it Out* (90s Nickelodeon) was one, kind of an outlier. And of course, there’s the US version of *Whose Line is It, Anyway?*

    *Dropout* is a whole group of shows via internet subscription that could be said to be panel-shows (including the D&D shows), in energy and format. *Um, Actually…* is pretty much on the money.

    They fell out of favor in the late 60s. (I would have thought it had something to do with the Quiz Show scandal of the 50s, which meant we didn’t really get shows along the lines of UK’s *Mastermind*, but no- it was just a demographics thing, where they weren’t getting the “right audience”). Match Game carried on until the late 70s, and that was about it.

    If I had to guess, the format of something like the *Tonight Show* (where a guest comes on to promote their current thing, talks for a bit and maybe gets to sit on the couch with the next guest, plus a musical guest) just appealed to audiences.

    Where you *do* get panel-shows is on the radio, usually NPR stations: *Whad’Ya Know?* , *Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me*, *Says You!* and so on. Someone familiar with, say, QI would find those pretty familiar-feeling. (Simon Amstell from *Never Mind the Buzzcocks* was on *WWDTM*, once. It was *hilarious*.)

    Edit: We did have an attempt at a US *Taskmaster.* [It was SO bad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNv1qzUOh_g&t=129s).

  21. Well, we do have Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, but other than that, the format pretty much died with Larry Wilmore’s Nightly Show like 10 years ago.

  22. I think panel and quiz shows in Britain work in part because British media recycles the same relatively small pool of celebrities constantly. Therefore, people know all of the personalities, making the shows feel more like a gathering of friends (for participants and viewers alike). We don’t really have that here.

  24. I don’t think I know anyone who watches regular tv shows anymore. Everyone is watching something off of the streaming services.

  25. We used to have a few like Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, but they kind of faded away. I really miss them and often watch British panel shows on YouTube like 8 out of 10 cats does countdown, and Would I Lie to You? We did get a version of Taskmaster but I don’t think it worked. They cast Reggie Watts as the TM which didn’t make a lot of sense imo. I honestly think half of what makes that show great is the weird chemistry between Greg Davies and Little Alex Horne.

    There are some things that are similar to panel shows but not quite the same thing like Kill Tony. It is something that I would like to see make a big resurrection.

  26. Different cultures. Other than maybe Hollywood Squares, panel shows don’t do well here. I love Taskmaster and credit it with getting me through the pandemic, but the US version was awful for a variety of reasons. The main one in my mind, though, is that everyone was trying to win. No one seemed to understand that the goal of the show isn’t to complete the task the best, the goal is to complete the task the funniest. We Americans are generally a tad bit more competitive and it shows in these types of shows. The British Taskmaster has had contestants like this in the past (notably Iain Stirling) and reception to those contestants has always been low compared to the rest. Put 5 Iain Stirlings in Taskmaster and it stops being entertaining.

    (to be clear: I mostly enjoyed Stirling, but he was much more entertaining when it dawned on him what the purpose of the show was)

  27. As an American living in a country with panel shows (I actually describe them as hybrid talk/reality shows), the US late night talk show format is much, much more formal and professional, and has infinitely higher production values – where even an absurdist comedian like Dave Letterman is doing real, actual interviews with people like President Obama.

    The late night talk show format is definitely something you don’t appreciate until you don’t have it anymore. I would have never described Dave Letterman as “sophisticated” before I lived overseas – but having lived here and seen what’s on offer here, yeah, actually, I’d say that the US media environment is actually pretty sophisticated, having developed into what it is over decades of development, with pretty standardized production, to the point you could almost call it “traditional American TV.”

    A panel show, in contrast, packed with B-list or lower celebrities talking over each other is cheap-looking and boring to me and comes off as unprofessional and poorly-made. It’s just not good TV.

    I know the stereotype is that Americans love trashy TV and have no taste, but, no, actually, the entire reason we don’t have panel shows like that is because we actually have pretty high standards for the media we consume.

  28. Panel shows in the US are daytime type things. From skewed political panels to vapid crap like “The View”. Your panel shows are cheeky and fun where our panel shows are cruel and tragic. Evil panel shows.

  29. British people: “why don’t Americans have the same type of popular shows we have, which are obviously superior since we’re far more cultured and witty?”

    Also British people: “why do Americans copy all our shows? Can’t they develop their own culture and wit?”

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