Claudia Winkleman has been on a journey. After a decade spent bouncing around the BBC, in 2004 she landed a plum gig anchoring the Strictly Come Dancing companion show, It Takes Two. From there, her ascent has been dazzling: promotion to Strictly proper, presenting three seasons of The Great British Sewing Bee, and, finally, national treasure status with The Traitors. When she announced her Strictly departure back in October last year, the question was not whether she’d get another gig, but what it would be. The answer? The Claudia Winkleman Show, a lavishly backed new primetime celebrity chat show.
“I’m so nervous I just need to touch people,” Winkleman remarks at the outset of her show’s first episode (which is not a joke about the BBC’s historic issues). But she doesn’t seem excessively skittish as she introduces her first slate of guests: Hollywood actor Jeff Goldblum, comedy legend Jennifer Saunders, West End diva Vanessa Williams, and TV comic Tom Allen. Though Goldblum and Saunders are always good value (if a touch overexposed) on the chat show circuit, the lineup feels a bit underwhelming for a series launch. And the announced guest list for next week – comedians Joanne McNally and Guz Khan, as well as former One Directioner Niall Horan – suggests that the booking team aren’t necessarily getting buy-in from American PRs.
That will come with time. Winkleman is in a tricky position, warming the off-season slot of Graham Norton, who has turned his series into, by my estimation, the best talk show in the world. He also pioneered the trend of having all the celebrities on the couch together, a gimmick that now seems impossible for a new show to ignore. Winkleman’s twist seems to be involving pre-selected members of the audience – a pencil designer who can extol the virtues of a “wide core”, a bloke from Wolverhampton to give Goldblum a travel guide, a ghost whisperer to cure Allen’s theatrical heebie-jeebies – to join the conversation and interact with the guests. Sometimes it works (the appearance of Winkleman’s set designer, Trudy, is a highlight), but generally it breaks the flow of the conversation. We’re not watching for the civilians, after all.
As a host, Winkleman is a bit of a throwback to the era when Michael Parkinson and Terry Wogan dominated the small screen. Their brand of avuncular questioning meant they could handle a range of guests, from musicians to politicians to athletes. But, in recent years, the chat show has been Americanised, with more comedians taking the reins (the surge of interest in celebrity podcasts has exacerbated this). Winkleman is witty but does not have Norton’s ability to comedically spar with his guests. While she does well to restrain Goldblum’s famously discursive style (a challenge, as anyone who has interviewed him, including myself, will attest to), there were a couple of moments where she seemed steamrolled. She struggled, too, to drag Williams into the flow of proceedings. “It does feel sometimes like I’m in a nursing home,” Allen remarked, as Goldblum embarked on a nonsensical detour about Roscoe Lee Browne.
What The Claudia Winkleman Show is shooting for, I suspect, is a classier alternative to the high-energy camp of The Graham Norton Show. In the episode, there is some debate as to whether the sofa is “hunter green” or “very dark teal”, but what’s clear is that the set is moody and sophisticated (and not unlike the Traitors roundtable). The opening titles feel like Saul Bass taking a crack at The One Show theme, and with her trademark fringe and Marlene Dietrich-esque suit, Winkleman cuts an elegant, likeable figure. Easy rapport with guests and a consistent format will come over time – The Graham Norton Show, after all, was not built in a day.
In her opening remarks, Winkleman speculates this might be “the first and last” episode of her self-titled show. It won’t be, of course. The British public have enormous affection for her and the BBC is determined to keep her in-house. Throwing a new chat format straight into primetime (Norton did two years on BBC Two before transferring) is daunting, but The Claudia Winkleman Show has the potential to be a stylish, televised cocktail party. The ingredients are there – and they have the right mixologist – but they might need to tweak the recipe.
