Patrick Kielty recently described The Late Late Show (RTÉ One, Friday, 9.35pm) as uniquely Irish, which might be a polite way of saying that it’s creaky, long past its sell-by date and potentially a bit rubbish – but that some of us would miss it if it were to mysteriously vanish overnight. (Insert your own joke about RTÉ’s accounting practices.)
Kielty’s first season was judged a qualified success. He came out swinging in an opening episode packed with jokes about RTÉ’s financial apocalypse and had a good inaugural Toy Show (but a disastrous New Year’s special, which looked as if it had been filmed on a wet Monday morning in October).
Still, there was a sense that, amid the upheaval, the Late Late was running on pure adrenaline. Those energy levels are impossible to sustain – so how will Kielty fare as he returns for a second run?
It’s too soon to judge as a whole, but the series opener delivers a solid two hours of everything we have come to love/hate/feel completely indifferent about regarding the Late Late. To start with, the host’s top-of-the-show monologue is serviceable. “It’s Friday the 13th. It’s the scariest day of the year,” Kielty says. “Your worst nightmare has come true. I’m back.”
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He also gets in a zinger about the potential convergence of Irish and American politics following the US presidential election. “We’ll both have a Harris in charge, republicans in opposition and Orangemen who say no” – the final line accompanied by a cut to Donald Trump in all his tangerine glory.
The guests are the traditional mixed bag. The comedian John Bishop – a laid-back chortle machine who could have been created with The Late Late Show specially in mind – is chummy if slightly put out when Kielty accuses him of being rude to a woman in her 90s when Bishop made a joke about her age at a show. (She took it in good spirit.)
The musical guests are a study in contrasts. The kiddie rap collective Kabin Crew and Lisdoonvarna Crew discuss their viral hit The Spark while John Sheahan of The Dubliners and Phil Coulter talk about their new project, The Dubliners Encore, a sort of Australian Pink Floyd reboot of Luke Kelly, Ronnie Drew and company.
The centrepiece of the evening is the return of Ireland’s victorious Olympians and Paralympians. They’re a chatty bunch, and Kielty puts them at ease. He works the same magic on the golfer Rory McIlroy during a prerecorded piece filmed at the Irish Open at Newcastle, Co Down.
The only flubbed note is a competition to win a holiday to Florida, the details of which are announced by Bláthnaid Treacy ... from Florida. The sponsor is presumably footing the bill rather than cash-strapped Montrose, but at a time when every other documentary on RTÉ is warning about the climate crisis, was it necessary to fly Treacy halfway across the world just to bang on about Penneys opening a branch in Orlando? Does anyone at the national broadcaster understand the concept of optics?
Kielty seems to be enjoying himself – not something that could be said of some earlier Late Late hosts. (Pat Kenny’s time in the hot seat was a study in masochism for him and us.) The wheel has not been reinvented, and the series still suffers from a dearth of A-list guests. But it’s perfectly adequate viewing, and, given where RTÉ found itself in the aftermath of the Ryan Tubridy controversy, that counts almost as a win.
