PK@rte.ie (again). The All New (Patrick Kielty) Late Late Show Thread

Is the late late now so boring we are no complaining about it lol

dis pain in the hole.

You must like audible torture so. Can't stand either of them two

Love the D4 "journalist" on RTE, her and Williams shold not be allowed on TV, only in it to make them popular, always giving out but never a solution.

Personally I prefer the light entertainment stuff for the current Late Late. In today's media era there's more than enough other coverage of current affairs. Back in the day when there were only a few channels and no internet there was a role to play in current affairs for the Late Late with its vast audience but it's a very different time, and show, now.

Light entertainment is everywhere. Some would say politics and world affairs have turned into a grotesque form of light entertainment. Coverage of politics and world affairs now seems to operate on the basis of it being light entertainment on all but a handful of outlets. Perhaps then a light entertainment programme actually has the space to cover these things in a way that is more enlightening than "serious" coverage.

It won't happen under the current tenure however. Kielty is just too nice and too bland and doesn't want to offend anybody. Which is a pity because when he was a guest on Tommy Tiernan a few years back he was interesting and had stuff to say.

Neither is the general calibre of guest a patch on what it was 40 or even 20 years ago. Most guests are too scared to say anything remotely challenging. Or maybe it's the sort of guests that are booked.

The biggest problem the Late Late Show has by far is that with each successive change of host, it has tried to become more like those godawful US chat shows. And every successive move towards trying be more like the Americans had diluted what made the Late Late great more and more.

Charlene McKenna at least was a bit of craic on tonight's show. But she was on for about six minutes.

What a pathetic thread this is. Some of the comments on the appearance of women are more cringey than the show.

Apart from that,why would RTE showcase Claire Byrne when she is effectively joining the competition?

This show is dead. The producers haven't a clue and there's NOBODY of substance they can get on to the show.

It would be better off going back to panel format of years ago with a controversial topic to discuss- get a few opposing views and people with personality.

Continuing the way it is- the only people watching will be an ever diminishing demographic and the odd chauvinist on boards.

Claire isn't really that honest. She took to instagram to say that she has never take any work outside RTÉ, but yet the previous year she worked on a separate quiz show for an independent producer, which she had to come clean about and say she was getting €25K for weekend of work. This was on top of her RTÉ wage, which was not included in her wage for that year!

That’s a good point. I certainly wouldn’t want Kielty to become like the partisan US presenters and their lame political satire. But one thing that does not exist anymore in Irish media is the barnstorming panel debate. Questions & Answers and Frontline are gone. Vincent Browne’s former programme has been reduced to two nights a week, with stand-in presenters. There is a genuine gap in the market. I think the Late Late Show could still remain light while resurrecting the round-table debates of old, several of which can be seen on Youtube.

their prominence again reinforced the idea that recognition is most meaningful when it comes from globally famous, non-traditional voices. The inclusion of the English actor Ricky Tomlinson singing ‘The Leaving of Liverpool’ further highlighted this need for external validation, as did Peggy Seeger’s appearance, this time from the US...

Completely disagree with that letter, the inclusion of international artists and Ricky tomlinson is what made the show interesting and watchable. If they were to go with the sentiment of that letter you descend back into puritanism which stifled traditional music for decades. Even the Dubliners were rejected by the traditional music puritans back in the 60s. Jon Kenny the comedian had a funny anecdote about his hit with "Spancill Hill" back in the early 80s where he rejigged the song in reggae format and it charted. He said we knew it must have been good because Ceoltais hated it.

My main criticism is it could have done with more music. Maybe they should have filmed a special of just music from those there and aired it when LLS on a break. Would be better than repeating a Hollywood film. Something similar was suggested earlier on the thread.

That's show business, well there's an awful lot of crap output put out under that banner. It doesnt exempt it from assessment. If people dont like trad music are they gonna tune in for something called a trad music special? So let the music be the star. Nobody was expecting an operatic recital but if you were doing an opera special wouldnt you expect opera music to be the focus.

What we actually got was neither one thing nor the other and you dont have to be a 'purist' to point that out.