I’m starting to wonder if late night talk shows will have disappeared by the time the TV Academy figures out what to do with them. Already, as talkers go away, we’re not seeing any new hosts replace them. With “Desus & Mero,” “Conan” and “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” already gone, and “The Late Late Show with James Corden” now wrapped (not to mention a “The Daily Show” figuring out its post-Trevor Noah plans), it’s unclear how much longer the field can sustain a category to itself.
The decision to realign “variety talk” and “variety sketch” this year into “talk” and “scripted variety” didn’t do much to change that. If anything, it further narrowed the field, as perennial variety talk winner “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” has now been kicked over to scripted variety. As a result, my colleague Clayton Davis counts only 14 series eligible for the outstanding talk nomination. And it’s not much better in scripted variety, where just 10 shows appear to be eligible.
The realignment ultimately didn’t do anything other than pit perennial winners “Last Week Tonight” and “Saturday Night Live” in the same category. It did nothing to address the gripe I hear about the most, that mismatched headline-based and variety-based late night shows shouldn’t compete. Instead, it’s made things more confusing. Sure, it wasn’t fair for daily talk shows like “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to go up against weekly news-centric shows like “Last Week Tonight.” But the new John Oliver vs. “SNL” matchup makes even less sense.
If anything, pitting “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “The Late Late Show with James Corden” against “SNL” would be more fitting. Those shows boast a lot more scripted variety tidbits than “Last Week Tonight,” including sketches and sweeping comedy musical numbers.
Meanwhile, if there were ever a group of shows cut from the same cloth, it’s “The Daily Show,” “Last Week Tonight” and “The Problem with Jon Stewart.” Oliver sits behind a desk and reads satire in the same vein as “The Daily Show” “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” As a matter of fact, all Oliver does on “Last Week Tonight” is talk — which may make it the purest “talk” show in the running.
And yet, the only reason why Oliver isn’t in talk is because he doesn’t interview guests on “Last Week Tonight.” According to the TV Academy’s new rules, talk series is defined as such when “a significant portion of the running time consists of unscripted interviews or panel discussions between a host/hosts and celebrities or personalities.” Scripted elements are fine – monologues, planned comedic bits – “so long as the main intent of the program is interviews/discussions.”
As for scripted variety, the shows are defined as “primarily scripted, or loosely scripted improv, and consisting of discrete scenes, satire, musical numbers, monologues, comedy stand-ups, sketches, etc.” Unscripted moments are OK, “but the main intent of the series is scripted or performed entertainment.”
Meanwhile, adding to the confusion of “scripted variety” is what will or won’t be in the category moving forward. I would argue that the category name change means that IFC’s “Documentary Now!” is even better suited for it. The show was nominated for outstanding variety sketch series in 2016, 2017 and 2019, but the TV Academy now sees it as a comedic anthology series because each episode tells a different story—and it will move to the limited or anthology field instead.
In forcing “Last Week Tonight” to face off with “Saturday Night Live,” it will at least be interesting to see those two perennial Emmy powerhouses go head-to-head — while talk finally gets to crown a new champ for the first time since 2016. But honestly, the category switcheroo just delayed the inevitable, as the late night landscape as we knew it continues to change. As Andy Cohen — one of the few hosts left standing — might say, “Watch What Happens.”