Well, that was…interesting. The BBC’s flagship political interview show, hosted first by Sir David Frost then by Andrew Marr, relaunched this morning under Laura Kuenssberg. On paper, she had it all sorted: she secured an interview with leadership frontrunner Liz Truss after she had pulled out of one with Nick Robinson just days before. It was a decent interview, as you’d expect from a former BBC political editor. It felt like the first interview of her premiership.
If there was a winner, it’s Joe Lycett, who walked away with plenty of material for his next show
But it ended to the whooping of applause from a comedian, Joe Lycett, a member of the show’s three-person panel, who seemed to regard his own inclusion as a joke. ‘Really excited to be on this new version of Would I Lie To You,’ he had tweeted earlier – a signal of his plan to hijack the format, and send it up. He lost no time in doing so.
“Well done, Liz!” he shouted out as the Foreign Secretary left the chair. He proclaimed himself ‘very right wing,’ a joke that won’t be lost on his fans. Warming to his newly-invented persona, he declared Truss to be ‘saying exactly the right things’ and being ‘very reassuring’ with her energy promises. By then, Kuenssberg had worked out what was going on: Lycett had come to torpedo her show. ‘This is a serious point, Joe,’ she said. ‘Oh, I’m not being sarcastic,’ he replied, with a smile that said otherwise. ‘You’re reassured. I’m reassured.’ He then laid it on thick:
‘The haters will say that we’ve had 12 years of the Tories and we’re at the dregs of what they’ve got available. And that Liz Truss is the backwash of the available MPs. But I wouldn’t say that, because I’m very right wing.’
He continued in this vein:
‘Well, as Liz said there, it would be wrong to predict the future. Even though loads of people have predicted we’re going to have real issues with paying energy bills. I think she’s right to say, basically, let’s not predict. Let’s just see what happens next week!’
You can imagine the looks of horror in the editing suite when all of this was going on: the joke was on them and their format. Lycett seemed to say: ‘This woman becomes prime minister tomorrow, and the BBC is going to a comedian like me for first analysis? Who’s the real clown here? You guys put a stand-up comic in a current affairs panel and think it edgy and exciting, rather than trivial and lame? The BBC Exec didn’t step in to veto this obvious madness? Well, let’s all have some fun – at your expense.’
There was, to be fair, plenty to send up. The panel was low-octane, yet frequently used. The show was obviously reaching to combine serious and hard-hitting with the light, informal feel of the Kuenssberg ‘Newscast’ podcasts. So in between strong interviews (the Olena Zelenska interview was beautifully shot and conducted) we had bizarre topics: moon landings, a rock concert. And why ditch the paper review? Kuenssberg asking the panel to discuss two OpEds is no substitute for the original format which allows guests to whizz through a broad range of topics.
Lycett seemed to be having the time of his life, staying in Tory Boy character throughout. He mocked the long interview with Rishi Sunak (‘he’s not going to be Prime Minister so you may as well have interviewed Peter Andre’). Perhaps Andre will be on next week’s panel. He then posted another stunt: his presenting ber with a picture of “something I knew she’d love – an original painting of Robert Peston in jail” – pictures here.
The set was cheap, with guests were behind desks not on a sofa. There was a new, odd, death march-style theme tune and opening credits that looked like a graphic design student’s rushed summer project. The BBC used to have some of the best title sequences in world: think back to John Humphrys’ On The Record (see here). What happened?
Laura Kuenssberg is a lively, intelligent journalist with a far broader hinterland than her old job allowed her to showcase. It makes sense to try to mould a show around her, but this looks like a rushed project that wasn’t thought-through or tested nearly enough. As a result, it fell apart on the launchpad – and the winner was Joe Lycett, who walked away with plenty of material for his next show.
Kuenssberg has every reason to be livid: she has been let down by the BBC. Lycett is using this debacle to promote his upcoming tour promising ‘more of my right wing opinions’. All told, plenty of lessons for the BBC to incorporate for next week’s episode.
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