Host the Week

I don't know what Channel 4 were thinking when they made this awful mess. It's similar to ITV1's dreadful The Nightly Show. HTW was so awful that its viewing figures were less than half a million and it was axed after only one episode. As with TNS, it tried to be many things: stand-up comedy, game show, chat show, light entertainment etc. - but failed at all of them.

The presenter, Scarlett Moffatt, was awful. As a participant in reality shows she was sometimes entertaining because of the reactions of other participants to the stupid things she said. However, when leading professional celebrities in this show, she was just embarrassingly inadequate. She has no comedic or presenting ability and was severely out of her depth throughout the episode. The dress she wore was hideous.

Jack Whitehall was due to present the following episode. C4 were clearly so disappointed with the first episode that they felt that the format couldn't work even with someone who is a good comedy presenter (Whitehall has presented BBC comedy chat show Backchat since 2013).

Channel 4 said there would be no scripts, but Moffatt was clearly reading badly from an autocue some of the time.

Well done to Channel 4 for trying something new. In this age of TV that is something in itself to be applauded. And yet when the first episode didn't work they pulled the plug. An almost American TV network way of doing things.

This show wasn't as bad as all that. I thought Scarlett Moffatt did well as the first (and as it turned out, only host) and don't really know what else Channel 4 thought would happen in a show that was improvised as it was always going to be hit and miss.

The right format will come along for Scarlett, this sadly wasn't it.