The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

From being a player on ABC's short-lived variety show The Dana Carvey Show to being a correspondent on The Daily Show for 8 years and hosting his own show for 9 years playing a fictionalized character, Stephen Colbert has conquered a lot of challenges, and in 2015, he would do his biggest challenge yet: to host CBS's The Late Show as a successor to David Letterman.

When Letterman retired on May 20th, CBS went all out with promoting the show and reworking the famous Ed Sullivan Theater where Letterman has hosted in from his entire tenure (apart from his on-location shows outside of New York).

It was the beginning of a new era of The Late Show.

It may have taken him a while to find his footing as he was being himself for the first time after playing a character for 9 years, but the execution was there, and he was smooth sailing by the following years. My grandmother had never heard of him until I showed her the Comedy Central Christmas special and now, she watches him every weeknight on this show!

So, if you're a fan of Mr. Colbert and only known him as his Report character, see him in action as himself.

You won't regret it!

I watch the 5-10 mins of monologues that get posted to YouTube regularly and love many of them. Always looking forward to the next one. Stephen is brill. I don't engage with the rest of the show - the music and interviews. Good stuff

I feel compelled to write this review just after US presidential elections because this last month changed dramatically my views on the program. I'm not an American citizen but an avid onlooker and political events happening there have such a great effect worldwide. To fully capture the feelings of the people there, late night shows are quite helpful while entertaining. Letterman's long career on this particular show was characterised by a sometimes cynical but always detached rapport with politics. That was a healthy if a bit too play-it-safe attitude.

I always found informative, funny and interesting Colbert's previous show and I thought he innovated the Late Night formula correctly. It was not as fun as the Report and guest- based shows tend to be boring product placement with exceptions on good nights but I felt Colbert's part was still enjoyable even if CBS restrained his comedy.

Then the election came to the last month run and the show was completely ruined.

The power of the jester is immense as he can freely mock the powerful without reprisal and spell more truth in a joke than a pundit can in long PC-ruled convoluted analysis. Colbert wilfully renounced this almost sacred role and destroyed this precious mask. He completely sided with HRC losing any comedic perspective, his bits became simply a ranting word by word repetition of what the outrageous Trump had said the previous day with some stitched on comedy remarks and nothing but that for weeks. NO JOKES on HRC but just false sounding and pandering praises, adding to the boring disgrace the guests were 99,9% HRC spokespersons or her fans/endorsers (all except Viggo Mortensen).

It ended up being ironical in his failure: Colbert's show has completely ceased to be funny while actually harming his political cause by amplifying Trump's message. Colbert's political attitude should not have been the main concern for the audience in the first place, at least not more important than quality entertainment. No wonder a poll taken few days before the vote shown that 75% of American public perceived the media to heavily favour HRC (that's far more than just Republican voters). Colbert was just part of the chorus and not the worst (Samantha Bee...ugh!) but he should have known better.

I've got nothing against Colbert's political ideas or his openness about those, I never particularly liked HRC and I find Trump quite dangerous, but the lack of comedy is unbearable and unjustifiable. It was a deceptively easy task to make fun of a man who surpasses his worst critics' expectations by almost daily announcements containing racial, gender and generic outlandish charged statements. Trump used the media and the media only wanted more in a circle of desperate addiction. Other hosts went with the flow and writers had a paid holiday. I judged Colbert's and Di Nello's wits to be superior and up to the task, alas they failed miserably.

How will the show fare in Trump-Land now? Will it become even more partisan and boring? Will it adapt to other themes? I'm not going to be there to watch, that's for sure.

I've never had a poster of anyone on my wall. I went to a couple concerts in high school, like U2 and the Ramones, and had a shirt or two, but never wore them. I've always viewed that kind of celebrity worship as being kind of infantile. So when I do fall head over heels in love with a celebrity, it's kind of a big deal. And there's no celebrity, past or present, that I cherished as much as I cherished you.

There's a guy on a late night talk show that looks like you, sounds like you and even has your name, but this doppelganger doesn't have your soul. This grinning, unconfrontational Stepford Wife is a hollow shell of you. You were punk rock, this guy's Disneyland. You changed the world. He sells some hummus.

It's unbelievably difficult to imagine a life without you. I know that nothing lasts forever, so our time together was always going to come to an end, but it was a day I never wanted to see- and a day that came far too soon.

I love you, I miss you.

Well, after 3 shows that were quite disappointing, it's clear that (i) Colbert is a fantastic host but (ii) being on CBS basically kills his potential.

This new show is passable, barely saved by Colbert's talent but offers pretty much no fun and no depth. In a nutshell, it's just another bland network TV show without much interest.

The inability to bring the best of the best TV host in the US on CBS demonstrates why it is way overdue that network TV shall disappear and cable shall take over. HBO has done it for TV and movies, Comedy central demonstrated it in reverse by letting Stephen Colbert go and lose most of his potential.

Stephen, please come back to cable and do what you do best instead of losing your soul and wasting your potential on CBS.