If you haven’t been paying attention, Sam Pang’s here to rescue the talk show

Sam Pang won’t admit he’s nervous. “Were you trying to get a quote out of me where I’m saying, ‘I’m nervous’?” he teases.

No, but who wouldn’t be nervous a few weeks ahead of the launch of a nighttime chat show, one of the most recently cursed formats on Australian television?

“I feel like it’s a normal amount of nerves that I have,” he decides. “Everyone that I work with has, before a show, I don’t know if it’s nerves – it’s probably nerves – but it’s excitement. There’s bad nerves, where someone’s crippled and they can’t go on, or they’re sick. That doesn’t feel very helpful, but good nerves and a level of excitement we’re about to do something, I’m feeling that.”

Launching on March 17 for an eight-week run, Sam Pang Tonight is a dream come true for one of TV’s most popular raconteurs. It’s also a demonstration of the amount of goodwill and clout Pang has built up in the industry and with audiences over the last decade or so.

Sam Pang on the rough set of his show Sam Pang Tonight.

This year alone, he’s at the centre of three shows – his eponymous talk show, as a weekly panellist on Ten’s Have You Been Paying Attention and as a co-host on Seven’s sports chat show The Front Bar. He is also in talks to host the Logies for the third year in a row. That’s not to mention the occasional stand-up tour, podcast appearances and radio spots he regularly frequents.

“I know it feels like there’s a lot of stuff on,” he says over Zoom from the Melbourne office of Sam Pang Tonight. “But those shows are quite seasonal. Have You Been Paying Attention is only from May to October, and Front Bar is during the AFL season, the Logies is a one-off thing. So, I’m not really as busy as everyone thinks. I play a lot of golf.”

Sam Pang Tonight, however, is a different beast altogether. Unlike on Have You Been Paying Attention and The Front Bar, Pang will have no co-host upon which to bounce off. And while he does host the Logies solo, he doesn’t sit down and have an extended chat with anyone on stage.

Clockwise from back left: Ed Kavalee, Urzila Carlson, Sam Pang, Kitty Flanagan and Mick Molloy on Have You Been Paying Attention?

But ask him if he’s worried about any of it, and the answer is the same: “It’s only eight weeks, we’re just going to have a bit of fun.”

Despite his laid-back onscreen persona, Pang is quietly confident the show will work. “I’m not too cool, I hope people watch,” he says. The mere fact he has agreed to an interview – he’s still professes to be not a fan of them and is much more comfortable talking about anything but the thing he is supposed to talking about – proves how much he is willing to step out of his comfort zone to make sure the show is a success.

“I’m glad you’re not sensationalising it,” he jokes when I point out that interviewing him is as rare as spotting a Tasmanian tiger in the wild. “It’s just not a strength, Louise, as you’re about to find out.”

In 2023, Sam Pang became the first solo host of the Logies since 2012.

The thing is, Pang is charming and self-deprecating – two things that make a good interview subject and a talk show host. But he still has the problem of the cursed format, as the history of recent nighttime chat shows on Australian TV has been embarrassing at best, disastrous at worst.

The ABC gave it a crack most recently with Frankly, journalist Fran Kelly’s 2023 Friday night chat show. It was cancelled after eight episodes. In 2019, Ten axed comedian Rove McManus’ Saturday Night Rove after two episodes and dismal ratings. Seven and Nine haven’t meaningfully touched the format in years.

The irony is, we used to be really good at it. Tonight Live with Steve Vizard ran five nights a week on Seven from 1990-1993 for about 1000 episodes, while Rove/Rove Live ran for a total of 10 years over Nine and Ten, from 1999-2009, picking up five Logies for most popular light entertainment program along the way.

Sam prepping with Sam Pang Tonight producers Tim McDonald (middle) and John Origlasso.

On the ABC, Adam Hills Tonight clocked up 36 episodes from 2011-2013, while Andrew Denton hosted a variety of talk shows across Seven, Nine and the ABC. Eric Bana even had a crack in 1997, with the Eric Bana Show Live on Seven, while Sean Micallef baffled Nine’s audience in 2003, with Micallef Tonight. Don Lane and Graham Kennedy’s shows from the 1950s to the ’80s are still remembered very fondly.

So why does Pang think his show will work? “I have no idea,” he says. “I’ve never done one.”

OK, what makes a talk show work for him? “Well, the ones I’ve watched, I suppose you’ve got to like the host,” he says, laughing. “I don’t know why the country hasn’t had one. Rove, he was on for 10 years, it was pretty successful. Vizard was on five nights a week, and I know it’s a long time ago, but I really don’t know why [we haven’t had a late-night show]. I also didn’t understand why the Logies didn’t have a host. I’m not a television network executive, they makes these decisions, but, I’m excited by the idea of doing one.”

What he has done is figured out the basics – there will be a desk and maybe a mug – and he’s surrounded himself with a writing and producing team that includes Tim McDonald from The Cheap Seats, Sophie Braham, who has worked on the ABC comedy Fisk, John Origlasso, whom he worked with on the Logies, Dean Thomas, who worked with Pang on Nova FM, and former Carlton star turned film producer Adam White, who produced the Australian horror film Late Night With the Devil.

Sam Pang with his The Front Bar co-hosts Mick Molloy (left) and Andy Maher.

Didn’t that movie – a satire of late-night shows – end fairly catastrophically for the beleaguered talk show host? “That feels like it could be the perfect final ep,” says Pang. “We’ll do a seance, we’ll do a good exorcism … that’s if we’re still on.”

He name-checks Vizard and David Letterman as talk show hosts he admires and recalls a visit to New York to see Letterman taping an episode.

“The musical guest was Kiss, and, you know, it was like three o’clock in the afternoon, there wasn’t a lot of energy,” he says, shaking his head. “And I’m pretty sure for this to have happened, the scheduled guest must have pulled out late because the main guest was [the show’s band leader] Paul Shaffer, walking all the way across from the band to plug his new book.”

Still, that highlights a battle Pang will have: the availability of guests. It’s the quality of the visiting stars that make these shows sing and Australia is only an occasional pit stop on the celebrity highway that feeds the US late-night shows and Graham Norton in the UK.

Pang, of course, is not bothered.

“Let me put you at ease,” he says. “It’s not like when Vizard did it, it’s not five nights a week for 45 weeks. I’ve got once a week for eight [weeks], and then we will just see. We’ll take the temperature and see if everyone’s happy, and then we’ll just see what happens.

Sam Pang during a practice run on his new show Sam Pang Tonight.

“So I’ve got eight [episodes] to just have fun and enjoy myself and I don’t think this wonderful team is going to burn out in eight weeks. If they do, then, then we’ve chosen the wrong people to go to war with.”

He has a rough format in place, starting with the classic opening monologue, and a line-up of comedian and actor friends ready to fill any gaps, plus sketches and segments.

“What we’ll try to do is create a world where it’s not just a talk show, it’s not just guest after guest after guest,” he says. “There’s going to be comedy and segments and all that stuff. So, hopefully, we create a world where people want to come along every week and then, oh, by the way, that guest was great as well. Or, you know, Margot Robbie is in town, they can pop in.

“I don’t know if I can rely on Hollywood, at least for guests. We’re a long way away. So hopefully, when they’re in town, they’ll come on, and if they don’t, hopefully the show stands on its own.”

As far as dream guests go, Pang names US actors Paul Newman and Burt Reynolds (both dead) – “they’re probably two of the more topical references” – and the singer Beyonce.

What would he ask her? “‘Why did you agree to come on my show?’ Then I’d follow up about halfway through with, ‘Are you regretting coming on the show?’ And then I’d finish with, ‘Thank you for coming on the show.’”

As the sole host, Pang jokes, the other thing he’ll have to do is “pretend I’m interested in the answers, which you could have done a better job of this last half hour.”

Hey, I listened! And now I can say I’ve spotted the Tasmanian tiger in the wild.

“You’ll be spotting him, hopefully, eight weeks on Mondays,” Pang says, ready with one last plug. “I can guarantee the first one is on Ten, but depending on how it goes, [episodes] two to eight might be on 10 Peach.”

Sam Pang Tonight premieres on Monday, March 17, at 8.40pm on Ten and 10Play.

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