Sam Pang Tonight review: Opening night jitters, with just enough titters

There are two schools of thought about reviewing a restaurant on opening night. One says it’s not fair to assess it so soon, because they’re still bedding everything down. The other says if they’re going to charge people to eat, they’re ready to be reviewed.

Watching Sam Pang Tonight on debut on Monday brought that dilemma to mind. The show is clearly still a work in progress. But it’s on air, so how can it not be judged.

Sam Pang has launched his new talk show.

Tell you what, Sam, let’s split the bill.

First and foremost, Pang is likeable. For a tonight show host, that’s essential. With no news or drama to speak of, there’s no compelling reason to watch other than the fact you find the person behind the desk (and yes, there was a desk, and a mug too) fun to spend time with.

Pang’s shtick is self-deprecation coupled with snark. In his opening monologue, he leant more into the latter, with an early joke about him being all that’s left of the Have You Been Paying Attention? cast after the P-Diddy trials. “I warned you all about Tom Gleisner for years,” he said. “Only with him, it’s not baby oil it’s Dencorub.”

He landed a gag about Leonardo DiCaprio coming out against a proposal for a new mine, saying that was funny “because he normally loves minors”. He got a big laugh when he joked about being mistaken for Penny Wong, and played variations on the “all Asians look the same” line throughout. Nothing to be scared of here, white Australia.

Talk shows have become a rarity on Australian television, but they used to be common. So where to look for guidance if you’re trying to make a new one successful? The past, obviously. Der.

Actor Jack Thompson was Pang’s first guest.Credit: Ten

Sam Pang Tonight had six segments: opening monologue; found footage, about which he made some decent enough jokes; interview with famous person (actor Jack Thompson); interview with regular person (emergency ward doctor Emma West), under the deliberately un-snappy title “Questions I’ve always wanted to ask and now I’ve got my own show I finally can”; Yesterday’s News Tonight (more found footage, of a hilarious nude interview from 1979); and The Wheel of Segments (in which the segment to be screened next is determined by where the spinning wheel stops).

None of it could be accused of reinventing the wheel (well, except the last bit, which literally did just that).

Familiarity needn’t be a drawback, though, and Pang found moments within each of these that worked, and got decent laughs from a studio audience that wanted them to. The overnight ratings – an average of 799,000 viewers across the episode, Ten’s top show and number eight overall – suggest the audience at home was up for it too.

Dr Emma West was a welcome, if lonely, female presence.Credit: Ten

What did surprise, though, was the degree to which everything skewed older.

Paul Kelly, who is 70, appeared in a little prologue sketch, in which his suggested theme music was rejected by Pang, who sneeringly judged Dumb Things “perfect ... for 1987”.

He was clearly nervous, but excited, to have 84-year-old Jack Thompson on to talk about the state of the Australian film industry when he started out in 1968 (in a word, non-existent) and to reminisce about some of his biggest hits – Wake in Fright (1971), Breaker Morant (1980), The Club (1980).

I love Thompson and admire his body of work, but this was a seriously odd choice. Was Pang putting the myth of Ten being the “youth” network to the sword, or simply indulging his own interests at the expense of an audience that might feasibly have been scratching its collective head and wondering who the old bloke slouched in the chair was? Either way, it was a bold – perhaps foolhardy – opening gambit.

Other than the doctor, things were very male-heavy, with comedian Dave Thornton drafted in as an occasional sidekick (more accurately, on-screen moral support). And when Pang asked Emma West “do people really believe you’re a doctor”, you just wanted to scream “come on, Sam, you’re better than that”.

It did get better as it went on, though, with Pang allowing himself to go off script, to ad-lib, to be loose. That’s what audiences want from him, it’s what he does best and, with a bit of luck, it’s what we’ll get to see much more of across the seven episodes to come.

Was it great television? No. But it wasn’t a disaster either. And the best news of all? You only have to get through opening night once.

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