not tv: borrowed (so to speak) from the Times of London
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Jon Delfin
Sep 12, 2021, 7:43:40 PM9/12/21
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by Dominic Maxwell, who recently gave much less enthusiastic reviews to Russell Brand, Olga Koch, and Simon Amstell
How good is Trevor Noah? I’ll tell you. After well over an hour of queueing to get into this Greenwich enormodome via airport-style security checks, I texted a friend to say that if this didn’t turn out to be the greatest stand-up show of the year I’d have wasted my evening. Ninety minutes later I texted again. “Evening not wasted. Face sore from laughing.”
Noah, the 37-year-old South African host of American satire programme The Daily Show, will take this tour to the US next. Yet while his material about masks and Zoom and sci-fi film tropes will play anywhere, he here added in UK-only material (the Euros final! Scousers! Punting in Cambridge!) that showed off his prodigious gift for accents and for seeing the big picture while making small details deliciously vivid. And somehow he kept dancing between the daffy and the dark, the trivial and the epochal.
The son of a Xhosa mother and Swiss-German father, Noah can cut through racial and national stereotypes and preconceptions with accuracy and vim. He was ironic yet acidic, cordial yet acute as he argued that Britain gets more stick for colonialism than other European nations simply because it lacks the sort of interesting cuisine that might compensate for its sins. He suggested that the US was built on a spite towards the English that has curdled into a spite towards other Americans.
Written down, some of his topics could be considered hackneyed: the French are haughty; white people love swimming but can’t dance. Yet every time, he found something of his own to add. “Black people are dancing to the beat,” he said. “White people are dancing to the lyrics.” And he always made it look casual as he padded around the stage in combat trousers and a hooded top, delighting a diverse audience of 20,000. He is a virtuoso, an artist who conceals the art. He’s the new gold standard of stand-up.
Noah, the 37-year-old South African host of American satire programme The Daily Show, will take this tour to the US next. Yet while his material about masks and Zoom and sci-fi film tropes will play anywhere, he here added in UK-only material (the Euros final! Scousers! Punting in Cambridge!) that showed off his prodigious gift for accents and for seeing the big picture while making small details deliciously vivid. And somehow he kept dancing between the daffy and the dark, the trivial and the epochal.
The son of a Xhosa mother and Swiss-German father, Noah can cut through racial and national stereotypes and preconceptions with accuracy and vim. He was ironic yet acidic, cordial yet acute as he argued that Britain gets more stick for colonialism than other European nations simply because it lacks the sort of interesting cuisine that might compensate for its sins. He suggested that the US was built on a spite towards the English that has curdled into a spite towards other Americans.
Written down, some of his topics could be considered hackneyed: the French are haughty; white people love swimming but can’t dance. Yet every time, he found something of his own to add. “Black people are dancing to the beat,” he said. “White people are dancing to the lyrics.” And he always made it look casual as he padded around the stage in combat trousers and a hooded top, delighting a diverse audience of 20,000. He is a virtuoso, an artist who conceals the art. He’s the new gold standard of stand-up.
Kevin M.
Sep 12, 2021, 7:51:04 PM9/12/21
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I have heard Noah do stand up and guest on panel shows… I like him much more in those capacities than I do as a host
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Kevin M. (RPCV)
Dave Sikula
Sep 13, 2021, 5:42:38 AM9/13/21
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I think I've expressed how much I think Noah has driven TDS into a ditch. Hopefully, things will improve once he's back in the studio this week, but I'm sick to death of his terrible dialects, the pretty awful writing, and probably the weakest lineup of correspondents in the show's history.
Dave Sikula
Sep 16, 2021, 12:13:21 AM9/16/21
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I guess what could be considered a new era of The Daily Show has begun: the studio's moved from the Terra Incognita of the west side to Times Square, there's (obviously) a brand new (poorly-lit) set, and they're processing the video to look like film (a move I hate on pretty much any show).
Unfortunately, nothing else has changed. The first 15-20 minutes are Noah doing crappy dialects and worse impressions, they're doing that stupid thing of insert shots from the side while he talks into another camera, and he's still not a very good interviewer (which makes him a part of the continuum of current hosts).
The oddest segments so far: a segment with Roy Wood, Jr., but seated across from each other at a table like they were hanging at a coffee shop, and Tuesday's panel with Gabrielle Union, which boiled down to "Wasn't the Met Gala awesome?" "Not as awesome as you!" "No, -you're- awesome!"
--Dave Sikula
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