Claudia Winkleman has revealed that she will not be returning for a second season of her self-titled BBC chatshow. The series, which launched in March and filled the gap while The Graham Norton Show was on hiatus, received lukewarm reviews and so-so ratings. The decision to end the show is reported to be Winkleman's own. "I was just too nervous to enjoy it," she admitted.
Challenges of the Chatshow Format
Part of the problem was that Winkleman was never going to match Norton's impeccable hosting style, honed over nearly two decades. Norton approaches his A-list guests with warmth and cheeky irreverence and is a sharp conversational steward. By contrast, on a gloomy set with the audience positioned weirdly close, Winkleman allowed conversations to drift and indulged in silly hyperbole. For a presenter still riding high on the success of The Traitors, it wasn't worth risking another critical drubbing.
A History of Female Hosts Struggling
Winkleman is by no means the first presenter to come a cropper hosting a chatshow. In 2006, Davina McCall was panned for her self-titled chatshow, which was dumped after one series. The same decade saw the short-lived Lily Allen and Friends and Channel 4's The Charlotte Church Show, where both hosts looked uncomfortable and out of their depth. The late-night chatshow has always been a male stronghold, with female hosts rarely flourishing in the format. The only woman to have succeeded in the UK was under cover of a comic character: Mrs Merton, the creation of the late Caroline Aherne.
The Rise of Podcasts
There is another existential threat facing the chatshow: the rise of podcasts. Many offer longer, more in-depth conversations, and public appetite for them remains undimmed. Male hosts still dominate, but women are getting more of a look-in. For example, Davina McCall now hosts Begin Again, a hit interview series about midlife reinvention. This suggests a Winkleman-fronted interview series could still succeed if she dispenses with the live audience and giant sofa and bypasses traditional telly altogether.
