Better when he's just himself ... Photograph: BBC/So TV/Nicky Johnson
The Graham Norton Show on BBC2 is the best chat show on British television. Admittedly, there's not much competition, but that shouldn't diminish Norton and his production team's achievement.
In the last few weeks, there have been cracking editions of the show, notably those featuring David Tennant, Dawn French and Sarah Beeny. Norton's skill, now honed almost to perfection, allows us glimpses into his guests' characters by engaging them as human beings. Or as close to human beings as actors and the like get.
He doesn't ask obviously penetrating questions, he doesn't get to the core of their being, but with his casual, chatty, clever manner, he often reveals more of them than direct, journalistically incisive questioning might.
And what of his competition? Jonathan Ross always believes that the most interesting person in the room is ... Jonathan Ross. Paul O'Grady can't resist a gag at the expense of some actual interaction with whoever he has on his couch, and watching Michael Parkinson is akin to being dunked in oil. And not in a good way. Indeed, you only need to recall his fawning over David and Victoria Beckham to require a soapy-water hosing from Greenpeace.
Hosting a chat show is enormously difficult - look at the mess Davina McCall made of hers - but Norton makes it look effortless. He manages to win the trust of his guests without ever betraying that of the audience. Sure, he's one of them, but, crucially, he's one of us too.
Obviously he meets all these people at parties, might be chummy with some of them, and perhaps even shares an agent with a few, but there's rarely any sense he's cosy with them in a way his competitors are. Plus, he's equally at home with men and women - not something you can say of Parky, for example. (The prosecution calls Meg Ryan).
Of course, The Graham Norton Show on BBC2 is not dissimilar to his Channel 4 shows. This is not surprising since they were/are all made by his production company. But so what? The BBC didn't throw buckets of money at Norton so it could reinvent him as the new Simon Schama. It offered him a deal so he'd bring his particular brand of comedy to the corporation. Which he has done, albeit with a significant difference.
His BBC show simply isn't as smutty as his outings on Channel 4. Gone are the caressing of dildos, explorations of the audience's underwear, and scurries around the weirdest corners of the internet. Instead - and you sense this is partly because there's only one show a week instead of the too-many he was doing at Channel 4 - there is a real sense of quality control. Plus, purchasing glow-in-the-dark vibrators with licence-fee money probably wouldn't go down well with director general Mark Thompson. (Or perhaps it would. But I don't really like to think about that.)
No, The Graham Norton Show has lost its crude edge and, without getting all Mary Whitehouse on you, I for one am glad. I feel a whole lot dirtier watching Michael Parkinson.
