David Spade Will Try To Follow 'The Daily Show' With A Pop Culture Skewering Late Night Show
Ever since The Colbert Report left Comedy Central in 2014, the cable network has struggled to hold onto a show that can effectively take the timeslot following The Daily Show. They tried to replicate the political satirical success of Stephen Colbert's program with Larry Wilmore's The Nightly Show and Jordan Klepper's The Opposition, but the only sustainable series to fill the gap was Chris Hardwick's @midnight, which came to an end in 2017. But now a new contender has entered the late night ring.
Former Saturday Night Live cast member and stand-up comedian David Spade will try his hand at a new late night program following The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. However, rather than trying to tap into the oversaturated political satire spectrum that is already dominating late night television, the new David Spade talk show will go in a different direction with "signature take on the pop culture news of the day."
Variety has news of the new David Space talk show coming to Comedy Central. It will be the first time the cable network tries to fill the time slot with someone who didn't get their start on The Daily Show. No, @midnight wasn't something that originated on The Daily Show, but that series only shifted to the post-Daily Show slot when it was vacated by the other failed shows. That's why it was called @midnight and not @eleventhirty.
If the idea of David Spade tackling pop culture in a late night format sounds familiar, that's because Comedy Central has done this before. For three seasons between 2005 and 2007, David Spade was the host of the weekly comedy series The Showbiz Show. Each episode featured Spade poking fun at the various headlines from that week's entertainment news, as well as comedians like Brian Posehn, Andrew Daly, Scott Adsit, Nick Swardson and Jessi Klein as correspondents.
The Showbiz Show itself was an extended version of Spade's famous Hollywood Minute segments on Weekend Update from his days on Saturday Night Live. Spade would deliver short, sweet one-liners about films, television and celebrity gossip in that signature smarmy, snarky tone that he became so famous for. NBC still has clips of those segments available online, but sadly they can't be embedded here.
The major different here is that this now untitled late night show with David Spade will air four times a week after The Daily Show. Perhaps the entertainment world movies a little faster in this day an age than it did over 10 years ago, so they have a lot more to riff on. More than likely the show will expand beyond the usual Hollywood ramblings to various other pop culture stories that flood the internet everyday.
Honestly, since this was the only schtick that David Spade was every really good at (besides being a great foil for the late Chris Farley), this sounds like it could be fun. Spade isn't exactly at the top of his game anymore, but this is the kind of thing he does best. If anything, it'll be a nice break away from the rest of the political humor at the rest of the late night talk shows.
David Spade will executive produce along with Alex Murray and Marc Gurvitz while Brad Wollack and Tom Brunelle of Free 90 Media will be executive producers and showrunners. Here's hoping they can make the show last in the post-Daily Show time slot.