Is ITV's The Nightly Show, Britain's answer to Saturday Night Live ?

ITV has moved ‘News At Ten’ to accommodate ‘The Nightly Show’, an up-to-the-minute satirical news programme, presented at first by David Walliams, who says there hasn't been a better time to be a satirist

David Walliams will present ITV’s satirical news programme ‘The Nightly Show’ before other hosts join the show

With the world in tumult, this is a terrific time for satirists – if not for the human race.

When sanity declines, satire increases. As the planet goes into meltdown and every day throws up a new, almost unbelievably absurd story from the White House, satirists are having a field day.

Just look at the huge current popularity of Saturday Night Live in the US. Enormous numbers of people worldwide are tuning into Alec Baldwin’s peerless impersonation of President Donald Trump and Melissa McCarthy’s fantastic skewering of his press secretary Sean Spicer.

But on this side of the Atlantic, we have recently been suffering from a dearth of successful new satire. Since the launch of Mock the Week on BBC2 12 years ago, TV commissioning editors have been struggling to find a popular, returning satirical programme. So is now the time now for another one?

Walliams will return to ‘Britain's Got Talent' after his stint with ‘The Nightly Show’

That is certainly the hope at ITV. The channel have boldly shifted the News at Ten to accommodate The Nightly Show. This topical comedy programme, which will go out, er, nightly, aims to blend satirical comedy with hot-off-the-presses monologues, studio games, celebrity guests, stand-up and video clips.

It will be fronted by a rotating group of hosts, who will each present the show for a week. Later in the run, the stand-up John Bishop and the chef Gordon Ramsay will be occupying the hot seat. But kicking off the run is comedian David Walliams, whose stint as presenter of The Nightly Show, begins at 10pm on 27 February.

Talking exclusively to The Independent in the run-up to the show, Walliams tells us he is very excited by the prospect of mocking the week in the current climate. “There really hasn’t been a better time to be a satirist. At the moment, it feels like The Great Dictator 2!

“Satire is always a great weapon to go after politicians with. We are living in extreme times with very colourful and very big hate figures. It’s extraordinary. We had quite a bland time before this. Who would spoof President Obama? What is there to spoof? He’s just a nice guy, but that’s all changed now.”

The British satirical puppet show, 'Spitting Image' was hugely popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s

The Nightly Show will not be short of news stories to satirise. “There is so much going on at the moment, you almost don’t want to watch the news – ‘Oh no, what’s happened now?’” Walliams says. “We’ll be completely up-to-the-minute, so we won’t know what jokes to write till nearer the time. The world is moving so fast now.

“For example, the travel ban that Trump brought in was quickly suspended by the judges. Over the course of 24 hours, you had to be following that story because it was changing all the time.”

So why does satire, which dates back to the Ancient Greek writer Aristophanes, whose plays sent up the powers that be in 4th century BC Athens, always thrive in hard times? “Satire shines a light on things,” says Walliams. “Because it deals in extremes, it can make you see things that you haven’t seen before.”

The comedian, who has an extremely successful parallel career as a bestselling children’s author, goes on to give a personal example of the influence of satire. “In my early teens I would never have watched Question Time. I wouldn’t have known what was going on, or who the people were.”

But, he carries on, “I loved Spitting Image, so I knew who everyone was in the Cabinet. It was so extreme, portraying Kenneth Baker as a slug and Norman Tebbit as a skinhead. David Steel complained that he was demeaned because Spitting Image depicted him being put into David Owen’s top pocket.

“It was not true, but it influenced your perception of these politicians and it made them iconic. It was so cruel, but so brilliant. I got my politics through Spitting Image. And I hope young people today might have the same experience watching satirical TV shows.”

Kate McKinnon as Hilary Clinton and Alec Baldwin as President Trump on US show ‘Saturday Night Live’

Of course, The Nightly Show taps into the tremendous history of British satire, which has produced such timeless artists as Geoffrey Chaucer, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, William Hogarth and George Orwell.

That has continued with a rich vein of post-war satirical TV programmes. Walliams, who first came to prominence in Little Britain with Matt Lucas, says: “We have had a great tradition of TV satire in this country, with everything from That Was The Week That Was to Have I Got News For You.

”Peter Cook was the first person ever to impersonate a Prime Minister when he played Harold MacMillan in 1964. Everyone was shocked – how dare he? But it was brilliant because the Prime Minister is a human being. So there is no reason why he or she can’t be satirised like everyone else.”

The comedian, who is also currently filming both the new series of Britain’s Got Talent and the TV version of his children’s bestseller Ratburger, before going on to make a new series of his BBC1 sketch show, Walliams and Friend, can lay some claim to being the busiest person in showbiz. But for all that he is more than happy to make time for The Nightly Show. He says: “I’m doing this because I like a challenge and the idea that you don’t know the outcome of something.”

All the same, Walliams is canny enough to admit: “I know I’ll probably get slagged off for it, but I don’t bother too much about that. We live in a hypercritical culture. If you dare put your head above the parapet, someone will slap you down. A friend of mine wrote a comedy show that started at 10pm. At 9.59 someone tweeted, ‘This show is awful’!

Dara O'Briain has presented BBC2’s ‘Mock the Week’ since it began in 2005

“We have this great desire to knock everything. Measured opinions don’t excite people. Extreme opinions are a really good way of getting attention.”

So is criticism just water off a duck’s back for Walliams these days? “Yes. When I did A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the West End four years ago, the director Michael Grandage said to me before the opening night, ‘The person sitting in seat C4 is having a life-changing experience, while the person sitting in seat C5 is having worst night of their life’. It’s just a matter of taste. Some people like bananas, and some people like apples. You can’t worry about it.”

After he finishes his spell hosting The Nightly Show, Walliams will be seen in another important satirical role, constantly taking the rise out of his fellow judge Simon Cowell on Britain’s Got Talent.

Walliams is now in the midst of filming the auditions. “It’s been a joy this year,” the comedian enthuses. “At an audition in Birmingham the other day, bizarrely this guy started singing Pink Floyd’s ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’. Even more weirdly, he then invited people from the audience to join him on stage. So a hundred girls ran on stage, even though those 18-year-olds from Birmingham may well have had no idea who Pink Floyd were.”

After the singer had exited, “The hundred girls walked off the stage and past Simon. He stopped every one of them and critiqued them as they came past – ‘I hate that jumper’, ‘You can’t dance,’ ‘You can’t sing’. It was absolutely hilarious.

“It’s one of many moments where I’ve thought, ‘I can’t believe I get paid for this job!’”

'The Nightly Show' begins on ITV at 10pm on 27 February