Why did the Late Late Show, under Gay Byrne, become such a social phenomenon in Ireland? There are a few interlocking explanations: First, and foremostly, the absence of any competition – in a country with two television channels, the Friday Night Talk show is always guaranteed at least 50% of the viewing public. Second, Byrne’s talent as a presenter – he stands alone as one of the few RTE talents down the years who could objectively have succeeded anywhere, even in England or the United States.
Those two explanations have lost their relevance in 2023: Byrne is long gone, and the competition for viewership is much stiffer. But there is a third explanation, one which I think is probably more important than either: In a conservative country, the Late Late Show was transgressive.
When Condoms were illegal, the Late Late Show was where you could see Gay Byrne holding one up and examining it. When homosexuality was illegal, the Late Late Show was where you could see a gay man being interviewed. Sex is the obvious and easiest topic to reference when discussing this, but on a range of issues and topics, the Late Late Show was once the forum where the unspeakable could be spoken about. That made it almost compulsory viewing.
In 2023, this is the selling point which it has lost – and the loss it suffers from – more than any other. For the Late Late Show in 2023 is not about challenging widely held assumptions in Ireland, but about reinforcing them. The Show has gone from being subversive to being modern Ireland’s answer to a Sunday Sermon.
The departing host, Ryan Tubridy, is many things – talented, gregarious, and much better with children on the Toy Show than he perhaps gets credit for. One thing he is not, though – and will never be – is a man to rock the boat.
It was telling last week that the highest praise that Micheál Martin could bestow on Tubridy – and the Late Late – was to thank him for “his leadership during covid”. That is about as close to an admission as you are ever going to get from either the Government or RTE that both bodies saw and see the role of the national broadcaster as being a mouthpiece for official Ireland, rather than as a thorn in its side. It simply would never have crossed Tubridy’s mind during covid to challenge the official policy position, interview subversive heretics with differing views on masks or lockdowns, or even hint that there was any reasonable position other than that advocated by the great and the good.
This, as on many other topics, is the problem: If the Late Late under Gay Byrne had adopted the disposition towards authority that the modern version does, then there’d have been no sex in Ireland at all, to slightly misquote Oliver J. Flanagan. The show would simply have taken its cues from the powers that were at the time – Archbishop McQuaid and his successor Lordships would have had a veto over any discussions seen as unseemly.
The show, to be sure, still strives for edgy, and the shock factor: But the problem is that those shocks can only ever be delivered in one direction. A raucus Valentine’s episode is less about anybody being entertained genuinely than it is about the vague hope that somewhere in rural Sligo, an offended Grandmother will write a letter of complaint. There’s a sense that many of the edgiest pieces of content are designed to shock the Ireland of 1983, when they might have inspired days of radio outrage in response. Instead, they provoke, at the very best, slightly bored chuckles. Two weeks before Tubridy announced his retirement, for example, there was a segment where a female comedian introduced him to the topic of “silent riding”. Despite many efforts to promote this clip across social media, the reaction to it was muted. Nobody cares – we get it, we can talk about sex now.
And the things we can’t talk about? Well, those won’t be on the Late Late Show. There is no prospect of the show challenging the new Irish pieties. The show would never dream, for example, of interviewing Enoch Burke and letting him set out what he believes and why. There’s no prospect of an interview with somebody like Louise Perry, whose book “The Case against the Sexual Revolution” is a quiet bestseller. On the very rare occasions when dissidents and heretics are allowed on the show – think Sean Spicer, Trump’s former PR man, or Peter Casey, former Presidential candidate – the tone is overtly hostile, and the audience is left in no doubt by the tone of the interviews that these are dangerous and bad people.
It is not worth watching, then, if you are looking for something fresh. What you get is instead a weekly celebration of modern Ireland that tells us how great we are, and searches desperately for viral moments of relevance. The old sense of danger is gone, as are all the moments that might make for discussion on a Monday tea break three days later.
This will not change, regardless of who the new presenter is, because RTE cannot countenance it. Their job, as Mr. Martin put it, is to “provide leadership”, and echo the affirmed beliefs of the respectable classes in Ireland. They’re as far from Gay Byrne today as it is possible to get.
That’s the problem – and it’s the one they cannot solve.