Is Talk TV paying Piers Morgan by the word? Yes, he had a world exclusive interview with Donald Trump to show us, but that could wait a good 20 minutes. First, a lengthy monologue in which he explained just what his new show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, was all about.
Or, rather, what it plans to rail against. Woke snowflakes. Woke imbeciles. Woke insanity. Cancel culture. Vegan virtue signallers. Pregnant men emojis. Mr Potato Head (I’m afraid he lost me there).
You have heard all this before. You’ve definitely heard it on GB News. But Morgan’s talent is for delivering the agenda in an entertaining way. He understands showbiz. “If it’s all right with you,” he told viewers, “we’re going to enjoy ourselves.” And I’m not sure there is another presenter who could deliver the line: “As Nelson Mandela might have said, it’s been a long walk to freedom of speech,” without sounding like Alan Partridge.
Talk TV was once touted as Rupert Murdoch’s rival to GB News, but it’s here to challenge the big guns. It looks like a cross between ITV and Fox News. Morgan’s show has a hyper-American feel, including a moment when a multi-coloured “world’s gone nuts!” logo flashed up on screen while Morgan theatrically buried his face in his hands.
His interview with Trump was fine, except that every line had been relentlessly trailed in recent days, so none of it was new. Trump hinted that he would run for president again, slagged off Harry and Meghan, and said that he could sort out Putin (his analysis of the Russian leader was pretty sharp). According to reports, Trump will explain in the second instalment of the interview how delighted the Queen was to meet him.
This wasn’t a soft encounter – Morgan stood up to Trump on his ‘rigged election’ claims. It was also as much about the interviewer as the interviewee: Morgan kept bringing us back to the studio to analyse their relationship and talk about himself. He also revealed, amusingly, that Trump had been handed an anti-Morgan dossier by “a treacherous little weasel called Nigel working for a little-watched TV network somewhere in the UK”.
As launch nights go, it was a purring Rolls-Royce to GB News’ sputtering Robin Reliant. Apart from the first minute, that is. Tom Newton-Dunn opened proceedings in the 7pm slot. The camera careered into a close-up of his face as if being piloted by a drunk pigeon. Then Newton-Dunn began speaking and the sound was out of sync with the pictures, like a badly-dubbed kung fu film.
But the mistake was swiftly corrected. It’s clear that there are experienced people behind the scenes. Plenty of money, too. The production values are so slick, it feels like a channel that’s been running for years. Newton-Dunn’s show, The News Desk, was as competent as anything you might find on a rival broadcaster, although in that slot it may struggle for ratings. And I’m not sure they’ll be inviting back James Slack, of Partygate fame, who bore the expression of someone who had been marched on to set at gunpoint.
All in all, an impressive start. If Morgan can keep landing major interviews – Will Smith would be great – it should keep people interested. I’m not sure the world needs another panel discussion show, though; The Talk, hosted by Sharon Osbourne, felt much more GB News and was nothing to write home about. It also featured Jeremy Kyle, whose presence dragged down the quality of the channel by several notches.
