Commentary: Why ‘The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore’ will be missed
Comedy Central has canceled “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore” – in the back stretch of an election cycle, no less. It will be gone before the week is out. I like Wilmore a lot, and I’ve liked his nightly “Nightly Show,” which, in some 19 months on the air, did find an individual voice among the range of current events late-night topical comedy shows. But they come, they go. Circle of television.
That is as usual. The two-decade reach of Comedy Central’s flagship “The Daily Show,” under Craig Kilborn, Jon Stewart and now Trevor Noah, and the nine-year run of its spinoff “The Colbert Report,” are for the network more the exception than the rule. (And were Noah to go, the “Daily Show,” as a power brand, would surely keep its name.) That viewers might be getting their news from comedians is no longer the must-write think piece it once was, but Stewart was the person that notion was invented to describe; that he became for some the most trusted name in journalism was an irony he never ceased to point out, and a fact that in itself somehow proved our need for him.
And Colbert created a character, made entirely of irony, who has continued to cast a shadow over the actual person who now hosts “The Late Show.”
Wilmore, who had been onscreen as “The Daily Show’s” Senior Black Correspondent but was more often in his career a writer and producer – he created or co-created the sitcoms “The Bernie Mac Show,” Eddie Murphy’s “The PJs” and “Whoopi” – was not particularly well known as a performer. But late-night hosts often emerge from the shadows: Conan O’Brien, James Corden, Noah, Stewart, for that matter, his MTV years notwithstanding. They are almost always greeted with suspicion before they are sometimes relied upon for comfort.
Certainly, Wilmore’s show has lacked the buzz of those of other “Daily Show” alumni: Samantha Bee’s “Full Frontal” and John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight,” like the Noah-run “The Daily Show,” get many times the viral love. (Comedy Central chief Kent Alterman, who in announcing the cancellation of “The Nightly Show,” said that Wilmore “has not resonated” with viewers, noting at the same time that Noah, who has come in for criticism — for not being Jon Stewart, essentially, unavoidably — has been “resonating increasingly” with them.)
Whether by coincidence or design, Noah’s and Wilmore’s brand of shock and amazement is more modulated than that of Bee’s and Oliver’s, and of Stewart’s comedian-on-the-edge-of-a-nervous-breakdown style, or Colbert’s pretend pundit. One might reasonably wonder, TV being the risk-averse medium that it is, whether they were chosen for that tone in order to avoid, as has been said of the African American in the White House, the appearance of being an “angry black man.” (Which is not to undervalue the decision to hand both Stewart’s show and Colbert’s slot to people of color, and to bring race to the center of the conversation.)
But President Obama’s even temperament has never seemed less than inborn and authentic, and neither does Wilmore’s. At 54, he is a year younger than Obama, old enough to have seen things change – and to have seen some things not change. Wilmore’s repertoire of slow burns, eye rolls and sighs tells us plenty; his weariness contains its own kind of power. He doesn’t need an anger translator any more than the president actually does.
However much irony the jokes he reads might contain, there’s nothing less than straightforward about Wilmore’s bearing, his intelligence or investment; unlike some of his peers, he has never seemed to be playing a character. In some respects – especially during the panel discussions that make up the back-end of “The Nightly Show” – he has been more commentator, more concerned citizen than comedian. This may not have worked for his ratings, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t work.
‘The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore’
Where: Comedy Central
When: 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday
Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)
On Twitter @LATimesTVLloyd
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