Jason Manford

Hot Topic: Generation Next

Talent schemes like C4's help stop future TV stars slipping though the net, Jason Manford explains to Broadcast Now. (Registration may be required to view article)

And the prize for most innovative programme of the week goes to this offering, hosted by Jason Manford. Among those featured are consumer conspiricy theorist Steve Lipschitz, teenage telly addict Ollie and investaigative reporter Jack Whitehall.

Recorded before a live audience on the day of its broadcast, the quality of topical comedy show Tonightly is pretty much dependent on how inspired the writers felt when they got up that morning.

Possibly because it is such a bold venture, I have a lot of time for Tonightly. The comedy sketches lean towards the infantile rather than the satirical and are tediously dependent on profanity, but they are carried by the brash enthusiasm of their performers. Showbiz correspondent Ollie Roberts' cut and paste fake interviews may just be a repetition of the same joke, but it is a joke I always laugh at.

However, the show's greatest strengths lie in host Jason Manford and sidekick Andi Osho. Affable and unflappable, the pair exude confidence without ever coming over as smug. Something the presenters of The Eleven O'Clock Show never came close to achieving.

Tonightly is a three-week 11 O'Clock Show-style aberration that's part of Channel 4's Generation Next strand. So-called because that's where they'll all be working in six months time.

Particularly the hosts. Pub funny comedian Jason Manford, who so wants to be Peter Kay it hurts, and his hypnotically awful assistant Andi 'Err' Osho, who's no rabbit in the headlights... she's road kill in the highlights.

There's a team of 12 - TWELVE! - writers who've clearly watched The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart, but forgot to take any notes. The show hits the screens at five past 11. They start work on the script at about five to 11.

Admirable as it is to encourage young comics, they really should start using them again. Because the evidence suggests Britain hasn't got talent. It's just got a lot of deluded students who all think they're the next Sacha Baron Cohen.

Tonightly is bad. Really bad. It's 50% smug and 50% tundra. This has been picked up by the viewing public... or rather, the lack of. A paltry 500,000 viewers tuned in to watch Jason Manford (No Frills Peter Kay) desperately trying to kick water up hill. Still, there's a part of me that feels a bit sorry for him, thanks to the people that surround him.

The bosses at Channel 4 took an enormous risk with this stab at a British Daily Show when they chose Jason Manford to front it. To give him such a responsibility when we are all still getting used to him, seems a far reaching step for those in the board room and not to mention the comedian himself.

At first, I had mixed feelings. Manford is a confident host who has clearly been ready to front a show for some time, and confidence is certainly needed when delivering long monologues to camera as he is required to do for much of the first half of the show.

And while co-presenter Andi Osho's little ad-libbed asides were funny, it seems she needs to have a bit more faith in herself.

In an era of copy-cat shows and more food and lifestyle shows than anyone could possible keep up with, any channel and production team attempting a new format is absolutely to be applauded.

And a nightly comedy show looking at the news, recorded a few hours before transmission, is a rare beast indeed here in the UK.

Presenter Jason Manford was genial, funny, comfortable and confident. He started with some nice self-deprecating humour about how he's easy on the eye for the girls and the gays 'like Adam Rickett' and continued to be far more watchable than the other segments of the show.

Any hopes that it might be a British Daily Show were dashed pretty quickly, in the main thanks to the sub-par troupe of 'correspondents' hoping to become the next Ali G.

Jimmy Carr returns with the sixth - yes, sixth - series of this consistently funny panel game, sitting smugly between the announcement of who's getting kicked out of the Big Brother house and the first evictee's chat with Davina.

Comedians Sean Lock and Jason Manford are still in the team captains' chairs and tonight they'll be joined by repeat guests (also known as show stalkers) Vic Reeves and David Walliams, who have appeared more than 10 times between them.

The inessential comedy panel show returns for an astonishing sixth series, with Jimmy Carr again marshalling six comedians as they recite jokes based on surveys and statistics. Returning as team captains are Sean Lock, generally the best spontaneous contributor by far, and Peter Kay-ish Manchester comic Jason Manford.

It's all a bit stilted and choppily edited, but it can attract decent guests (Vic Reeves and Griff Rhys Jones were on last year - David Walliams appears tonight) and will do well in the ratings.