Sam Pang, from the ground up… | Television tonight

Sam Pang, a man of few (interview) words, is cold but pragmatic as we speak ahead of the second season of Sam more tonight.

As someone who works with the Working Dog team Have you been paying attention? and Mick Molloy further The front barhe takes into account how long it can take for shows to find their feet.

10 will return for a second season before the year is out, supporting one of the few Tonight show TV projects in recent years.

“I think I forgot how difficult the first seasons of any show are, if I’m honest,” he reflects.

“The first seasons are difficult because you’re building something from the ground up. I always focused on the content and the amount of humor and comedy. You know, ‘Was it funny?’

“I was really happy with that side of things, and other things you learn along the way. Like people don’t like the chair, or they don’t like the desk. Well, that’s fine. That’s easy. These things are custom.”

“But as far as the DNA of the show, I thought we got that kind of right, and I think we got better and better every week. Things are hard at first. You’re starting something new. We all did a good job.”

“Those two shows that I was lucky enough to be on, the people who were involved with them, Tom Gleisner and Working Dog and Mick Molloy, reminded me, ‘Those shows did 300 or 400 shows, and you did eight of them.’

“So it’s a very young show and I think we’re constantly learning. But we’re learning quickly. It was lovely to have a Logie nomination after eight shows. So I was very happy and proud of season one.”

If there was any expectation that the show would be a successor to the glory days of the Australian Tonight shows, Pang was always keen to play it down. Those budgets are up, the studio is modest, but there is still room for comedy and chemistry in an exchange of guest anecdotes.

“I think I said, ‘This isn’t it The Graham Norton Show,” which features three or four of the biggest guests every week. We’re in Australia and the show lasted eight weeks. Some weeks the guests will be larger than others. I was very proud of the guests, they were interesting and I enjoyed talking to them. But if we had done the show two weeks earlier, Renée Zellweger would be working here Bridget Jones Diaryand she might have been working. But there is that element that the guests have to fall in the eight weeks that we are doing. The same goes for this season,” he explains.

“I don’t know about old school variety. We were just going to try to have fun and make sure there was enough comedy in every show. Vizard, Don Lane and Rove…it was those shows and this is something else.

The challenge with booking guests, he admits, is their availability for an interview on Monday evening in South Yarra. The show is recorded just minutes before broadcast, leaving no room for edits.

Who would be his dream guest?

“Russell Crowe would be great. I met him at the AACTA Awards earlier this year, and he’s supposed to be great, but he’s very busy. I’ve been a big fan. And then, you know, if Julia Roberts is ever in town, she’d be great too. But if they’re not in town, they don’t come…” He shrugs.

“Eric Bana, Sam Neill, Bryan Brown, Cate Blanchette. They’re easy ones. I think it’s more when they’re not available that the challenge is finding funny, interesting, entertaining people to talk to. Because this show just can’t rely on guests.”

“The guest is one or two segments. There are four other segments that we have to fill. So I never thought it would be very dependent on the guests. We are trying to build a show that is entertaining every week.” Have you been paying attention? is a great example. The guest quiz master in segment 3…usually I don’t know who they are.”

Rosie O’Donnell is the guest for his seasonal return. The two met briefly at Monday’s HYBPA? episode, but while Pang makes a pre-show greeting in the green room, most of the gold remains for the broadcast.

“We are planning the segment, but we don’t know where it will go,” he continues. “Depending on how the chat goes, I’ll get to it completely, otherwise we’ll run out of things to say and I’ll break early. But Rosie O’Donnell, for example, has done this a thousand times. She had her own show. I’m sure she’ll be fine if we just go outside and turn on the lights.”

So if Pang wants to gently build on his first season, are there any changes from season one?

Yes, but most are behind the scenes, he acknowledges, around processes and planning.

“But we have a new deskmate. So please, you can take charge with that.”

Sam Pang Tonight returns Monday at 10:40 PM on 10.