Heerrre's Johnny: On the Spot

In Britain, the Tonight show speaks an alien tongue

The Brits are baffled. Burbank? Governor Jerry Brown? Medflies? Orson Welles on a windy day? Cronkite? Rather? And what is that marmoset doing on Johnny Carson's head?

Well, as to that last, it is playing a supporting role in what may be the weirdest export since Dallas got dubbed and sent to Japan. The NBC Tonight show has been shipped to Britain, where a 40-minute version airs once a week, some days after its U.S. showing, to a bit of national befuddlement, considerable indifference and a few shreds of outright hostility. Carson's opening monologue, with its repeated references to daily U.S. political folk ways and wild consumerism, may be delivered in what is--roughly--considered a common language, but the jokes turn out to be not fully translatable. May be subtitles would help. Or footnotes.

Or maybe nothing. London Weekend Television Ltd., which ordered 13 Carson shows, and has since signed up for 13 more, is flying directly against heavy weather from both viewers and reviewers. Michael Grade, director of programs for L.W.T., says he chose to start running the Tonight show eleven weeks ago because "American TV is extremely popular. The critics ask us why we put on so much American rubbish, but what they hate the public loves."

Statistics do not necessarily bear out this conclusion. Up against weekly Saturday-night competition of soccer highlight and a drama on the BBC, Carson "has averaged a 36% share of the viewing audience," by Grade's reckoning. But Britain's Broadcasters' Audience Research Board lists the top ten programs on each channel. Tonight has not joined the roll call. It seems for once that the viewing public may be speaking as one with the critics.

"Who is this Johnny Carson guy?" wrote a London Standard reader. "I find it very difficult to laugh when the chat-show king is earning a multimillion-dollar salary reading cue boards." The pros were even rougher. Announced TV Critic Margaret Forwood in the Sun: "To be frank, Carson got right up my nose." Said Joe Steeples of the Daily Mail: "His monologue could be in Swahili for all we get from it."

On the defensive, Director Grade--nephew of the impresario Lord Grade--told Carson and his staff that he was "delighted" with the first shows. Grade also said that "Carson seemed a bit hurt that the U.S. papers picked up the worst quotes in the papers here" and, for a more moderate view, directed the curious to a Sunday Times column by TV Critic Russell Davies. That was largely an act of existential futility, like trying to hide from a blizzard inside a freezer. Davies wrote that the premiere Tonight show "had catastrophically equated our national tastes with those of Benny Hill," then proceeded to nail Carson's guests, his audience, his tailoring and "a marmoset [that] peed endearingly on Johnny's head and an aardvark [that] shat in a sandbox." Nevertheless, Davies concluded his well-turned roast with an exemplary demonstration of fair play: "Against the run of all this evidence, I insist that Carson is worth having."

Carson says that it is difficult to play to two audiences. "I never expected to be a tremendous hit in England," he says, "but I hope the people will give it a chance to settle in." But three regional television companies have given the ego a beating by dropping the show. Said a spokesman for Central Scotland television: "Our audience didn't like it, and more important, didn't understand it. Seventy percent of the jokes mean Sweet Fanny Adams to us up here."

Meantime, Michael Grade is leaving to "go to work for Lear." This does not mean that he is auditioning for the Royal Shakespeare Company, however, only that he is becoming president of Norman Lear's TV production company in California. This will put him an ocean away from Sweet Fanny, but within hailing distance of Burbank, allowing him to watch the Tonight show five times a week.

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