So Jonathan Ross’s BBC chat show has finished. It has ceased to be. He’s off now to ITV.
It’s easy to knock him for Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Although he frequently knew what he was talking about, probing his subjects with surprising depth, and could be original and edgy with his interviews, a lot of the time he was teenage-boy childish, crude and even rude to his guests. And no one but no one criticises Hershey’s bars in front of an American – foolish man.
However, the "not very good" qualities of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross shouldn’t make people forget just how talented he has been in the past. He’s been particularly good at introducing Britain to other countries’ pop cultures, particularly when talking about film.
He first came to fame when he revolutionised chat shows back in the 80s with his Channel 4 show The Last Resort, which was the first UK chat show to "do a Letterman". On the show, he was able to bring on guests who rarely if ever appeared on the other networks, even when few in the UK knew who the guests were. Here he is introducing Britain to Steve Martin, for example.
But it’s for The Incredibly Strange Film Show that he should best be remembered. This 80s show gave pretty much every film nerd and teenage boy a knowledge of Jackie Chan, John Waters, Ed Wood, George Romero, Sam Raimi, Russ Meyer and numerous other directors they probably never would have had otherwise heard of.
He’s also produced some excellent travelogues, particularly of Japan for his show Japanorama.
So let us not knock Ross so easily. He’s one of the few people on TV willing to share his passions and enthusiasm unselfconsciously on TV and there aren’t many of those about any more. And who else would be willing to make an entire documentary about the search for Spiderman artist Steve Ditko in which he eventually finds his subject and is able to talk to him – provided Ditko isn’t filmed during the interview. Failure? No, because it was both informative and epic fun.
