There is a small set of stage plays in which the younger, upstart medium of television is the hero: Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon, James Graham’s Best of Enemies and Aaron Sorkin’s The Farnsworth Invention. This genre is swelled by Doug Wright’s Good Night, Oscar, a 2024 Broadway success now transferring, with some English cast substitutions, to London. In common with the Morgan and Graham dramas, it is set around a notable television interview.
The early realisation in TV that millions of viewers would happily sit on sofas to watch celebrities chatting on chairs meant that the role of talkshow host – Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, David Frost, Michael Parkinson – soon evolved a breed of alpha guests: Peter Ustinov, Kenneth Williams, Robin Williams and, in America, Oscar Levant, a classical pianist and movie supporting actor (An American in Paris) who became a waspish and risque late-night anecdotalist.
