The mystery of The Drew Barrymore show, a basic celebrity-chat format, is not how it got to be so popular, with every episode a soaraway success, but how much she manages to get out of people. Even if you are not interested in celebrities, there is a radical naivety to Barrymore – watch her enjoying the rain, for its very distillation – that is joyful, unreflective and fun to watch, like a dog in a hat.
If you are interested in celebrities, these will be the most interesting interviews you’ve ever watched, with deeply personal confidences, from stars in their prime. This just isn’t how things work; when you have hinterland, whether that’s an alcohol problem or an A1 anecdote, you save it for when you’re on the skids, trying for a Vanity Fair cover or writing a memoir. You don’t throw it away on five minutes of TV. So how does she do it?
