Pat Kenny's chat show for UTV Ireland will be called Pat Kenny in the Round and will be filmed in front of an audience in the Round Room in Dublin's Mansion House, says the independent production company commissioned to make it.
The Coco Television show will feature “one or more” guests in conversation with Kenny each week, with a mix of well-known Irish and international people on the producers’ list of bookings. It will be recorded as live – meaning there will minimal editing – in front of an audience of about 140 in the Round Room, with tickets available through audience@cocotelevision.ie.
"The Mansion House adds something to it," says Stuart Switzer, managing director of Coco Television, which counts RTÉ's CrimeCall, Room to Improve, Don't Tell the Bride and The Consumer Show among its credits. "Filming in a studio or somewhere like the Helix is an easy default."
The series producer will be Dave Skinner, who has made the Mobo awards and Bafta red carpet programmes for the BBC and Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled for Dave. He also worked as a producer on Big Brother for Channel 5 and The Big Breakfast for Channel 4. This will be the first time he has worked with Kenny.
The run of 13 one-hour episodes will be directed by Patrick Cowap, with set design by Fiona Cunningham, lighting by Peter Canning and VT segments produced by Hilary O’Donovan.
Skinner says the set will be made to seem “intimate”, despite the fact that the Round Room “is a big old room”. Although there are some logistical complications with filming in such a venue, it was a part of Coco’s submission to UTV Ireland’s call for pitches that the Kenny show be shot outside of a traditional television studio. It will be the first full series to be filmed there.
Skinner says the show, in which Kenny will have some input, will veer away from the “fairly superficial” 8-10 minute interview format.
Audiences are a little weary of the "tell us about your book, and then let's move on" formula, says Coco's head of television Linda Cullen, the show's executive producer. "And Pat is probably better at in-depth interviews than the quick fix. I think he's known as a good interrogator," she says.
Cullen also resists comparisons to programmes that specialise in one-to-one interviews, such as ITV's Piers Morgan's Life Stories. "Piers Morgan's show is about Piers Morgan. Pat Kenny is not Piers Morgan."
Fearing counter-scheduling by RTÉ and TV3, UTV Ireland is keeping quiet about Pat Kenny in the Round's time slot for as long as it can, though the first show is expected to go out next month and there will be a summer break.
Many, though not all, of the guests have been lined up and there is tight secrecy about the names. UTV Ireland denies press reports, however, that the first person in Kenny’s Round Room hotseat will be tennis legend Martina Navratilova.
