You could almost call it a cold open. Strike Force Five, the new podcast from the hosts of five of the United States’ biggest late-night talkshows, has jumped right into the centre of a storm mere moments into its planned 12-episode roll-out.
Here’s the background: Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver came together in May this year, soon after the Writers’ Guild of America began its strike. (According to episode one, it was Colbert’s idea.) The concept was to pull together a podcast with the proceeds going to support the out-of-work staff on their respective shows, which apparently number in the hundreds.
Each host takes turns driving Strike Force Five. As the current roster stands, Jimmy Fallon will be hosting episode five, which has many of us in full popcorn-eating gif mode as Fallon came under fire in a Rolling Stone piece last week that accused him of erratic and sometimes abusive behaviour towards staff and fostering a toxic work environment. The problem is that all the episodes are pre-recorded. So how and whether the show will address the allegations – Fallon has since apologised to his staff – is the real cliffhanger.
As we wait to see how a pre-recorded show deals with in-the-moment drama, there are the first three episodes to dive into if you’re a fan of what the hosts readily admit are five straight white men talking over each other. Truth is, they’re less talkative than you’d think. In contrast to what you might expect from five alphas in the room – lots of taking the lead, little of following – these five are incredibly respectful and uninterrupty, though perhaps that’s all down to the editing. It’s not that they all sound exactly the same, either: Meyer’s voice is a little higher, Fallon slurs mildly and Oliver is the one with the English accent. But something about hearing them all together makes achingly clear why diversifying the late-night circuit might be long overdue.
And, yes, they have some lukewarm tea to spill in the mildly shambolic first few episodes for anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes of celebrity interviews and big-budget productions: Robert De Niro can be a famously monosyllabic interviewee, Mariah Carey has timekeeping issues, Alec Baldwin didn’t like Meyer’s snazzy set so it got a makeover etc. But more revealing are moments when the hosts mine their own lives for content, including the story about how Colbert came to be in possession of a pair of pants belonging to the former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, or Kimmel’s frank and winning discussion of a vasectomy appointment that didn’t go as planned.
Perhaps surprisingly, these five rivals for American eyeballs are comradely and convivial in this audio format, as they discuss how they’ve been occupying themselves since the strike began – grilling meat, tap-dancing, reading books about reading Moby Dick. It’s not that it’s a bad show, especially given its altruistic impetus, more that it’s a kind of meh show, a duller version of their sharper TV iterations. These prime-time behemoths are a lot less honed and funny when they’re in charge of their own material, which seems fitting: Strike Force Five makes an airtight case for the strikers it was created to support.
