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SCMP Reporter

LIKE the Japanese, the Singaporeans love to take the best of the best from around the world, adapt it, improve on it, and call it their own.

 In business and manufacturing this formula has scored many a success, but when it comes to humour the formula does not work.

 The Television Corporation of Singapore tried to make its mark with a talk show, Tonight with Gurmit, which seems to have been slavishly copied from The Late Show with David Letterman - except for the quality of the jokes.

 It has the same city skyline studio backdrop, the obligatory school-teacher desk and two armchairs for guests.

 The host, local sitcom actor Gurmit Singh, comes on serenaded by his studio band and enthusiastic stage-managed applause, does a stand-up monologue, followed by a couple of celebrity chats and a slot for a musical guest.

 They even go as far as making Singh try to ape all the Letterman idiosyncracies, from throwing things into the audience to claiming he is the most powerful chat show host on TV.

 In Singh's case, he is the only chat show host on Singapore TV so he does still have a point.

 But the series has been lambasted in the press and is proving a deep embarrassment.

 'There has surely not been another moment in the history of Singapore television displaying so shamelessly its lack of originality,' moaned reviewer Teo Pau Lin in The Straits Times.

 Careful, in true Singapore style, not to offend anyone, Singh's joke writers have clearly had a difficult job.

 Guests have also been restricted to Television Corporation of Singapore's home-grown celebrities.

 'Since the chances of Zoe Tay flashing her frontal treasures to the host [the way Drew Barrymore did to Letterman on top of his desk, her back towards the camera] are slim, we'd make do with Zoe juggling her dogs on the roof of her Mercedes-Benz,' one commentator said.

 'Why limit your guests to celebrities? Television Corporation of Singapore does not have enough anyway,' she added. 'So get the bug-eyed woman to show how she pops her eyeballs back and forth, or the zoo keeper to show how some animals have more than one set of reproductive organs.'  On Singapore TV? You must be joking.



Humour on a home-grown TV talk show - you must be joking