The Times’ Carol Midgley also felt the guests were “solidly amusing” and said that while Winkleman is not a comedian, “she is funny (she made a joke about breastfeeding her dog)”.
“This is a job that is more difficult than it looks. Claudia, despite her self-mockery and nerves, put in a respectable first shift,” she wrote, external.
The new show is produced by Graham Norton’s company So Television, which is also behind his own show.
And online, fans have been inevitably comparing the two shows. One X user called Winkleman’s new show “a welcome contrast” to Norton’s, while another wrote there was “not that much different… but I love her anyway”.
Ahead of the show airing, there had also been much speculation about how it would involve pre-selected members of the audience.
In the end, we heard from a number of people in the crowd, including a man from Wolverhampton who recommended his city’s Nando’s, and a woman who designs pencils.
In a three-star review, external for the Metro, Rebecca Cook welcomed the audience engagement, writing: “In Winkleman’s world, the spectators are just as interesting as the sofa…. Some of these interactions struck better than others, but they offered a nice point of difference.”
But the Guardian’s Mangan disagreed, saying audience participation “should have been outlawed generations ago. We are not a camera-ready nation and we never will be”.
Throughout the show, Winkleman is characteristically self-deprecating, thanking her guests “for coming on the first and possibly last show”.
Goldblum reassured her, promising that in the blink of an eye, we would fast forward decades into the future, where it would be “the longest-running show ever”.
Will he be right? For now, it appears the jury is out.
The first episode of The Claudia Winkleman Show is available now on BBC iPlayer.