{"id":370914,"date":"2026-01-15T07:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T07:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/370914\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T07:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T07:34:08","slug":"bbcs-new-graham-norton-show-replacement-marks-late-nights-biggest-change-of-the-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/370914\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC\u2019s New \u2018Graham Norton Show\u2019 Replacement Marks Late Night\u2019s Biggest Change of The Decade"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Graham Norton Show <\/a>has been Britain\u2019s flagship chat show since 2007, airing on both BBC One and BBC America. The series occupies one of the most prestigious entertainment slots on UK television and has long been comparable to US late-night shows. Its unique format of bringing all guests out together<\/a> to create shared conversation rather than isolated interviews has helped sustain its success and cultural influence across 33 seasons. That formula is now being shaken up by the biggest change the genre has seen in decades.<\/p>\n

Graham Norton<\/a> currently presents one annual season running from September to March with 21 episodes, having previously hosted two seasons per year before 2021. The BBC has now confirmed that the second annual season will return, but this time with Claudia Winkleman as host. She will front her own standalone program, with her own set, for an initial seven-episode run. The commission is positioned as a major moment not only for this franchise, but for British late-night television more broadly, as it is the first time in several decades that a flagship evening talk show has a female host.<\/p>\n

Claudia Winkleman Allows the BBC To Expand Late Night in a Real Way<\/p>\n

Claudia Winkleman has worked at the forefront of British television since the early 1990s and is one of the BBC\u2019s most established presenters. She has recently completed a 15-year run hosting the UK\u2019s Dancing With the Stars<\/a> equivalent, Strictly Come Dancing. She is also the host of The Traitors<\/a>, the BBC\u2019s most recent entertainment success, and her career spans radio, journalism, and publishing. The announcement of her own talk show replacing a time slot previously held by Norton isn\u2019t a complete surprise. In February 2025, Winkleman guest-hosted The Graham Norton Show for a single episode while he toured Australia, interviewing high-profile guests<\/a> including Chris Pratt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In hindsight, that appearance now seems to have functioned both as a showcase of her talents and as a network test. It demonstrated her ability to handle major international talent, manage a live studio audience, and gave the broadcaster a clear opportunity to assess her suitability for the role. BBC Television managing director<\/a> Graham Stuart said Winkleman matched Norton\u2019s ability to make the \u201cFriday night talk show slot\u201d a \u201cdazzling appointment to view,\u201d adding that the challenge of following Norton was met by \u201cbooking a host equally as brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n

The commissioning of an initial seven-episode run signals confidence that the format, and Winkleman\u2019s approach to it, can succeed. In her typical humor, she said alongside the announcement that she’s \u201cobviously going to be awful\u201d but is \u201cover the moon\u201d that the BBC is letting her try. As a proven host, Winkleman is also well-suited to the specific mechanics of the Norton format<\/a>. Her quick-wit, affable style, and deep familiarity with celebrity culture support informal, anecdote-led conversations.<\/p>\n

\"Claudia<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\tWatch Out, Graham Norton, Another UK Idol is Coming For Your Spot!
\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Graham Norton has some fierce compeition.<\/p>\n

Women Have Typically Been Left Out Of The Late Night Television Schedule<\/p>\n

Placing Claudia Winkleman in this prominent time slot has larger implications when viewed against the wider late-night landscape. In the UK, only Jonathan Ross occupies a comparable position on ITV. In the US, flagship late-night shows remain dominated by male hosts, including Jimmy Fallon<\/a>, Stephen Colbert<\/a>, Seth Meyers<\/a>, and Jimmy Kimmel<\/a>. Although women such as Ruby Wax, Sharon Osbourne, and Davina McCall hosted interview programs in the UK during the 2000s, they were not in that coveted BBC One flagship time slot.<\/p>\n

For Ruby (1997\u20132000), Wax used a dinner-party roundtable format with up to five guests and held long, unscripted conversations edited significantly for broadcast on BBC Two. Meanwhile, Osbourne\u2019s UK chat shows in the 2000s had shifting formats and sat in the early-evening slot framed as \u201ctea-time talk\u201d rather than late-night post-watershed conversation. Other female-led shows in the same era also focused more specifically on subjects like music and trends, such as Lily Allen and Friends (2008). These shows were also never on BBC One and were not built with a long tenure in mind. Claudia Winkleman\u2019s new series is different because it replicates the BBC\u2019s established prime-time formula. It is launching with an existing audience and carrying international reach via BBC iPlayer, making it a change that drops Winkleman into the center of British late-night rather than another side project on the margins of the genre.<\/p>\n

The timing of the BBC\u2019s switch is especially interesting because US late-night has been openly destabilizing<\/a>. In the New York Times<\/a>, Conan O\u2019Brien <\/a>has described market saturation, the collapse of the \u201ccaptive audience\u201d due to streaming, and a more polarized culture that makes broad comedy harder to land as reasons the genre has changed in recent years. Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s late-night show faced significant disruption in September 2025 when ABC temporarily pulled the series<\/a> due to controversial comments made by the host that angered some affiliate station owners. CBS also announced<\/a> in July 2025 that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/a> would end in May 2026 with no similar program replacing it. The network framed the decision as a financial one amid a \u201cchallenging backdrop in late night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comparatively, the BBC looks to be moving in the opposite direction by commissioning The Claudia Winkleman Show \u2014 it is using the available late-night slot as a place to modernize and innovate the space. In a genre that has remained largely unchanged for decades, The Claudia Winkleman Show looks set to prove that the late-night format can change without losing its ratings and international appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Graham Norton Show has been Britain\u2019s flagship chat show since 2007, airing on both BBC One and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-370914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}