{"id":709772,"date":"2026-07-25T01:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T01:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/709772\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T01:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T01:14:08","slug":"who-could-be-the-next-graham-norton-and-does-the-bbc-even-need-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/709772\/","title":{"rendered":"Who could be the next Graham Norton, and does the BBC even need one?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Everyone thought she could pull it off because she&#8217;s smart and funny, but a chat show with multiple guests is very difficult to handle,&#8221; the Telegraph&#8217;s arts and entertainment editor, Anita Singh, tells BBC News.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You have to marshall the conversation, give each guest equal time, help them to plug whatever they&#8217;re plugging, then cue in whatever anecdote they&#8217;ve agreed beforehand with the researchers. Graham Norton makes that look deceptively easy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She adds: &#8220;I think if Claudia had done a couple more series she would have become better at it. But she&#8217;s at her best when she&#8217;s being spontaneous, and the format allows very little space for that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Winkleman&#8217;s decision to quit surprised many. The viewing figures were lower than Norton&#8217;s, but still respectable. The reviews from critics were mixed, rather than universally bad. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The BBC confirmed it was Winkleman&#8217;s decision to stop, and implied that they would&#8217;ve happily commissioned a second series &#8211; and possibly already had. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;My understanding is they had made a deal beyond one season,&#8221; says Deadline&#8217;s Jake Kanter, who has reported on the talk show throughout. &#8220;How formal that was, I don&#8217;t know. But there was an intention for it to continue.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He adds: &#8220;I wholeheartedly believe her that this perhaps didn&#8217;t work out because of her own concerns and anxiety around the hosting.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;Everyone thought she could pull it off because she&#8217;s smart and funny, but a chat show with multiple&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-709772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709772","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=709772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}