Part talk-show host, part comedian, and all-out extrovert, the very Irish and very gay Graham Norton is one of the few people who deserves all the adjectives that are thrown at him: "bawdy," "saucy," "outrageous," and "hilarious" are a few of them. His BBC talk show, So Graham Norton, is something that you just couldn't find in America: a rampant exercise in audience titillation that wallows gloriously in bizarre human behavior. It's like an audience-interactive NC-17 Saturday Night Live, with occasional breaks for celebrity chit-chat. If you ever wanted to see Gillian Anderson, Cher, Sophia Loren, or Dolly Parton break the talk-show mold with bawdy sex talk, then your dreams have come true. And Norton's cringe-inducing yet compulsively watchable audience polls, which ask common folk to relate embarrassing, adult-oriented tales, reveal a European openness (and sense of humor) that just wouldn't fly in the U.S.

05 October 2004

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