Stephen Colbert hasn’t yet taken over as host of The Late Show from David Letterman, but you’d be forgiven for thinking he had. The man is everywhere: he’s on the cover of Time magazine and the subject of a 6,000-word profile in GQ. He’s been publishing political commentary on YouTube and has started a podcast. He’s even had an interview with Eminem go viral despite the fact that it took place at 2am on Michigan public acccess television.  Through all this PR, Colbert is letting us know him in a way he never did when he played a rightwing pundit on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. We know, for example, that he takes a very particular kind of pleasure in the Food Network show Chopped. We also know he wasn’t a good student. We know that he’s the youngest of 11 kids and that he lost his father and two brothers in a plane crash. Colbert is a religious man. He loves his mother. He is anxious about failure.  But for all that he has revealed about himself, Colbert hasn’t said nearly as much about what to expect when he returns to television on 8 September as the host of CBS’s The Late Show. Fans have been kept in the dark about the details: the set, the theme song and the tone have been a mystery – until now.  This week, at the Ed Sullivan Theater in Times Square, The Late Show has been inviting select audiences to “test shows” – live studio performances complete with the new Late Show house band and real celebrity guests. The only difference between a “test show” and the real thing is that although it is recorded, it will never be broadcast. The intention of the performances, the audience is told, is for Stephen to experiment with jokes, tone and format and get a feel for his new space.  Tickets to these shows are perpetually sold out, and when new batches are released they disappear in minutes. Thanks to a rare stroke of luck (believe me, I’ve had a rough summer) I managed to get a hold of one on Monday night. If you’re spoiler-wary, stop reading now – if not, such is the excitement generated by Colbert’s new show that I’m going to share with you a few things I learned, without being too specific.  To fans anxiously wondering if they will recognize Colbert in his new persona, fear not: from the way he addresses his audience – “Hello, nation” – to the Colbert Report-blue that dominates the colour scheme of the set, there are plenty of cues to help audiences feel comfortable in Colbert’s new space. But there are some differences, too. For instance, Colbert has gained a pair of legs. No longer is the host stuck behind his desk, and he can do more than just wag a finger at the camera to get his point across. In his new role, Colbert twirls, dances and does the occasional jig across the stage. Colbert, it seems, is looser on network TV.  There may not be a flying eagle in the intro, but the set of Colbert’s new show is plenty patriotic. The American flag is the central motif. From the red, white and blue lightboxes to the Captain America shield, Colbert is signalling to his audience that he is the same political satirist they loved. It’s also a bit of a man-cave, complete with wood furnishings and an antelope skull. One surprising feature of the new set is the library (a two-storey corner of bookshelves) that takes up the left side of the stage. Is this Colbert’s indication that he intends to deliver less shtick and more smarts?  No matter how much the jokes change in the week until Colbert premieres, one thing is clear: he is more David Letterman than Jimmy Fallon. There are no lip-synching contests or celebrity impressions. The jokes are from the headlines and the focus is politics. It’s not exactly dry, but it is slightly predictable. Joke about female Viagra, check. Dig at Hillary’s latest email dump, check. There is plenty of room on late-night TV for a thoughtful, sharp political commentator, especially now that Jon Stewart has gone, but the question is whether Colbert’s material will reach beyond his nightly network TV viewing audience (which is a decidedly older demographic than he might be aiming for) via made-for-YouTube viral moments, which have been so crucial to the success of John Oliver and Jimmy Fallon.  Jon Batiste and Stay Human, the official house band of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, is an absolute highlight. Batiste and his band, which includes a tubist and a serious cowboy-hat-wearing drummer, bring a palpable energy to the show. While bandleaders and show hosts have traditionally been peers (think Paul Shaffer and David Letterman, Jonny Carson and Doc Severinsen), there are 24 years between Colbert, 52, and Batiste, 28. The two went through a couple of different bits together during the run-through, an indication that showrunners hope to involve the bandleader more in the show itself. They should.  When Colbert was announced as Letterman’s successor, the internet rolled its eyes. Another white man. Great. Tonight, sitting four rows back, I watched nearly 40 people troop on and off stage. Of all the producers, directors, stage managers, writers and cameramen who appeared around the set tonight, I counted only two women: a makeup artist and hair stylist. Yes, there could be women offstage, perhaps in the writer’s room or elsewhere, but it felt strange that in front of an audience composed of nearly 50% women, there did not appear to be a single female on stage.  The show does feel extremely male – from the set to the warm-up music (only songs from male-led bands were played, from the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Passion Pit) to the tone-deafness of the way Colbert interacted with his one female guest, a fashion blogger (“You know how I know you’re famous? I’ve heard of you,” he said before running through a series of photos and making fun of her outfits). If the showrunners of The Late Show want to grow its audience, they should pay attention to who is watching.  At the end of the three hours of watching Colbert practice his bits (some funny, some not) and entertain a political cartoonist, a fashion blogger and an R&B/electronic musician, I’m left feeling confused. Who is this show for? It’s less fun than Fallon. It’s more political than Kimmel. When it comes to pop culture, Colbert – perhaps deliberately – seems more like an out-of-touch dad than a guy with his finger on the pulse of the nation. It’s understandable that CBS is reticent about changing the structure too drastically from the format that Letterman used for more than 20 years, but the whole point of bringing on Colbert was to put Letterman’s tired routine to rest. If CBS wants to attract the same audience that loved Colbert so much on Comedy Central, the network needs to loosen up a bit, think up some original made-for-YouTube moments – and for God’s sake, get some women involved.
In less than a week, amid deafening buzz, Colbert returns to TV as himself – and New York audiences are already getting a taste of what that will mean