Night After Night

That is until it got moved to well past my bedtime. I was a freshman in high school when that happened and I wasn't about to wake up in the middle of every night to see it (I'll go to my grave never knowing how to program a VCR). I did wake up to catch the last episode (no school that week) thought the format changed to a studio audience instead of an audience of one but it turned out to be the crew sitting in for the end.

The show hit all the right notes for quality entertainment. It was sort of intimate like listening to an old Jean Shepherd show on the radio. There was no major audience reactions or show bands led by the Vivino Brothers, it was scaled back (no doubt do to budget issues) but that works to its advantage. The show when I watched never had to compete directly with late night panel shows anyway. The news was usually on when this was. If anything was spent it was on the quality of the writing staff, Nick Bakay and the host Allan Havey who almost seemed to have instinctively perfect timing. Even if he didn't say something outright funny on it's own, he knows when to drop the comment at the right time. The humor also tended to be very dry and often based on strange stories instead of one liners.

On top of that, Havey was an excellent interviewer and got many good guests. I remember Tupac Shakur being interviewed promoting Juice, Bill Hicks looking somewhat sickly and guant but no less funny incorporating some of his jokes into the interview. He was promoting his latest comedy album, even the legendary script writer Dennis Potter was interviewed. Interviews that were thorough and entertaining.

This show is long gone now but it lives on in memory and I've seen the scaled back format used again since (Seth Meyer's show was almost like this during COVID) but the people making Night After Night mattered the most.

I think the only thing I enjoyed about The Informant was seeing Allan Havey playing a role and remembering this TV show while seeing him on the screen. I was remembering a news segment he did from Night After Night about a pet owner passing away suddenly at home and the dogs in the house began eating the corpse. Havey mentioned how guilty the dogs looked in the photo for the article. It's the only laugh I had while sitting through that movie. My date thought I was nuts.

I used to watch this show back when I was in junior high and high school. I still have my free bar of soap from the Mobley Hotel ("Now with soap!"). It was a laid back, unpretentious, funny show. I haven't seen Mr. Havey around much since, and Jon Stewart is filling the late-night slot on Comedy Central admirably, but it would be great if they could bring "Night After Night" back.

Back in the Stone Age of cable television, this was one of the few programs that worked as enjoyable, reliable nightly entertainment. You could depend upon it when you tuned in. Good times.

"Night After Night" aired opposite the "Tonight Show" and snagged a younger (and much smaller) audience. It deserves to be released on DVD. I would gladly pay to see it again. Allan Havey never found a better outlet for his talent.

The Audience of One was a cute bit that worked well. I also thought the running gag with Dave, the weird Weather Guy, was priceless. The banter between Nick Bakay and Allan was comparable to that of Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, or David Lettermen and Paul Shaffer.

"Night After Night" is sorely missed.

Everything I've read here has made me want to rewatch it even more I still do human slolam when walking in a crowd.

I looked Night After Night up because it isnt even listed in Allan Havey's IMDB credits. (Currently watching Billions for the first time and he's great as always)

This late night talk show aired in Comedy Central. One of the most unusual features was the Audience of One. The host would literally have one person watching the show, and this opened itself up for many inside jokes between the host, guest, and audience member. The night of Johnny Carson's final show, this show went off the air, showing only a sign that directed people to watch the Tonight Show instead. Very off-beat humor, like a Conan O'Brien show with no network limits.

In effect, this was one of the first non-conventional late night shows. Nick Backay went on to be the side kick of Dennis Miller's short lived series which itself was something of a precursor to Conan. It would be interesting to see reruns to be able to judge them from a present perspective.