Late-night comedy: Here's when Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver will be back
Who says late-night hosts can't work from home?
Studios are deserted and audiences hunkered down at home practicing social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic, but Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, Seth Meyers and Conan O'Brien are still trying to bring a little laughter into the world.
After more than a week of reruns augmented by short, homemade videos, network late-night shows, which had shut down production at least through March 30 pending re-evaluation, are now planning to return that night – but not in their traditional format.
ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" will be back, joining CBS's "Late Show with Stephen Colbert." However, both shows (weeknights, 11:35 EDT/PDT) will tape remotely, not in their studios or with the usual audience.
HBO is living up to its Home Box Office name, with John Oliver and Bill Maher returning with full shows also taped at their homes.
"Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" has a new episode scheduled for March 29 (11 EDT/PDT), after a one-week break, while "Real Time with Bill Maher" is back on April 3 (10 EDT/PDT).
Some daytime talk shows will be back next week, too. CBS' "The Talk" returns March 30, with all five hosts and staff working remotely and Zoom connecting them with their guests onscreen during the show. Tamron Hall also returns Monday via new segments filmed at her home focusing on COVID-19 news. They will air before reruns of her syndicated talk show, "Tamron Hall."
Even as most television and movie production is suspended, many late-night hosts have stayed in touch, delivering short-form DIY versions of their comedy to audiences via YouTube. And their kids, pets and spouses often show up in the videos, as is becoming common for workers participating in meetings via video chat from home.
With social distancing the new rule, it appears the comics are working from home for the near future, trying to bring a sense of levity and maybe even a bit of normalcy to the world, however they can. So far, it's incredibly welcome, even if all the jokes don't land.
Trevor Noah
Noah expanded "The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah," an at-home digital edition, to full, original episodes that began airing March 23 on Comedy Central(11 EDT/PDT).
Earlier, Noah experimented with shorter sketches and clips on his YouTube page, including one with "cleaning tips" for coronavirus, in which he "cleaned" everything in his house, from the water coming out of his tap to a piece of a clementine.
Jimmy Fallon
Shortly after shutting down regular production, Fallon's introduced an "At Home Edition," a daily home video added to each night's NBC rebroadcast of segments from earlier episodes.
In Fallon's first "At Home" video, the host's 6-year-old daughter drew a new version of his "Tonight Show" graphic, but was unwilling to participate as his band leader. His wife happily filmed him as he read jokes his writers sent in from home, ate Irish Soda Bread to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and sang a quarantine ditty. From the guy who brought you songs played with classroom instruments, the playroom vibe really worked for Fallon
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Seth MeyerMeyers, host of NBC's "Late Night," joined the out-of-office fun March 23 with "A Closer Look" segments filmed from his New York home and running on the show's YouTube channel.
Samantha Bee
Bee, who hosts "Full Frontal With Samantha Bee" on TBS, returned to her usual time slot March 25 with a remote production, one of a series of upcoming episodes shot at her home and "from the woods of New York."
Bee warmed up for the show's return with a daily digital series called “Beeing At Home With Samantha Bee!” The first installment, titled "Sam gets into survival mode," shows Bee struggling to chop wood in the wilderness in preparation for the spread of coronavirus.
"At the end of the day, it's like what Scar from 'The Lion King' said: We all have to be prepared," the host explains. "He's the hero of that movie."
Jimmy Kimmel
ABC's Kimmel, who has been sharing his "minilogues" on the "Jimmy Kimmel Live" YouTube channel, has Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as his March 26 minilogue guest, before returning to full episodes.
An early minilogue focused on St. Patrick's Day, with Kimmel wearing a green Guinness shirt from his own office (he's hiding from the kids that he just "discovered" he had) and suggested ways to celebrate from home: Dyeing hand sanitizer green and drinking.
Conan O'Brien
O'Brien, who has been filming short videos during a pre-scheduled hiatus of TBS' "Conan," joins the remote-taping fun when his show returns March 30. Videos will be shot on an iPhone, sans studio audience and O'Brien will conduct guest interviews via video chat. The "Conan" production staff will be working from home.“The quality of my work will not go down because technically, that’s not possible,” said O’Brien said in a statement.
Stephen Colbert
Colbert added new monologue entries filmed at home to "The Late Show" repeats early last week, before the CBS show started a previously scheduled hiatus that runs until March 30.
Colbert was way ahead of the curve, delivering the first at-home late-night monologue (from his bathtub) Monday. On Tuesday, the comedian "discovered fire" in his back yard (while wearing AirPods, natch) and still found a way to break out his Trump impression. His video had more of the trappings of this usual show, including opening credits, graphics, cuts to news clips and a video of his band leader John Batiste playing the piano from his own house. He and Colbert still managed to do a socially distanced and coronavirus-specific version of "Oh, Danny Boy" to celebrate St. Patty's.
Contributing: Hannah Yasharoff
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus: How to watch Fallon, Colbert, Kimmel work from home
