Current affairs in the Netherlands are not always interesting for a Belgian, even if you live in a border region like the undersigned and have a lot of friends from across the border. Prime Minister Mark Rutte who is visiting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: I am convinced that even Dutch households will not immediately gather around their TV screens for this, let alone a Flemish viewer who stumbles upon it when he unexpectedly stumbles upon it. the Dutch public broadcasters. But not when the events are commented on by Arjen Lubach.
The 43-year-old presenter became famous with his weekly satirical show Sunday with Lubach a broad concept among our northern neighbours, and also among a not insignificant part of the Flemish viewers there is a general tenor of jealousy that we do not have such a thing. Or you must be a really big fan of The Cooke & Verhulst Show.
Met Sunday Lubach and his team still had the luxury of getting the news of the week through the wringer with some distance. But whether a daily dose of that satirical madness will continue to work in the longer term, even if presented by a TV phenomenon like Lubach? When you consider that at the beginning of April, barely a month and a half after the start, he and his editorial team already want to take a week off, in their own words “to be able to continue fresh and sharp again”, you can ask yourself questions about this.
Not everything is equally solid in The evening show with Arjen Lubach† Such as the in-depth item, in which the jokes are briefly limited to interjections and the focus is mainly on a social stumbling block. This idea undoubtedly comes from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on American TV, but there they dig a lot deeper into the matter than it does the evening showitem about municipal reclassifications that I followed for a while. And the daily guest – surely something for which the also American The Daily Show model – is more of a casual chat with no strings attached than the strikingly short interview that viewers have across the large puddle.
Yet Lubach should have taken that step to daily jab earlier. He works with seasons, which makes it a bit easier for himself and his editors to stay sharp all the time. And furthermore, the adoration for Lubach in the entire Dutch-speaking area is completely justified: he is sharper than a platoon of razor blades, and presents his subjects with enthusiasm, humor, compassion and flair.
A few episodes of The evening show with Arjen Lubach even brought back a sentiment that the undersigned had not experienced since his school and student days: VPRO envy. Just as I, and many of my peers with me, turned a little more than a quarter of a century ago from the roguish friends on Dutch TV to tune in to the toppers of that beacon of creativity and depth, such as jiskefet, Looked at the week on Rembo & Rembo.
The evening show with Arjen Lubach, Monday to Thursday at 10.10 pm on NPO 1.
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