A LITTLE LATE WITH LILLY SINGH: THE PRIMETIME SPECIAL
NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET
Lilly Singh’s late-night NBC talk show, taking over the Carson Daly time slot, premiered earlier this week, with a show featuring Mindy Kaling as its major featured guest. That was significant not only because it was intentionally female-centric, but because Kaling, like Singh, has broken several glass-ceiling show business barriers as a woman of Indian descent. Singh became a star on YouTube, doing musical parodies and other skits, and has amassed a loyal base of 14 million fans on YouTube. If only 10 percent of those fans follow her to NBC, she’ll be drawing more late-night viewers than James Corden. But Corden has succeeded, as have Jimmy Fallon and others in the late-night TV arena, by doing segments that draw many millions of views when played on YouTube. A Little Late with Lilly Singh merely comes from the opposite direction, and features an established YouTube star bringing her act to late-night network TV. And she’s not only female and very young, at 30, but she’s proudly bisexual and aggressively happy to be herself, and talk about her own opinions. This prime-time sampler is just that… a sample. And while her opening show was uneven, they often are, and Singh is so unlike so many others who have held this particular TV job, that it’s refreshing just to see her learn on the job.