Good TV: Charlie Rose

San Francisco, 10/30/2016 English German

Edition # 117
San Francisco, 10/30/2016

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Good TV: Charlie Rose

Figure [1]: On KQED, Charlie Rose questions celebrities at a dimly lit table.

AngelikaTV debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are agonizing to watch. Both of them keep repeating the same old sound bites, Clinton maybe a bit more nuanced, but they're still insufferable. It is as if the entire country has been taken over by loudmouths who don't have enough material to debate a given topic for more than two minutes.

But there's still hope, as since 1991, journalist Charlie Rose has been procuding a moderating the "Charlie Rose" talkshow. Public television station PBS ("Public Broadcasting Service) and Bloomberg TV are airing the show Monday through Friday. Usually, Rose spends about an hour talking to a guest, sometimes it's even two or three. He invites all kinds of people, politicians, Nobel Prize winners, doctors, athletes, authors, actors, or musicians. Last week, for example, he had Jeff Bezos (Founder of Amazon), golf player Tiger Woods, actress Sarah Jessica Parker, conservative opinion piece writer Glenn Beck and Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein of Jordan.

You'd be mistaken if you assumed all that was happenting was superficial chit-chat. Rose asks smart questions and his guests usually provide thoughtful answers. Also, the format is quite diametrically different from typical talk shows, where people keep yelling and speak out of turn. Instead, Charlie Rose and the guest are sitting on opposite sides of a round oak table, with a pitch dark backdrop, and focus on their dialogue.

There's nothing except these no-frills requisites, the oak table and the dark backdrop, which have since become the trademark of the show. The set was originally designed this way for rather pragmatic reasons, however, because Rose had very little production money available in the beginning and simply purchased the table himself. For myself, I can say that I entirely enjoy almost every episode and can only warmly recommend the show to others.