Watching: Late Night

Late Night stars Emma Thompson (with fantastically good hair) as Katherine Newbury, the host of a long-running late-night talk show whose long-running formula is no longer winning the viewers it once did, and Mindy Kaling, who also wrote the script, as Molly Patel, a younger South Asian woman who somehow manages to be in the right place at the right time to land her dream job as a writer on the show.

Ultimately, this is a feelgood fantasy about how diversity makes everything better, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of feelgood fantasy sometimes and goodness knows in a dreich and dismal June with the world going to hell in a handbasket a bit of cheerful make-believe doesn't go amiss. Thompson is brilliantly acerbic as the critical and demanding Katherine, Kaling's Molly is earnest and full of heart without tipping over into mawkishness or being too unbelievable in the role of total-newbie-who-somehow-excels. The developing relationship between the two leads is an interesting female version of the bromance (femance? fromance?) and I enjoyed the way both women's relationships with men were relegated to second place. There's plenty of witty banter and some well-aimed jabs at the privileged white, male world of TV writing, and I enjoyed it a lot.