Paul de Leeuw is under a magnifying glass: his comeback show Hotel Hollandia is a ratings drama and the scores are closely monitored. RTL Boulevard opened with it yesterday.
What a misery for Paul de Leeuw: after years he is back on the main stage of TV entertainment on Saturday evening, but the thunderous applause is not forthcoming. Hotel Hollandia started with 1.1 million viewers, but many people thought it was so bad that only 597 thousand people watched this weekend. Oops, oops, oops. Really, really bad.
‘Fear the worst’
This extreme drop in ratings from Paul was the opening news of last night RTL Boulevard, the most watched show section in the Netherlands. And they are not gentle there. “I fear the worst for this program, because I don’t see them straightening it out in the coming weeks,” said TV critic Alex Mazereeuw of de Volkskrant in an item.
Rob Goossens tells the desk that he especially thinks the cabaret in Hotel Hollandia is bad. “That satire and that theater is actually an annoying interruption of the show, while that was of course what the NPO has put so much effort into, because it must become a bit of the new Kopspijkers.”
Shut up
The new Tacks? In any case, that’s not going to happen, says Rob. “Maybe we should just conclude that it is very complicated to make the new Kopspijkers and the two programs that have shown it satirically are Even Tot Hier and Zondag with Lubach and now De Avondshow.”
What now? “In any case, I would politely ask the hotel staff to keep quiet until they finally find a copywriter who can write some nice dialogue. I would say to Paul: continue with what you are good at and don’t let that terrible cabaret distract you.”
Live program
Presenter Frank Dane thinks Paul should change course. “Shouldn’t he be making live television? Shouldn’t things be in a hurry and shouldn’t he be in a hurry?”
Rob: “Yes, if you see how well he does what he has always done, then I would say: throw away this entire program and just go back to making Mooi Weer De Leeuw with Paul de Leeuw.”
Paul remains silent
Paul himself did not want to participate in the item. “The management thanks us for the email and the question. That is very thoughtful, but unfortunately Paul de Leeuw will not cooperate with our item.”
And what does BNNVARA say? “We have taken a leap into the unknown with Hotel Hollandia. A new genre, combining satire, sitcom and a talk show. This has never been done before and there is therefore no ready-made formula for it.”