After an unrelenting Angela de Jong, Paul de Leeuw also received the show expert from RTL Boulevard: Aran Bade. “I actually didn’t laugh once.”
There is a lot of criticism of the Paul de Leeuw show Hotel Hollandia: many viewers are very disappointed with what he presented last Saturday evening. Angela de Jong has written a mercilessly hard column and Sanne Wallis de Vries is a bit pissed about it. But Aran Bade, the show expert from RTL Boulevard, is also very fierce.
Confusing program
Aran joins Angela. “I think what Angela says is somewhat justified. If the most villainous joke on a satirical program comes from the presenter himself and not from the cabaret team, then you have a problem. I actually didn’t laugh once and I wish it was Paul de Leeuw,” he says in the show section.
It would have been more fun if Paul’s program had been a substantive success, according to Aran. “I mean: after so many years he is back on the Saturday evening of NPO 1, but it is a very confusing program.”
No critical questions
Aran especially thinks Paul’s lack of criticism is bad. “The interviews with Rob Kemps and Rachel Hazes too… Two types of whom you think: you can ask a lot of critical questions, but that didn’t happen. I found that part frustrating. And then the cabaret, which wasn’t actually funny at all… That makes it a bit of a lame meal.”
Yet it is a ratings success. “He has more than a million viewers and after fourteen years he defeated Linda de Mol on the late evening. I think a lot of people are curious. The second episode will of course be very important for Paul. I think the viewer might drop out after all.”
Sticky moustache
The viewer will find it substandard, Aran fears. “Johan Derksen, for example. That’s a very sharp man and the most villainous man we have. If you’re going to imitate that with a sticky mustache and a slightly dingy wig, then you have to get over that. Then it must be even funnier and even harder. It wasn’t and then you get a poor price.”
He continues: “I also think that we have been spoiled by the gentlemen of Even Tot Hier, Jeroen and Niels. They are at such a level… We know Owen Schumacher and Paul Groot from Koefnoen and they cannot surpass that. Then I think the time of wigs and stick-on mustaches is over. They have to get to work.”
‘It’s going to be difficult’
It is cabaret at school level, Aran concludes. “I also had to think of Remko Vrijdag, the comedian who once impersonated Mark Rutte at the Televizier gala. Then Chantal Janzen said the more legendary words: ‘Enough laughing.’ That feeling now sticks and it becomes difficult for the writers to get out.”