After Dark (TV Series)

After Dark (TV Series)

After Dark was a British late night live discussion programme which ran off and on Channel 4 television between 1987 and 1997, and on the BBC in 2003. Inspired by an Austrian programme called Club 2, Roly Keating of the BBC described it as "one of the great television talk formats of all time". In 2010 the television trade magazine Broadcast wrote "After Dark defined the first 10 years of Channel 4, just as Big Brother did for the second".

Broadcast live and with no scheduled end time, the series was considered to be a groundbreaking reinvention of the discussion programme format. The programme was hosted by a variety of presenters, and each episode had around half a dozen guests, often including a member of the public. Guests would be selected to provoke lively discussion, and memorable conversations included footballer Garth Crooks disputing the future of the game with politician Sir Rhodes Boyson, MP Teresa Gorman walking out of a discussion about unemployment with Billy Bragg, and Oliver Reed drunkenly assaulting Kate Millett during a programme that asked "Do Men Have To Be Violent?".

The show ended in 1991 but a number of one-off specials and a BBC revival followed.