After Dark (TV Series) - Guest Response

Guest Response

Author James Rusbridger wrote in The Listener magazine: "When I appeared on a Channel 4 After Dark programme recently my postman, milkman and more than two dozen strangers stopped me in the street and said how much they'd enjoyed it and quoted verbatim extracts from the discussion." Catholic priest Father Michael Seed was quoted as saying: "I went on a programme called After Dark on Channel 4 once with a prostitute, a psychiatrist and a gay man. Afterwards they all started coming to see me."

Journalist Peter Hillmore described appearing on After Dark as follows:

"In the age of the glib, packaged sound-bite, a discussion programme that is long and open-ended, lasting as long as the talk is remotely interesting, occasionally longer, seems a necessity. For all its faults, as when Oliver Reed appeared tired and emotional as a newt, the programme fulfilled its purpose and filled a gap. I appeared on it once. It was a strange feeling to realise that if you had failed to make your point properly, you had more time a short while later. So Channel 4's decision to axe it seems incomprehensible and wrong.... In his book on the channel, its founder Jeremy Isaacs gave a long list of programmes that he felt summed up its ethos. With the ending of After Dark, not a single programme from the list remains. That is not a coincidence."