Some may wonder why Alec Baldwin is doing a talk show. Others may be puzzled why it’s apparently set in a steakhouse.
At any rate, Up Late with Alec Baldwin premiered on Friday in the US with about 654,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen.
That performance wasn’t too bad for a Friday night, but it was nowhere near the 1.5 million that showed up for Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News Channel. However, building a talk show following takes time.
The critics weren’t in a forgiving mood. The premiere featured the former 30 Rock actor and his guest, New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, nestled into a green banquette in a set that looked like it was built for a mob-meeting scene in Goodfellas.
Slate called it My Dinner with Alec and described the proceedings as “willfully wonky.” The Daily Beast called it a “snooze.”
Baldwin’s conservative detractors were predictably even less gracious. Twitter aggregator Twitchy called the show “soporific” and accumulated an array of unflattering tweets, many describing the show as “boring.”
