The TV war has begun

Well, actually Martien Meiland the winner with 1,239,000 hardcore viewers, but last night was mainly the opening of the talk season. Matthijs was back after a long and at least equally deserved vacation, Eva kept going, and Beau made his debut with his first, real, solo talk show. So I settled in for it.

Matthijs is Matthijs is Matthijs, seems to become a bit more charming every year and is able to elevate a small topic like saving a dog (it was a special story, indeed) to prime-time worthy content and to translate an incredibly complicated story about cyberattacks in Iran into a John Grisham book. I still didn't get it, but it remained exciting. And give me Henny Vrienten (he's going to be the house band of this season! The exclamation mark is justified in this case) and I'm happy. I completely understood those 1.2 million viewers (Matthijs was right on Martien's heels).

Then Beau. You know: I love Beau. Because he dares. Everything. Even falling flat on his face is part of it. Or the possibility of that. He didn't play it safe on the right, but opened with a subdued monologue and ended with a song where he also poked fun at himself. The setting was a marriage between Jensen and Seth Meyers. I understood the couch quite well, but then again not why part of the couch was an armchair and the rest was a couch. So why was Theo Hiddema sitting on the seat part of the couch and Thierry Baudet sitting next to him? I know that snacks on the table at a talk show are just as useless as an electric blanket in the tropics, but that little cup of Thierry looked a bit meager next to that bistro glass of wine from Theo. Anyway, nitpicker, nitpicker, whiner. You love Beau and that was evident from the reactions on Twitter and the viewing figures. 650,000 viewers clean on the hook. Art had that too. If he added up three days.

In between, I zapped to Eva. She's been going all summer, but yesterday must have been exciting for her too with those two guys who also cast their line in the pond. But her little table was full, you know. With Sven Kockelmann, Dries Roelvink (how delightful that Eva mixed them up and laughed so hard about it herself, I immediately got visions of Sven in a yellow hip slip), Wopke Hoekstra, Sjinkie Knegt, and Joost Vullings. It was about something as always, and I think I found the interpretation of the Baudet-Otten saga more exciting than Baudet's own poetic tone.

Eva ended up with 100,000 more viewers than Beau.

The season is open and our evenings are filled.