How Josh Gates Tonight Became the Best Talk Show for Movie Nerds

Josh Gates Tonight, the Discovery Channel talk show hosted by the star of their globe-trotting reality series Expedition Unknown, pretty much happened by accident. After all, a worldwide pandemic isn’t exactly conducive to international travel, and rather than bench one of their biggest stars for who knows how long, the network let Gates launch a Zoom-centric talk show out of a spare bedroom in his own house.

At first, it seemed like a trifle, something for Gates to do while he was stuck at home with no adventure show to produce. But, against all odds, Josh Gates Tonight has grown into something far more interesting — a highly entertaining hour of gab that’s able to combine Gates’s pop-culture obsessions with a goofy and slightly warped sense of humor that may be the closest thing we’ve gotten to Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show since Ferguson stepped away from the desk in 2014.

For those not familiar with him, Gates first made a name for himself as a TV host for Syfy, starring in Destination Truth from 2007 through 2012 while also regularly making appearances on the network’s paranormal-reality series Ghost Hunters. In 2015, he jumped to Discovery to headline Expedition Unknown, where Gates, who holds a degree in archeology, ventures around the world seeking out rare artifacts and trying to unravel historical mysteries. Just imagine a schlubbier version of Indiana Jones who decided to become a reality-TV host instead of a college professor. For those who still have cable, Expedition Unknown makes for great lazy Saturday afternoon viewing — the kind of inoffensive and moderately interesting reality show that you might have on in the background while you’re folding laundry. (It’s also now streaming on the recently launched Discovery+)

josh-gates-tonight-shark — Image via Discovery

None of this leads one to believe that the guy could host a compelling talk show. But here are some other things to know about Josh Gates: He’s pretty damn funny, with a self-deprecating sense of humor that works well for someone who’s most known for hosting reality shows on cable. And he’s also a knowledgeable pop-culture junkie — a child of the 1980s who grew up loving the action, adventure, and horror films that dominated the decade. Having this guy interview today’s biggest celebrities wouldn’t likely result in a story like this one. But lucky for Gates, his nascent talk show was never going to draw guests of that caliber. Instead, he’s used his show to interview the folks he grew up watching and worshiping in movies and on TV. For anyone who’s a fan of 80s and 90s cinema — and especially genre cinema — Josh Gates Tonight suddenly became the most interesting talk show on TV.

Among the actors and filmmakers he’s interviewed over the last year and a half include Bruce Campbell, Scott Glenn, Joe Dante, William Shatner, Dee Wallace, Robert Englund, Doug Jones, Karen Allen, Alex Winter, Haley Joel Osment, John Rhys-Davies, Danny Trejo … the list goes on and on. Even better, the guests usually aren’t appearing to plug a new project. Gates and his producing team instead assemble episodes built around themes. There have been hours devoted to superheroes, famous screen villains, and the works of Stephen King. And, unlike with most talk shows, Gates tends to ask his guests solid questions about the stuff you actually want to hear about. So, when you tune in, you’re going to end up hearing England chat about A Nightmare on Elm Street or Rhys-Davies tell stories about Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Lord of the Rings. It’s clear that Gates is a real fan of the properties, so it’s fun to watch him get starstruck over guests you’re not likely to see turn up on Jimmy Fallon. (And he usually is pretty careful to pull up before he goes full-on Chris Farley Show.)

Josh Gates Tonight also proves to be an entertaining watch even when Gates isn’t Zoom-ing with outside-the-A-list celebrities. The show has a shaggy, makeshift quality that likely was a result of its small budget and pandemic origins but really does force welcome comparisons to Ferguson and maybe even early Conan O’Brien. The episodes, which are also available on Discovery+, usually open with a goofy film or TV spoof that ties into that episode’s theme. (I urge you all to watch Gates’s loving and preposterous recreation of the Murder, She Wrote opening credits.) The show routinely features a cursed tribal mask named Gabe and, during its Shark Week episodes in 2020, spent a week pitting Gates against an acerbic shark puppet named Rick Chomp. Every episode devotes a few minutes to cocktail time, where Gates instructs the viewer on how to mix some exotic alcoholic beverage. Where so many of the late-night network talk shows still try to copy a Johnny Carson paradigm that may no longer be relevant, somehow the adventure-show host with no budget on cable is breaking new ground … or, at the least, serving an audience of film nerds and classic pop-culture enthusiasts who are always eager for content. (Josh Gad found similar success during the pandemic with his Reunited Apart web series.)

The show is not perfect. Too much time is spent promoting other Discovery network content (a remnant of the series’ “after-show” origins that grew particularly grating during this year’s Shark Week run). But it’s been enough of a success that Gates’s obsessions are now starting to spill over into his day job, as evidenced by the recent Expedition: Back to the Future Discovery+ miniseries, which documents Gates and a very game Christopher Lloyd as they attempt to track down all the screen-used DeLoreans from the time-travel trilogy.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic shows no signs of vanishing, the virus numbers have dropped enough that Expedition Unknown was able to go back into production on new episodes. I hope that doesn’t mean the end of Josh Gates Tonight, which has given its host a platform to geek out about the things that so many of us hold dear. There’s no reason it can’t continue in a post-pandemic world. (Former hobbits Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, as well as writer/director Kevin Smith, all recently turned up on set for in-person interviews.) You let this man have a desk and a mic, Discovery. Don’t take them away from him now.

KEEP READING: Seth Meyers and Amber Ruffin on Evolving Late Night TV Without an Audience