During the recently-aired concluding episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Colbert’s fellow late-night TV hosts joined him onstage to bid farewell. In one frame you could locate the different kinds of pleasures late-night American TV has to offer—old-school political satire (Jon Stewart), celebrity-led ‘easy viewing’ (Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel), eccentric, social-media-era humour (Seth Meyers) and journalism-adjacent ‘news comedy’ (John Oliver). For the last couple of decades, these gentlemen have shaped the way we understand contemporary ‘infotainment’. In the Indian context, the actor Shekhar Suman’s show Movers and Shakers arrived in 1997 with all the trappings of the late-night talk show—the broadly accessible political jokes, the celebrity interviews, the in-house band with its cymbal crashes punctuating punch lines. From 1997-2001 (and again in 2012 for a short-lived revival) Suman interviewed actors, politicians, cricketers et al with charm and humour and his own personal brand of Bihari extroversion, introducing Indian viewers to TV templates established by the likes of David Letterman and Jay Leno.

A couple of weeks ago, Suman made his return to the format with Shekhar Tonite, and so far two 40-minute episodes have been released on YouTube. Minister of Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari was the guest on the first episode, while actor Bobby Deol headlined the second. Now in his 60s, Suman has visibly slowed down in his line-delivery and some of his jokes feel like they were air-dropped from the 90s. But on the whole Shekhar Tonite feels like a breath of fresh air because Suman delivers the kind of honest-to-God news satire that was commonplace in Indian television in the 1990s and 2000s — but has all but vanished now due to a number of structural reasons.

He’s making jokes in easy-to-understand Hindi, about the NEET paper leak, about Raghav Chadha leaving the Aam Aadmi Party and joining the BJP, about prime minister Modi himself. This by itself places Shekhar Tonite in a very small club because direct criticism of the BJP or of the Prime Minister is exceedingly rare when it comes to Hindi-language programming in the country today. Suman’s colleagues in the mainstream TV media have abandoned this responsibility and it is usually independent online creators (such as Ravish Kumar) who are the source of such criticism. Moreover, Suman is quite aware of this vacuum that he is stepping into — in the very first episode he says things like “bol ke lab aazad hain tere” (speak, for your voice is forever free) and “the voice of the people is the voice of God” before consolidating the sentiment with “main yahaan hansne hasaane nahi jagne-jagaane aaya hoon” (I’m not here to jest, I am here to wake you up). These aren’t typically the opening sentiments of a late-night talk show but it shows you the kind of media ecosystem Suman has re-entered in 2026.

“Samose ke baad chai ki talab toh lag ji jaati hai” (You often end up craving tea when you’re eating a samosa) Suman says about Raghav Chadha at one point. This is a really clever line because it combines two narrative strands — Chadha’s 2024 crusade over overpriced samosa at Indian airports, and the BJP’s decade-long image-crafting around the Prime Minister’s past as a tea-seller. In a similar vein he notes that the BJP, having won the Bengal election, removed fish items from the inauguration day lunch. “Pehli baar sunaa hai ki machhli ka istemaal kaante ki tarah kiya gaya ho” (First time I ever heard of a fish being used as bait) Suman notes wryly.

My favourite part in the first episode is when Suman addresses the PM’s recent call-to-the-nation directly (asking citizens to save fuel), making fun of ministers who are conducting photo-ops with bicycles. He requests PM Modi, “Agar lockdown ka mood hai, toh pehle se bataa dein, hum thaali-chammach saaf karke rakhenge” (If we are in for a lockdown, please let us know in advance, we’ll keep the plates and spoons clean and ready), referring to the Covid-era ‘thaali-bajaao’ phenomenon suggested by the Prime Minister as a national morale-booster.

Of course, there are limits to Suman’s criticism as well. Once Gadkari sat down on that couch and began the interview, it was clear that Suman was content to lob softballs at the Cabinet Minister. For the most part, Gadkari is allowed to speak unchallenged in rally-talk, narrating mid-sized essays about his various accomplishments as Minister of Road Transport & Highways. It was predictable to be honest—I did not really expect the actor to go full-blast where Indian journalists with decades of experience behind them have (politely) demurred. And towards the end of the interview, Suman does get a veiled jab in when he invokes the memory of the late former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee, quoting some lines of Hindi poetry written by him that warn us against hero-worshipping politicians.

The celebrity interviews, both Gadkari and Deol, are actually the middling parts of these episodes (except the very poignant 5-7 minutes where Deol and Suman talk about Deol’s late father, the Bollywood superstar Dharmendra). Everything else, the setup, the standalone jokes, the occasional bits of shaayari that Suman indulges in, are all extremely pleasurable throwbacks to an era where Indian TV had a lot more variety than it currently does.

“Sabse badaa bojh naa mehengai ka hota hai, naa naukri kaa aur naa hi zimmedaari kaa. Sabse badaa bojh hotaa hai aawaaz ka bojh”, Suman says at one point during the second episode. The biggest burden of all, he suggests, isn’t inflation or job-troubles or life-responsibilities. It’s the burden of having a voice, a voice that’s authentic, original and independent. On the evidence of these two episodes of Shekhar Tonite, Shekhar Suman is wearing this burden lightly, and with style.