§ THE TEA · 2 MIN READ
Tommy Davidson Brought Varnell Back
The Varnell Hill Show premiered September 1 on Paramount+, and the joke underneath it is sharper than the premise: an old-school late-night host trying to stay relevant in a media era that stopped needing hosts.
By Culture
THE SHORT VERSION
The Varnell Hill Show premiered on Paramount+ on September 1, 2026, with Tommy Davidson reviving the Varnell Hill character he originated on Martin, now as an old-school late-night host struggling to stay relevant in a changed media era.
Reviving a thirty-year-old side character is usually a sign that nobody had an idea. Occasionally it is the idea, and this is one of those.
The Varnell Hill Show premiered September 1 on Paramount+. Tommy Davidson plays Varnell Hill, the character he originated on Martin, now an old-school late-night host fighting to stay relevant in a new media era.
Read that again, because it is doing more work than it looks like. The joke is not that Varnell is back. The joke is that the desk he is sitting behind is a piece of furniture the culture is finishing with, and he is the last man who believes in it.
Late night was, for decades, the throne. A monologue, a band, a couch, an audience. It made and ended careers, and it decided which comedians got a national audience.
That machine is not what it was. The clips outlive the broadcast, the podcast eats the interview, and a comedian with a phone can reach more people on a Tuesday than a network show does in a week. A show about somebody clinging to the old format, played by a man who came up inside the era that built it, is a genuinely good comic engine.
“The gag is not that he is dated. The gag is that he is right about how good it used to be.”
In Living Color. Which matters, because that show was the argument against the exact institution Varnell now defends: sketch comedy that did not wait for a network's permission to be Black, fast and rude, and which launched a generation.
So you have a performer formed by the thing that broke the format, playing a man mourning the format. That is not nostalgia casting. That is the right person.
The guests. A show like this lives or dies on whether the people sitting in the chair are willing to play inside the bit rather than promote something. Early signs matter more than the pilot.
And the band, always. In this tradition the band is the second lead and the show tells you how serious it is by how much it lets them play.
Owning the room is the through line here. Don Cornelius built Soul Train with about 400 dollars and owned it, which is why it looked like the people watching it. The comedians winning now are the ones who own the feed, the channel and the catalogue, which is the same sentence in new equipment, and that is what independent channels are for.
It is a good month for this. A Different World hits Netflix on the 24th, and the whole fall slate is worth the group chat.
- What is The Varnell Hill Show?
- A Paramount+ series that premiered September 1, 2026, in which Tommy Davidson revives Varnell Hill, the character he originated on Martin, now playing an old-school late-night host trying to stay relevant in a changed media landscape.
- Who is Varnell Hill?
- A character Tommy Davidson originated on Martin. The new series brings him back decades later as a late-night talk show host.
- Why is the premise interesting?
- Because it is about the decline of a format rather than simple nostalgia. Late night once decided which comedians reached a national audience, and that machine has been displaced by clips, podcasts and direct publishing. A host clinging to the old throne is a strong comic engine.
