One of my favourite moments on television is an interview between late-night hosts John Oliver and Stephen Colbert, in which Oliver asks Colbert, “What friendship have you had that has impacted you the most?” Colbert goes on to give one of the most passionate and genuine responses about how, without his wife, he would not know how to exist or function. I still watch it now, six years later, on days that feel numb, just to feel something.

And as Colbert takes his final bow next week, on 21 May, following the surprise cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert due to “budgetary restraints” (though we all know it is because Colbert flew too close to the sun — the sun being a giant orange), I found myself thinking homeward. What has India’s relationship with late-night television historically looked like?

Late-night television in India does not have a linear history. While we have embraced interview-style formats — shows where hosts speak to celebrities and culturally relevant figures, such as 'Koffee with Karan' or 'Rendezvous with Simi Garewal' — India’s tryst with the classic late-night format, in which a host comments on socio-cultural and socio-political issues through satire and humour, has never quite taken root in our media zeitgeist.

If there is one show that came closest to giving India a classic late-night format, it was 'Movers & Shakers'. Premiering in the late 1990s and hosted by Shekhar Suman, the show felt refreshingly unlike most Indian television of its time. Running from borrowing cues from Western late-night formats, it combined celebrity interviews with opening monologues, sketch comedy, a live band and sharp political satire, often poking fun at politicians and bureaucracy.

'JayHind! The Late Night Show' was created by satirist Abhigyan Prakash and fronted for a period by 'Sarabhai vs Sarabhai' alum Sumeet Raghavan. The series slowly found its footing online, where it had greater freedom to experiment with edgier political humour and internet-native absurdity. Poking fun at everyone from the RSS to Bollywood, and featuring recurring characters like the 'Aam Aadmi' the show released two episodes a week online and ran from 2009 to 2014. What made JayHind! particularly notable was its writers’ room, which featured several comedy up-and-comers and future heavyweights of Indian satire, led by Varun Grover and Rahul Patel. Watch episodes of JayHind! on YouTube here.

Yet, much like other Indian experiments with the late-night format, JayHind! remained something of a cult success rather than a cultural institution — beloved by those who found it, but never fully absorbed into the country’s mainstream viewing habits.

Another important — and perhaps the most mainstream — chapter in India’s late-night history came with 'The Week That Wasn't with Cyrus Broacha'. Hosted by Cyrus Broacha, the show aired on CNN-News18 and carved out a space for political satire that was deeply irreverent and self-aware. Structured as a spoof news recap, it took the week’s headlines — from political scandals to celebrity controversies — and filtered them through parody and sarcasm. In many ways, it was India’s closest analogue to satirical news formats popularised by shows like The Daily Show in the West, albeit scrappier and more niche. Broacha’s brand of humour leaned heavily into exaggeration and chaos, making the show feel less polished than American late-night but arguably more reflective of India’s own political absurdities.

More importantly, The Week That Wasn’t demonstrated that satire could coexist with news, even if largely confined to urban, English-speaking audiences. After an almost 17-year run, the show was cancelled, with Broacha stating in interviews that the decision stemmed from management changes at the channel and a broader “lack of interest” — both from networks and audiences — in keeping such formats alive.

Unlike in the United States, where late-night television evolved alongside a strong culture of political satire, Indian television developed under very different conditions. For decades, television in India functioned as a communal medium rather than an individual one. Primetime was built around the logic of family viewing: mythology serials, soap operas, singing competitions, and film-centric entertainment designed to appeal to entire households gathered in the same room. The sharper edges of late-night: political ridicule, irreverence, and long-form satirical monologues simply sat uneasily within that environment.

Political satire in India has historically occupied an uneasy position. To openly mock politicians, religious institutions, nationalism, or bureaucracy on mainstream television requires a tolerance for criticism that broadcasters, advertisers, and networks have often been reluctant to accommodate. This also raises a larger question: who owns the media? In a country like India, where many major channels are controlled by business conglomerates, the space for politically irreverent programming becomes significantly narrower.

And these tensions are not uniquely Indian. Similar anxieties around ownership and political pressure increasingly appear in the United States too, as debates surrounding Colbert’s cancellation and Jimmy Kimmel’s show’s temporary cancellation have demonstrated.

This piece was convieved as a tribute, not just to the art of late night and to people like Colbert and Suman, who fight irreverently to keep it alive, but also to my father, who showed me what satire, humour, and sarcasm could look like. His determination to actively, and sometimes passively, expose me to a world of comedy that did not take itself too seriously, but decisively took the world seriously, shaped my entire understanding of humour.

If America had Colbert, I had Srikanth Adiga growing up.

And so, to Colbert and my father — whom I miss dearly even though he is only a phone call away — and all the other savants of this artform I say: it has been a pleasure laughing alongside you. I only hope your continued efforts to keep irreverent comedy alive bear fruit in our country and across the world sooner rather than later.

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