The All-Night Show

The All-Night Show was a television series starring Chas Lawther and produced by Jeff Silverman which ran from September 19, 1980 to August 29, 1981 on CFMT-TV in Toronto. The show was created and written by Errol Bruce, Chas Lawther, Michael Lennick and Jeff Silverman.

During its run, The All Night Show ran Mondays through Saturdays, running from the end of other programming (typically 2 am, but 1 am on Saturdays) until 6 am.

The premise was that Lawther's character, Chuck the Security Guard, had, with the help of his friends, taken over the facilities of CFMT (which at that time was branding itself as "MTV", prior to the introduction of the American music channel MTV.) Ostensibly without the knowledge of the station owners, Chuck and company found "a bunch of cool old tapes in the basement" of CFMT, and started broadcasting their favourite shows over the air while fooling around with the equipment. In the series continuity, rather than fire Chuck, the station decided to let him continue by giving Chuck his own overnight show.

The All-Night Show generally showed reruns of classic series such as The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Prisoner, Car 54, Where Are You?, The Beverly Hillbillies, Dave Allen at Large, Sgt. Bilko, and many others. The show filled the space in between each episode with current and decades-old music videos (including old Scopitones), old movie shorts, clips sent in from viewers, viewer call-in segments, and comedic banter with Chuck and the crew.

Chas Lawther played Chuck, a friendly, slightly awkward late-night security guard. Chuck addressed the audience directly, and introduced the night's programming from a TV studio control panel -- actually placing the video tapes in the playback machine to be played on air. Chuck's show opening, a loud, upbeat "Hey, you!", became a catchphrase for both the character and the show. Occasionally, Chuck would venture beyond his base in the CFMT TV control room and explore the empty station at night while doing his rounds; memorably, he once broke into real-life station president Dan Iannuzzi's office and made himself at home in Iannuzzi's absence.

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