A breath of fresh air, maybe, on Hughes' 'Angin Malam'

Angin Malam

Host: Hughes

RCTI, 11:30 p.m. Saturday

JAKARTA (JP): Entertainer Hughes is something of a phenomenon on Indonesian TV. She is big and beautiful, possessing a pretty face and the nonchalance to shrug off the fat jokes that are the ugly part of the territory of being in the public eye.

Pretty she may be, heavy she certainly is, but she most definitely is not stupid. A graduate in English from Atma Jaya University in Jakarta, she has already earned a reputation for her quick repartee in her performances.

It would seem a natural fit for her to host a TV talk show such as Angin Malam (Hughes was briefly paired with sportscaster Ary Sudarsono but their contrasting styles were jarring). It's still a relatively new style of program for Indonesian TV, with perhaps the only real predecessor being singer Ebet Kadarusman's show in the early 1990s. However, Angin Malam (which means "night breeze"), unlike Ebet's show or the U.S. programs of Johnny Carson and Jay Leno which it appeared to imitate right down to the set design, does not stick to the formula of a celebrity guest or two paired with a musical performer.

Instead, Hughes explores one theme as the main part of the hour-long show, another minor segment plus a couple of musical numbers by a guest and a call-in quiz with the dancer Putri Malam. The themes usually are on current trends; these can be interesting, such as how the young occupy their free time today compared to in the past, or rather limp, such as the profession of bodyguards, which was dead on arrival and beaten even further into submission over the next 45 minutes.

It must be saying something for Hughes' networking that she pulls in interesting, high-profile guests to her set at Hotel Indonesia overlooking the famed traffic circle (it's a sight to behold at night). For last week's main segment on "celebrities and the media", one of the guests was none other than actress- singer Desy Ratnasari, notorious for her frosty relations with the media.

It might be put down to the fact that both women are from Atma Jaya, but it was still a scoop that Desy showed up to tell of her uneasy encounters with reporters. There was not only Desy but Peggy Melati Sukma, discussing how she markets herself as an actress and singer, and singer Melly Manahutu.

Hughes is at her best when she uses her questions to keep the conversation flowing; it's the art of the interviewer, being able to subjugate one's ego and listen to what someone else has to say. Unfortunately, she occasionally has a tendency to needle. She did it a little with Desy last week, but at least this time the latter was able to hold her own (it was nothing like the mortifying, stilted segment in a joint interview, in English, earlier this year with Miss World Lara Dutta, in which some thought Hughes was making fun of Desy).

When she does go overboard, the consequences can be fatal. She went too far two weeks ago in a show about women as objects of beauty. With actress Feby Fabiola on hand, Hughes made the other guest, author Remy Syllado, the butt of the joke. It got a bit out of hand, particularly as Remy's ideas about love and women seemed old-fashioned to the young women.

When Hughes made a point of saying that Remy was himself sexy -- "I like older men with glasses and long gray hair, don't you?" -- the audience was lost and Remy's body language showed he was ready to give a little of his own back.

"Well, what's really amazing is the change in perceptions of beauty today," Remy suddenly jumped in. "After all, we used to think that a woman had to be delicate to be beautiful; now we have a big sex symbol, a really big one, like you."

The silence, as they say, was deafening.

It's still early days for Hughes and Angin Malam, but the program may well amount to something if the host goes with her instincts and does away with the fluff. (Bruce Emond)