Danilo Gentili came to the desk from stand-up, and the needling register of Brazilian club comedy runs through the show SBT handed him in 2014.

The format will look familiar to anyone raised on American late night: a host behind a desk, an opening comic run at the day's news, then guests who sit down for an interview that slides between promotion and provocation. Gentili keeps a standing company of comedians around him, with Léo Lins, Murilo Couto, Igor Guimarães, Juliana Oliveira and Diguinho Coruja all credited as regulars, so the jokes arrive from the sides of the room as often as from the host. The guest chair pulls in Brazilian actors, musicians and public figures, and the tone stays closer to an argument than an audience with a star.

He arrived at SBT with three years of late night already behind him. Agora É Tarde, on the Band network, was the first version of this job, and he left it after conflicts with Eyeworks, the company producing that show, and over restrictions the networks wanted to place on it. The Noite is the same idea rebuilt with different backing.

For a viewer outside Brazil, the reward depends on your Portuguese and your appetite for local politics and celebrity, since the monologue lives on both. The show assumes you already follow the week's news in Brazil, and it does not slow down to explain.