the best TV discussion programme ever. Critical response After Dark earned a remarkable spread of critical enthusiasm, from the Socialist Worker ("my favourite chat show") and The Guardian ("one of the most inspired and effective uses of airtime yet devised"), and The Daily Telegraph ("A shining example of late-night television"), to more media focussed journals such as the BFI's Sight & Sound ("often made The Late Show look like the Daily Mirror") and even the US showbiz bible Variety in its review of the year ("compulsive for late-night viewers"). The Listener magazine called it "The programme in which you can see the people think". Guest response Author James Rusbridger wrote in The Listener magazine: "When I appeared on a Channel 4 After Dark programme recently my postman, milkman and more than two dozen strangers stopped me in the street and said how much they'd enjoyed it and quoted verbatim extracts from the discussion." In 2021 author David Hebditch wrote an article about appearing After Dark to discuss pornography. It is available here. Journalist Peter Hillmore described appearing on After Dark as follows: Notable guests and programmes Series One Peter Hain, Clive Ponting, Peter Utley, Colin Wallace and "Secrets" The first ever After Dark programme (1 May 1987) was described in The Listener: Nancy Banks-Smith wrote in The Guardian: The programme finished with the Beatles singing "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" The programme is available online here. Simon Hughes The second programme of the first series – transmitted on 8 May 1987 – centred on press ethics and featured, among others, Tony Blackburn, Peter Tatchell, Victoria Gillick, Johnny Edgecombe and a Private Eye journalist. A week later After Dark broadcast the following correction in relation to the British Member of Parliament Simon Hughes: "Mr Hughes has asked us to say that he is not a homosexual, has never been a homosexual and has no intention of becoming a homosexual in the future." He has, however, since declared that he is bisexual. "Do the British Love Their Children?" As described by academic Nick Basannavar in 2021: David Mellor, David Yallop and "The Mafia" The Financial Times described the following week's discussion about the Mafia: During the programme it was claimed that Pope John Paul I was "eliminated...because he discovered that mafia profits from heroin had been laundered using the Vatican Bank". "Spectacular corruption allegations from author David Yallop" were described