The aim of Last One Laughing is to be exactly that. In Prime’s runaway hit, a group of comedians are trapped in a room and forbidden from cracking a smile or a laugh, and the one who keeps a straight face the longest is crowned the victor. Last year, it became one of the streamer’s biggest ever launches, drawing in six million viewers at its peak. It also confirmed eventual winner Bob Mortimer to be one of the funniest men alive.
Mortimer had been bobbing around on the periphery of national treasure status for a few years, with his viral Train Guy sketches and his slow TV gem Gone Fishing enjoying a surge of popularity in lockdown. In 2022, he also started a new side-hustle as a bestselling novelist with The Satsuma Complex (he’s published two more since). But it was the 2025 launch of Last One Laughing, a strange and ridiculous import from Japan, that pushed him over the edge. No one stood a chance against him. He was like some kind of surreal, Middlesbrough-bred King Kong of comedy, crushing his competitors with peculiar songs about lemon curd, and random observations such as “meats and cheeses, always pleases” (for some god unknown reason, it turns out this is the funniest sentence in the English language when spoken with a Teesside accent).
Now, Last One Laughing returns for season two with Mortimer back as defending champion. No spoilers, but I’m happy to report that the show is just as brilliant in its sophomore outing.
This time, Mortimer is joined in the abominably decorated Berkshire studio (those LED strip-lights are a hate crime) by a lineup including Alan Carr, David Mitchell, Diane Morgan, Romesh Ranganathan and Mel Giedroyc. They all arrive one by one, none of them knowing who’ll trot through the door next. Kind of like Love Island, except no one’s half-naked and glistening. Instead, they’re all wearing too many layers and looking a bit crumpled, as British comedians are wont to do.
Just like an alpha skulking around Casa Amor, Ranganathan looks genuinely rattled by the surprise return of Mortimer, the ultimate threat. In fact, they all do. It soon feels obvious who the weaklings are. We already know, from The Celebrity Traitors, that Carr cannot keep a straight face to save his life. He himself calls his casting on Last One Laughing “madness”. Deadpan genius Morgan, however, will surely excel.
One of the things that made this show so entertaining to watch the first time around were the comedians’ desperate techniques for suppressing explosions of laughter. In season one, Daisy May Cooper had by far the best I-will-not-laugh-even-if-it-kills-me face, resembling a severely constipated Woody Harrelson. The new contestants’ attempts to retain their composure vary between biting down hard on their own fingers, yoga breathing, pacing (so much pacing) and preoccupying their mouths with whatever food they can find: pick ’n’ mix, miniature cucumbers, cheese. Mortimer, meanwhile, deploys what he calls his “safety face” – which turns out to be an absurd underbite. Sometimes, literally running away from laughter is the only option. When Carr starts sucking helium and chatting away, his fellow comics all scatter like pigeons, unable to be in his high-pitched presence for even a second.
The sheer daftness of the show is its greatest asset. It’s as perfectly childish as a staring competition, or a thumb war. We all remember how hard it was not to descend into a fit of giggles in school assembly when someone set you off, and this show makes you feel like you’re right back there. When I watch it, I feel laughter bubbling up in that very specific way I used to as a child – stupidly and uncontrollably. The contestants are the same. Even if nothing funny is happening, the very fact they’re not allowed to chuckle has them all in agony. “I feel smiley in a hysterical way that’s very unhelpful,” notes Mitchell, about three seconds into the game. “No joy to it.”
Just as hard as not cracking up, it seems, is comedians performing to a silent audience. They’ve all “died” on stage before – but what about dying on national television in front of all your peers? “This is like the first five years of my stand-up career,” says Ranganathan at one point. “Horrific.” One of the show’s creators admitted last week: “I imagine it’s the talent’s worst nightmare to do something funny and not have people react. They all really feel for each other, but also don’t want to lose, and are clinging on with whatever they can to not laugh.”
Some of them resort to aggressive tactics to make the others break. Mortimer, for example, strides towards his victims with purpose. He starts off with what seems like a harmless topic of conversation, before suddenly sticking the knife in with an incongruous comment about defecating on a windowsill. Some of the more resilient contestants gang up on the wobbly ones, as vultures would around an injured deer: if someone looks to be on the edge of hysterics, they all pounce. Sometimes even just persistent staring is brutal enough to nearly take someone out.
It’s such a simple premise for such a winner of a show. The first season became a word-of-mouth hit after clips, mostly of Mortimer, went viral. This path to success is a sign of the times, and our endless appetite for short, clippable content over longform programming. It’s a formula that Saturday Night Live UK will be looking to replicate when it launches this weekend. After all, if it’s funny and people are watching it, who cares how they consume it?
Compared to the millions Prime spends on its fantasy dramas, Last One Laughing must have cost mere pennies, and all it requires in terms of commitment is for celebrities to spend six hours in a studio, showing off their best material. In the end, just like the wonderful simplicity of a thumb war or a staring competition, it’s just not that complicated to make the funniest thing on British TV.
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