One thing the last two years and counting of the pandemic has given us (which no one gives it credit for) is: a renewed love of parlour games. Everyone is down on the coronavirus, but we do have to give it that particular due. “Oh, but we couldn’t go to the supermarket … ” Yeah, but you got Zoom quizzes. “Oh, but we couldn’t see our loved ones for months on end … ” Hmm, OK, but Quiplash and Among Us filled a void. “Oh, but I lost my job and couldn’t get a haircut … ” Fine. But you had six months to sit on the floor doing jigsaws and getting too into adult board games? What is the problem, exactly? Honestly, I think some people just like moaning.
Anyway, this is a TV column, and it should behave accordingly. The second series of Mel Giedroyc: Unforgivable drops on Dave this week (10pm, Tuesday), and it feels, somehow, related. The format is thus: Mel Giedroyc sits on a throne and coaxes a revolving cast of British comedians into performing tasks and games. She has an underling who sits on a lower chair than her and they do various pre-planned skits that never quite hit, but that is sort of the charm. Katherine Ryan is in an episode, Jamali Maddix in another. Hold on. Hmm. No, it’s not Taskmaster, you’re right. But it is, isn’t it?
It feels a bit dismissive to say Unforgivable is “Taskmaster, but Dave still has the license for it”, but to ignore the role Taskmaster plays in the genesis of all this seems like ignoring a very large, Greg Davies-shaped elephant in the room. Taskmaster (I am not explaining what Taskmaster is. You are reading the Guardian. You know what Taskmaster is) was the breakout hit from Dave’s get-away-from-Top-Gear-repeats-by-elevating-British-comedy tactic. It defected to Channel 4, but there are a lot of interesting shows with interesting comedians leftover: the James Acaster and Josh Widdicombe-fronted Hypothetical, the deeply enjoyable British as Folk, the rebrand of Late Night Mash. Unforgivable is along the same lines – British comedians you haven’t heard of getting their first big run at TV, a few comedy stalwarts in the mix, some pre-planned storytelling that rapidly goes off-piste – that makes all of them so good.
We’ve had a fallow few years with panel shows. The Cats are always doing Countdown, of course, and Would I Lie To You? and Mock the Week are still mainstays on the BBC, but it hasn’t felt like the giddy panel-heavy days of the late 90s and early 00s for a while. Why? You would have thought the easiest path to TV gold would be “put five to six funny people in a room together and let them be unscriptedly rude”, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. Is it the cultural temperature at the time? Too many celebrities in the mix and not enough comedians? Is it the exact right format? – but it feels like Dave is closest to cracking the alchemy right now. Unforgivable can clank a little; every episode starts agonisingly slowly. Giedroyc brightly asking everyone, “Tell us an embarrassing story!” can veer into office away-day ice-breaker awkwardness, and I could do with fewer rhyming puns – but it understands the best way to make funny people be funny on TV is, simply, by letting them.
Giedroyc helps – her post-Bake Off pivot to “wholesomely cheeky schoolmarm” has been a delight to watch – as does Lou Sanders who, in the role of underling, consistently comes out with the sort of lines you can’t believe survived an edit (the new series starts with a throwaway joke featuring a toilet roll prop that made me have to pause the screener to compose myself). Their nice/naughty dynamic helps pull structure out of what is, for the first third of each episode at least, people sat in chairs storytelling.
But the episodes get more manic as they progress: essentially, someone always gets comfortable enough to tell the country the last place and time they shat themselves, and once that Rubicon has been crossed (normally around the 24-minute mark), there are a lot more laughs. It’s not quite the can’t-miss format of the show that came before it, but it’s a valiant attempt. Listen up, the rest of British TV! Put more funny people on shows where they can be funny! Dave has figured it out! Catch up!
