Looking over the top 10 list of most viewed shows on BBC's iPlayer, becuase I'm back in Reading as this is being written and anything is better than being out in Reading on a Saturday night, one finds four comedy shows regarding current affairs and also four general comedy/panel quiz shows. Apparently, the market is not nearly yet saturated enough and must be bled drier than a virgin at a vampire orgy before moving on to the next erstwhile pure genre. The Bubble covers both current affairs and comedy and quiz/panel based comedy joining Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You and 8 out of 10 Cats to name but three also present in the crowded middle circle of that particular Venn Diagram.
Anywho, The Bubble's spin on the format is actually rather orginal. Take three comedians/newspaper columnists/ talking heads/ plant pots and put them in a house (the bubble) for a week prior to filiming with no contact with the outside world. No phones, no Internet, no TV, no newspapers, thus, the hope being, they cannot tell the difference between real news stories and ones made up by the production team. The aim is not only to provide laughs but to also utilise some unusual news stories from the week, in a less original spin on things.
Apart from the obvious human rights aspects of locking people away for days on end (dressing them in jumpsuits may or may not have been discussed at the first production meeting), the show works well. David Mitchell hosts, gaining experience of being in the hot seat of a panel show before fulfilling his inevitable destiny to replace Stephen Fry on QI once Fry gets bored of being universally loved and leaves. This puts the show in a safe pair of hands as Mitchell's quick wit and withering delivery will more often than not deliver.
Sat in what resembles a library from the year 2087 (at least to my limited and stunted imagination), Mitchell proceeds to give the contestants three news stories from different medias for each round, from which they choose the correct one that they believe is real, a task far harder than it actually sounds.
As with all panel/quiz shows the standard of guests will define the quality of the programme and whether it will make it through to "Stage Two" of television: recommission. Whilst the first show offered a glittering all-star cast of Frank Skinner, Victoria Coren and Reginald D. Hunter to play wit tennis with Mitchell. However, the show's description on the iPlayer website terrifyingly promises "wildcard bookings" as guests in the future. This could go one of two ways. Firstly, they get a 'character' on like ultra-cock Rod Liddle or that scary dancing man pillock thing from the "we-buy-any-car" advert. The other option being the complete opposite, a person so dull and beige that the seat they are sitting in offers a more dynamic, engaging personality.
Either way, a troubling conundrum for a promising, innovative take on an increasingly doomed genre.
Dan
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