Clare Balding

TV review: Guessable, Series 1, Episode 1

It feels like a waste of Sara Pascoe, John Kearns and Darren Harriott's talents, all of whom deserve their own shows and not just low budget studio based idiocy like this.

Best mates with Benedict Cumberbatch and a stalwart of daytime ITV, Judge Rob Rinder has a pretty varied backstory as it goes. Now he adds Charlie Brooker-lite to the CV, too, with this year-in-review show in which he mulls over the events of 2018 with Ed Balls, Clare Balding and more.

The veteran gabsmith welcomes a fresh phalanx of guests to his studio, including R&B superstar Tina Turner, who recently returned from retirement to work on the musical biopic of her life, which is set to open next year. Also set to sample the green room buffet are controversy courting UFC combatant-cum-professional boxer Conor McGregor, presenter Clare Balding and Spider-Man Andrew Garfield. Plan B brings the tunes.

Before the Paralympic opening ceremony - oddly uncaptivating Brazilian music and dance, saved by the disabled pianist João Carlos Martins and (again) the stadium's digital floor - there was much delight to be had in The Last Leg: Live from Rio, in which Channel 4 trumped in two hours the BBC's recent 17 or whatever weeks of coverage by being in possession of 1) a tiny budget; 2) a refreshing lack of deference; and 3) a grown-up sense of humour.

Adam Hills, Alex Brooker and Josh Widdecombe had great gags, winning gags, about disability and even about the flight over to Rio: ribald laughter about leg-room, and hand-space in the overhead lockers, and the fact that it was the safest plane that had ever flown - "we had all the shooters". Clare Balding, who has had a deserved couple of weeks back in Britain to check her bank account - don't get me wrong, she's lovely and deserves every tin groat - looked, on The Last Leg sofa, both shocked and delighted. Almost as if she might be allowed, in the next 10 days, to talk not about heroes or legends, but just about humans.

Radio Times review

We know from past experience that the out-takes Would I Lie to You? puts on the end-of-series leftovers platter aren't disappointing. Far from it.

Would I Lie to You? has such a rich seam of comedy that routines as enjoyable as David Mitchell discussing his alleged jigsaw habit ("I find it incredibly irritating when other people fiddle with my jigsaws...") or Clare Balding speaking in German end up on the cutting-room floor.

There are the usual flashes of Lee Mack's ad-lib brilliance here, but best of all is a weepingly funny tour de force from Bob Mortimer, stoutly maintaining that he had a pet owl he used to carry around on a cushion.

BBC security correspondent sets sights on W1A cameo

Frank Gardner is to follow in the footsteps of Clare Balding, Carol Vorderman and Alan Yentob by appearing in the mockumentary.