Marcus Brigstocke

The ubiquitous Griff Rhys Jones's comedy panel series reaches its final episode tonight. Captains Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker are joined by journalist Grace Dent and comedian Rob Rouse. As ever, their knowledge of recent history - and ready wit - are tested via a bewilderingly broad range of archive footage.

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Although its derivative format and focus on the relatively recent past makes it feel at times a little like Have I Got Some Really Very Stale News for You, when it hits its stride this Griff Rhys Jones-chaired comedy quiz can provoke an occasional belly laugh. Tonight, comedians Robin Ince and Andi Osho join the reliably acerbic team captains Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker, attempting to answer random questions on a wide range of tentatively historical topics.

Yes, it's yet another panel game, although given that this series is only four episodes long rather than the conventional six, you can't help but think Channel 4 don't have much faith in it.

Hosted by Griff Rhys Jones and featuring team captains Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker, A Short History of Everything Else uses old film footage to ask questions about recent history, from the famous to the obscure.

Watching this show, I can't help but think that it's just too much like Have I Got News for You. The key difference, though, is that the questions are too old to be satirical enough and the set is a bit more high-tech. This one actually features TV monitors rather than just turning boards!

Most of the humour in the show come not from the footage, but the panel insulting each other and trying to mock Rhys Jones (mostly over an old beer advert he did). That's all well and good, but it'd be much better if they could get more funny still from their video archives.

If I were a betting man, I'd say before long this show will be history...

The last time I saw Griff Rhys Jones on television was during the Jubilee pageant, when he was meandering up the Thames in a motor launch. I thought he looked miserable then, but that was nothing compared to how fed up he appeared presenting the first episode of the comedy panel quiz show, A Short History of Everything Else (Channel 4). Griff's script opened with: "We're off down memory lane without a seat belt ... because we didn't have to wear them in those days" and went downhill thereafter. His rictus smile throughout was almost certainly pain, though it would be more charitable to put it down to professionalism.

It wasn't just the script that was desperate: it was the concept as well. It was as though someone in the commissioning department had watched a couple of episodes of Have I Got News For You on Dave and come up with the brainwave of dispensing with topicality and making a news show that would feel like a repeat the first time you watched it. From round to round, the format never changed; Griff would make some crap gags to introduce a sequence of archive footage before inviting the two team captains - Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker - along with guests Micky Flanagan and Kirsty Wark to make their own crap gags. I guess it was cheap, but it wasn't funny.

Brigstocke looked for a moment as if he thought he had actually wandered on to the set of a HIGNFY repeat as he gave a passable imitation of an extremely grumpy Paul Merton, looking permanently pissed off and not laughing at anyone else's jokes. But, on reflection, he was probably just annoyed he too had let himself be talked into signing up for such a turkey.

Satire just doesn't work on 30 year-old archive footage. Margaret Thatcher gags stopped having any edge the moment Ben Elton started making them in the 1980s. As for the old clips of Elton John having a tantrum and the 70s beer adverts ... For what it's worth, Charlie and Kirsty won by 15 points to 14. The result might seem rather more relevant in five years though, after the show has been repeated a few times.

Review: A Short History of Everything Else

There's currently a bit too much quiz in the mix and not quite enough banter, though Marcus Brigstocke warmed up nicely and the clip researcher had done a pretty decent job.

The nation's apparently endless appetite for panel shows might just be tested to destruction by this retro news quiz helmed by Griff Rhys Jones. It's not appalling as such; at the very least, you'll crack a smile at a few of the clips. But the format's beyond tired and the premise - remembering the news of the recent past - seems like little more than an excuse to ransack the vaults for lazy comic effect. Didn't the smug funnymen of Britain have their fill of taking the piss out of Swampy back in 1996? Haven't we been encouraged to laugh at the drunken hi-jinks of the 2005 Ashes winners often enough by now? Anyway, joining Griff for this opening episode are Marcus Brigstocke, Charlie Baker, Kirsty Wark and Mickey Flanagan. They do their best, but silk purses stubbornly refuse to materialise.

A Short History of Everything Else review

It's not quite as good as the 'Big Three' of quiz 'banter' - Have I Got News For You, QI, and Never Mind the Buzzcocks, but it's still early days. Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker have yet to establish a comedic rapport as team captains, but this does take time.

It's about time that someone devised a lighthearted panel show involving a bunch of British comedians - and, thankfully, Channel 4 have stepped in to fill the gaping void with this new series. Hosted by Griff Rhys Jones, with Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker as regular captains, it is, as Jones admits, a "nostalgia fest", in which the teams are presented with clips of archive news footage from decades past, with all their attendant horrors of industrial strife and terrible haircuts, and attempt to show off their memories of current affairs past - both momentous and trivial.

Ubiquitous Griff Rhys Jones hosts this new comedy panel show, in which players are challenged to give "a short history of everything else". If that sounds slightly vague, then it's appropriate for the programme's rather nebulous concept. Each week, team captains Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker and their guests watch varied clips of archive footage, and try to prove that they remember more about the stories behind the films than the other team. But they're really competing for points which are nonsensically allocated according to the drollness of their observations. The guests for this week's opener are broadcaster Kirsty Wark and comedian Micky Flanagan.

The show's real strength is the footage itself - the researchers have done a great job mining the archives to provide what Jones describes as "a serious nostalgia fest". Tonight there's vintage footage of Peter York discussing Sloane Rangers - "my goodness, don't they look lovely" - and a meringue pie being squished into Jeremy Clarkson's face. It may be yet another panel show, but this offbeat trip down memory lane extracts lots of humour from our social history.