Rob Brydon

The show was essentially a take on the classic Blankety Blank as two contestants answer a series of mundane questions alongside a panel of famous faces. However, The Guest List sees the panel answer the question first before the contestant can then agree with one of their answers or choose their own.

The highlight of the entire show though is the presentation style of host Rob Brydon, who realises how ludicrous the entire programme is. It's clear that the producers have given Brydon a lot of leeway as he appears to be ad-libbing for large sections of the programme. Due to Brydon's light-hearted style his interaction with the celebrity guests doesn't feel forced and I do think that these segments could've been excruciating when put into the hands of a less jovial host.

Brydon bounced especially well off James Corden due to their existing chemistry as Gavin & Stacey co-stars while gymnast Louis Smith essentially became a performing monkey as he was tasked with both singing and dancing. But the surprise of the evening was the participation of Simon Callow who isn't your stereotypical BBC One panel show star. Callow's tremendous laugh coupled with some of his more outlandish answers made him the perfect foil for Brydon and the two played off each other magnificently.

The tone of most of the questions was slightly suggestive and as this was a pre-watershed programme there was a little bit of smut thrown in. My big criticism was of the format itself, with not one of the celebrities helping the contestants with an answer all evening. But, at the end of the day, that didn't really matter as I found The Guess List to be perfect Saturday night entertainment that didn't ask too much of me as a viewer and provided plenty of laughter throughout.

Say what you like about Rob Brydon - and I certainly plan to - but he hosts a brain-ruining celebrity quiz show with aplomb. Those hours spent remaining cheerful while dining opposite Steve Coogan's wet-weekend-in-Ancoats face on The Trip to Italy are certainly paying dividends.

How bad is The Guess List (BBC1)? It's as likely as Michael McIntyre's chatshow to make it to a second series. It makes Would I Lie to You?, Brydon's other quiz show, seem like a work of shattering genius.

That said, I couldn't look away. "How lovely to be this close to a fox and not worry it's going to sniff round your bins," said Brydon introducing his first celebrity guest, Emilia Fox. "I speak for everybody when I say I loved The Vicar of Dibley," he said, introducing Jennifer Saunders. He went on with similar amiable insults to the other usual suspects (Simon Callow, Louis Smith, James Corden), while they kept their smiles mirthlessly frozen. If there isn't yet a Bafta for best rictus in quiz show adversity, it is only a matter of time.

The idea is, five celebrities come up with a plausible answer to a question, and then two contestants have to decide which, if any of those suggestions, is most plausible. For example: "According to a poll, what should old people do three times a week to help them live longer?" "Tango," said Callow, insanely. "Orgasm," said Corden, sensibly. "Exercise," said Smith, boringly. The answer? Oh come on! It's have sex.

Only one of the contestants seemed to have trouble with The Guess List's concept. Naturally, she won. But then she also told us she'd moved from Birmingham to Australia after watching Wanted Down Under, which is the very definition of madness.

Celebrity input seemed so superfluous that the show could readily have been renamed Pointless Celebrities. Here's my question: "Which of the following collective nouns is the odd one out: A) murder of crows; B) whoop of gorillas; C) busyness of ferrets; D) pointlessness of celebrities?" Answer: D) I want to hear more from the other three.

The Guess List, TV review

Rob Brydon has a surprisingly rare, but commercially valuable, ability to be both granny-friendly and genuinely funny.

Rob Brydon interview

"I showed that to Anthony Hopkins, me impersonating him, when I was in LA recently and it was bizarre to see him watching it on a laptop and laughing away."

Radio Times review

In theory we have a new game show here but in practice, that's overstating it. This is a chance for Rob Brydon to flex his comic muscles as bullying, joshing host. There's a good ten minutes of jokey chit-chat at the start as we meet the celebrity panel ("Emilia Fox... have you ever done a real autopsy?") and then the contestants. The game itself is so barely there that after half an hour (and this really isn't a spoiler) only one point has been scored.

But Brydon's relentless comic energy drives the thing on as he tries to get Simon Callow to tango or has Louis Smith sing a song with James Corden. It's hard to resist smiling in the face of the Brydon hurricane but we could do with more game and less show.

For all its obvious charms, the first run of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's improvised sitcom did sometimes seem like little more than a Parmesan-crisp thin excuse for its stars to gorge on high-end scran. Credit all the Mediterranean cuisine being scarfed down or just tighter direction from Michael Winterbottom, but this sequel outing to Italy feels more substantial. Tonight's episode features a plot, with the pair venturing to Shelley's house by boat, and Brydon chirpsing one of the crew. Impressions galore - Tom Jones, Pierce Brosnan - too.

Radio Times review

It's pure pleasure, this. Something so seemingly simple really shouldn't work as well at it does, but boy is it funny. Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan - or the versions they play of themselves - have reached San Fruttuoso in Liguria on their tour of Italy.

They take a beautiful yacht to a restaurant on a pebbled cove where, over lunch, they do impressions. Quite why two men doing silly voices filmed with the production values of an arthouse movie is so funny, Lord knows.

There's Steve doing Saddam Hussein's Frank Spencer impression or Rob doing Roger Moore playing Tony Blair. There's a lovely bit about what the different intonations that newsreaders use mean.

But underneath the comedy back-and-forth there's a poignant undertow about middle-aged friendship and the status games men play. It's cleverly done and not quite like anything else, ever.

What The Trip To Italy tells us about male friendship

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's gently competitive riffs and references highlight the changing composition of modern male relationships.

Rob Brydon: comedy, politics & dining with Steve Coogan

Lazy criticism, women on comedy panel shows and intimations of mortality... As he chews the fat with Steve Coogan in another series of The Trip, the new prince of Saturday-night TV confesses that he has a lot on his plate.

The Trip - or, as it's now titled, The Trip to Italy - returned on Friday on BBC Two. Essentially it's the same show: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing caricatures of themselves, talk rubbish and swap impressions in restaurants. It's very funny.

Now and again it threatens to turn into a deeper, more mature sort of programme, about Coogan and Brydon's relationships with their families.
Personally I'd rather it didn't. I could easily take half an hour of solid nonsense from them. There's almost no plot, but in the interests of more nonsense I'd accept less.