10 O'Clock Live

Is it third time lucky for 10 O'Clock Live?

I'd prefer a tighter show, giving their chemistry something to push against.

10 O'Clock Live review

It helps that this show's four presenters are funny people in their respective jobs, although there's a continuing problem with Lauren Laverne; she doesn't really fit.

This will be interesting. As this scrappy topical comedy show returns for a third go at providing a credible homegrown answer to The Daily Show (good luck with that), we can't help but wonder just how, er, taxing co-host Jimmy Carr will find tonight's live appearance, having become the story, à la Deayton, in the interim. As to what subjects will be pounced on by Mitchell, Brooker and Laverne, your guess is as good as ours. Though North Korea and Baroness T will probably still be due a glib couple of minutes apiece.

A gaggle of familiar faces jostle for screen space as the topical news satire returns to take a pop at the week's headlines. While it's never quite matched the casual wit of Have I Got News For You or the US chutzpah of The Daily Show, there's always the chance one of the TV regulars - including Screenwipe's Charlie Brooker, Peep Show's David Mitchell and music pundit Lauren Laverne - will hit a funny bone when you're least expecting it.

The comic current affairs show returns with David Mitchell, Charlie Brooker, Lauren Laverne and Jimmy Carr sinking satirical claws into the week. Late-night political satire is a fixture of US television and if they got it right here, it could be a buzzy alternative to Question Time. So far 10 O'Clock Live has only shown flashes of that, but Mitchell is a better interviewer than you'd expect and his longer pieces, along with Brooker's Screenwipe-ish rants, mean the show is always good in parts.

A strange one, this. Without ever quite feeling the sum of its talented parts, this satirical current affairs show has made it to a third series. Last time around, certain problems still bedevilled 10 O'Clock Live. The tone remained unsure and Lauren Laverne still felt a tad underemployed. And yet it continued to be watchable - David Mitchell proved to be a reasonably penetrating interviewer and Charlie Brooker's world-weary plaints are always good value. Plus, any show that has James Delingpole up in arms is all right by us.

This time around, it's probably make or break. 10 O'Clock Live could establish itself as an irreverent but still sentient alternative to Newsnight (we'd suggest at least one lengthier and slightly more serious news piece per show), or it could drift off towards irrelevance and self-indulgence. For what it's worth, we'd like it to work and there's no reason why it can't.

David Mitchell interview

A short Q&A with 10 O'Clock Live star David Mitchell about his TV watching habits.

Tedious 10 O'Clock Live fails to dazzle with rapier wit

I know they can do better than this. So why don't they?

10 O'Clock Live: What we haven't learnt

When 10 O'Clock Live limped to the end of its first run we wrote a piece on where it needed to sort itself out. Two episodes in to the second season seems a good time to perform a stock check on how things are going. (One episode would have been the obvious point but we were on holiday. SORRY.)