I've Never Seen Star Wars

I've Never Seen Star Wars, hosted by Marcus Brigstocke, encourages celebrity guests to try completely new experiences.

This week's guest was John Humphrys from the Today programme. Unable to change the habit of a lifetime, Humphrys persistently talked over Brigstocke, disrupting his patter and obliterating several punch lines. Brigstocke, like a conscientious midwife, stayed with the script until all the gags were safely delivered, although some of the spontaneity was lost in the process.

Shows like I've Never Seen Star Wars are heavily dependent upon the comic input of their guests, and John Humphrys was not a particularly forthcoming one.

The original radio format is left almost intact, undisturbed by any visual innovation. Close your eyes and all you would have missed would have been a short moondancing lesson from Brigstocke and a cluttered set design heavily reminiscent of Room 101.

BBC Radio 4 comedy I've Never Seen Star Wars transferred to television recently, presented by Marcus Brigstocke - a stand-up comedian who resembles a geography teacher, and who's apparently determined to find fame by appearing on every British satirical show in existence.

INSSW is a variant of Room 101, where a weekly celebrity guest must talk amusingly about a certain topic. In the aforementioned series, it was pet hates; in this show it's things they've never experienced, but wish they had. Of course, a proviso is that each guest gets to plug the gaps in their life-experience beforehand, then relate everything to Brigstocke.

It's a show that clearly relies on its guests and their choices to amuse. I don't hate Clive Anderson, but it's difficult to remember why he was a fairly big star back in the '90s, despite the fact his enduring legacy is being bumbling while hosting Whose Line Is It Anyway. His wit has long since been exposed as relying solely on daft word-play, too. His choices here were uninspiring and not particularly strong to deconstruct for comedy. What humour can you mine from the revelation someone hasn't seen Withnail & I until very recently, let's be honest.

I've heard a few episodes of the Radio 4 series in my time, and that sounded much sillier and comically distended than anything here - recently, Sandi Toksvig admitted she's never eaten a Pot Noodle, and was promptly heard cooking and eating one in comic detail as if it were an epicurean delicacy. There was nothing to equal that amusement in two episodes of the TV version, despite the assumed a visual medium should bring.

Take Room 101 and rip it off with a slight twist, and you're left with I've Never Seen Star Wars. Based around the simple concept of giving celebrities cultural experiences that they've yet to experience and seeing if they enjoy it, this was fairly amusing - though that may be because Marcus Brigstocke's first guest was the witty Clive Anderson.

The programme in which Marcus Brigstocke cajoles some famous faces to do something they've never done before or actively avoided - he forced Barry Cryer to watch an episode of Friends and Joan Bakewell to have a beatboxing lesson - leaps off the radio and on to the small screen. Tongiht's first episode sees Clive Anderson broaden his cultural horizons.

The early-evening Radio 4 comedy in which Marcus Brigstocke encourages celebrities to venture outside their comfort zones transfers to TV, with Clive Anderson the first to try five fresh cultural experiences. The former barrister had not been recorded throwing caution to the wind at the time of going to press, but we're promised few changes to the programme's original format. Recently we've heard Phill Jupitus eating his first Findus crispy pancake, Joan Bakewell getting a beat-boxing lesson and Barry Cryer changing a baby's nappy - the result being an enjoyably less-splenetic version of Room 101, in which the guests do sometimes find pleasure in the very things they've been avoiding.

Sometimes it's comforting - in a way - to get back to comedy the way it used to be made by well educated middle-class males. Here, Marcus Brigstocke takes his radio show asking guests to sample new experiences. First up is Clive Anderson who watches Withnail and I, does the National Lottery, learns judo, reads Men Are From Mars Women are from Venus, and tries to relax in a floatation chamber. It's all quite jolly, it makes you smile, then it's over. At no point does it make you want to kick your TV screen in, which given this week's other attempts at comedy - even Comic Relief will have to go some to be less funny that the shambolic nastiness of Horne And Corden - is quite a feat.

Because TV usually offers larger audiences and salaries than radio, series that excite listeners are rapidly offered to viewers. I've Never Seen Star Wars, in which stars try out activities they've previously avoided, is the latest, crossing from Radio 4 to BBC Four next Thursday. Such transfers often show their roots: the intense attention to voices in Little Britain results from creating characters who could orginally not be seen, as, more obviously, does Dead Ringers.

I've Never Seen Star Wars is a good example of a dual-use idea: Barry Cryer changing a nappy for the first time is a spectacle that works equally well heard or seen. Ironically, for a series with a sight-verb in its title, I've Never Seen Star Wars is a glimpse of the economic future of broadcasting: a series where it's irrelevant whether you see it or not.