Mock The Week

Mock the Week review

Three cheers! The latest series is a Frankie Boyle-free zone. At last the audience can stop cringing and start laughing again.

Mark Watson: I have mixed feelings about Mock The Week

"So, of course, I want to be in shows like Mock The Week, I think they're good, but at the same time, I often feel a bit threatened by them."

Mock the Week Episode 9.1 Review

Like him or loathe him, the departure of Frankie Boyle two series ago has left Mock the Week feeling toothless.

With the departure of the notorious and sometimes offensive Frankie Boyle just a distant memory, the satirical panel show - a sort of fusion of Have I Got News for You and Whose Line Is It Anyway? - returns for its ninth series. With much of the show based on the week's news, there's no way of knowing what topics the panellists will be poking fun at, but Dara O Briain is back in the host's chair, presiding over Hugh Dennis, Russell Howard, Andy Parsons et al like a twinkly-eyed, indulgent uncle, while the irrelevant scoring system and weird mix of sit-down/stand-up rounds is intact. The show is undoubtedly a bit softer without Boyle but, along with BBC2's QI, it always manages to deliver intelligent comedy.

Has Mock the Week lost its spark?

Just when TV didn't need to be any more blokey the panel show returns to our screens. Will you be watching? Or have you had quite enough already?

BBC Two welcomes back Mock The Week

The BBC is pleased to announce that hard-hitting panel show Mock The Week has now rejected the opportunity to form a coalition with Have I Got News For You and The One Show and chosen to go it alone in tackling the advent of a new Prime Minister, possible financial disaster and certain World Cup disappointment.

Milton Jones: 'It's pressured on Mock The Week'

Mock The Week guest panellist Milton Jones has admitted that he finds it hard to interrupt other comics on the programme.

Do I detect a slightly more relaxed and free-handed atmosphere now Frankie Boyle's not around to dominate proceedings? Mock The Week still can't match 8 Out Of 10 Cats' jovial atmosphere, but it's certainly getting there. The guests all got a chance to shine, which was the main thing. Chris Addison (best known for his role in political satire The Thick Of It, but also a stand-up comedian) got a few big laughs (mainly with his suggestion that we counter a tidal wave created by the Chinese jumping simultaneously with a similar wave borne of the UK's obese children), and stand-up comedians Sarah Millican and John Bishop both made enough of an impression to prevent total domination by the regulars.

But I'm still disappointed MTW even has so many "regulars" - because what's wrong with the traditional two team captains format? It just feel unbalanced and, frankly, I've grown tired of Hugh Dennis and Andy Parsons' shtick. And it still irritates me when the stand-up round features topics designed to give the guests the opportunity to reuse their stand-up routines (I mean, "Language"? The broadness of "Politics"?), but otherwise this was a fun episode - if still something you'll have forgotten about by ten o'clock.

Frankie Boyle's been lanced, Russell Howard's wearing specs, but it's otherwise business as usual for satirical news quiz Mock The Week; a fusion of Have I Got News For You? and Whose Line Is It Anyway?, with irrelevant scoring and a weird mix of rounds that go from sitdown quiz to stand-up performances. It's all a mere conduit for ribpoking of the week's news stories, and MTW is perhaps more consistent than its contemporaries because four of the pannelists are regulars.

The downside of that consistency is that Hugh Dennis stopped being funny in the mid-'90s and Andy Parsons has never been funny, leaving host Dara O'Briain and Russell Howard to shoulder most of the comic burden. And, like a great many modern panel shows, a lot of guests just become glorified audience members, desperate to shoehorn in paraphrased segments of their standup material. This week, Mark Watson coped well as a guest (he's a veteran of this format), Patrick Kielty had the confidence to soldier through any difficulties he encountered, and while Milton Jones sometimes struggled to recycle his material appropriately, he at least didn't just sit back and do nothing. It helps that his stage persona is a spaced-out weirdo, so his weaker moments and slipups could be forgiven as part of his "act".

Alas, we'll miss the dark humour of Frankie Boyle, who recently announced his departure from the programme, but this new series of the comedy panel show retains wit aplenty in the form of Dara O'Briain, Russell Howard, Andy Parsons and Hugh Dennis.