Would I Lie To You?

The tall stories (some true, some not) comedy panel show returns for an eighth series. Its longevity has much to do with the way host Rob Brydon, plus team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell, get close to the knuckle without taking things too far for primetime, a tricky balancing act when Mitchell discusses the lead-up to an alleged vomiting incident ("There was definitely drinking, I think there might have been crisps ... "). First guests are Fiona Bruce, Micky Flanagan, Steve Jones and Claudia Winkleman.

Radio Times review

Host Rob Brydon and team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack return for series eight of the jolly panel show that tests the fibbing skills of celebrity teams. In this opening episode Micky Flanagan is the sole comedian guest, alongside TV presenters (of one form or other) Fiona Bruce, Claudia Winkleman and Steve Jones.

Did Flanagan liven up a hen do by taking his clothes off? Does Fiona Bruce dream about monkeys? And did Steve Jones once save rapper P Diddy's life? It may be inspired by elements from other panel shows (Call My Bluff and the mystery guest element from They Think It's All Over being the most obvious), but thanks in large part to the wit and repartee of the three regulars, the fun is infectious.

The spirits are high but the japes are deliciously low-down and dirty as Rob Brydon twinkles with seasonal cheer for this Christmas helping of tall tales. Did Stephen Mangan's Bedlington Terrier get its name by wagging its tail at the gravestone of a man called John Samuels? Lee Mack tries to dig up the truth, alongside Barry Cryer and Miles Jupp, while Mangan's partners in guile are David Mitchell and Miranda Hart.

"This is my cape," proclaims David Mitchell - words we've always wanted to hear him say. "I used to put it on to pretend I was Doctor Who and head into my Tardis, or as my parents called it, the airing cupboard."

Ahh, it's all too believeable, the kind of absurd but just-plausible-enough claim this series loves to tease us with. Equally tricky: does Miranda Hart begin every Christmas Day with a cigar in bed? Did Stephen Mangan name his puppy after a gravestone?

As usual, the panellists' festive fibs are great excuses for repartee, cross-examination and stories with more embroidery than a Downton dressing gown. But it's beautifully, stupidly funny, not least because everybody looks like they're having such a blast, so we do too.

A drum roll, please, for the much-anticipated, always enjoyable offcuts episode. These are the attempts by celebrities to fool other celebrities that ended up on the cutting room floor, not because they weren't funny (they are) but because they were surplus to requirements - or just a bit too guessable.

But we can still revel in Charles Dance's claim that he answers the phone in a Belfast accent or Dermot O'Leary's obsessive approach to stacking crockery. Best of all is a duel between Lee Mack and Richard Osman over whether the latter invented a superhero called Snooker Table Man as a child. We're fairly sure Osman is improvising furiously, but if he is, he's doing a great job...

A wonderfully enjoyable edition opens with Jimmy Carr claiming that he was given coffee in his bottle as a baby and progresses through the idea that Susanna Reid may have held the Breakfast team's speed record for drinking a pint of beer ("How big are your glugs?" enquires host Rob Brydon) and that Dave Myers of The Hairy Bikers once spent Christmas locked inside a bank.

All these prompt enjoyable cross-examination but, as so often, it's David Mitchell's mock-exasperation that really lights the comic touchpaper. "We've been doing this show for a thousand years!" he wails at one point to Lee Mack. "I know everything about you, including the fact that you did not learn to drive in a hearse."

Rob Brydon manfully steers the quiz show in which a talent for lying about your life leads to victory, especially if the opposition is vulnerable to having the wool pulled over their eyes. Tonight, Lee Mack is flanked by Getting On star Joanna Scanlan and Henning Wehn, German Comedy Ambassador to Great Britain. The opposition is led by David Mitchell, skipping alongside Olympic golden jumper Greg Rutherford and Desert Island Discs jockey Kirsty Young, who claims she has five chickens all named after her favourite newsreaders. Please let it be true.

Picture if you will, David Mitchell on a stag weekend in Cornwall, taking some time out to have a surfing lesson. Are you struggling? Yes, Lee Mack struggles with the idea, too, so he challenges Mitchell to demonstrate his technique for going from prone to standing on the board. The series is all the better for serving up these occasional gems of physical comedy among the verbal sparring.

Meanwhile, German stand-up Henning Wehn applies his bracing vowel sounds to a travelling yarn about Spanish trains, Moroccan enclaves, Interpol and a suitcase full of books. It's so bizarre, he convinces Mitchell's team it must be true. But is it?

In the last series, Bob Mortimer was responsible for one of the show's classic moments when he claimed to be able to tear an apple in half with his bare hands. After an interrogation by David Mitchell that reduced Patsy Kensit to hysterics, Mitchell's team decided he was lying. He wasn't - and, to everyone's delight, he proved it.

Mortimer returns tonight and we can only hope for similarly priceless TV. Other guests include RT's own Sarah Millican (who once claimed on the show to have weed on a car seat and blamed it on the dog) and actor David Harewood. If we don't get a Homeland-related anecdote/fabrication from him, it'll be very disappointing.