Would I Lie To You?

Ronnie Corbett is the very special guest on David Mitchell's team tonight. It's a chance for host Rob Brydon to try out his favourite Corbett impression on the real thing and also an opportunity for a very happy Lee Mack to fulfil a childhood dream.

Corbett's presence - small though it is - is a huge part of the show which also sees Julian Clary attempting to explain why he's got a unicorn in his garden and David discussing his unusual childhood friendship with a bucket.

The other two panelists, Sarah Millican and Holly Walsh, may be less well-known but in such legendary company as this they more than keep up their end of the banter - adding up to another perfectly breezy ­half-hour.

Fibbing to their host, fellow panellists and the general public this week are pouty newsreader Kate Silverton, comedian Hugh Dennis, presenter Ben Fogle and Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood. Dennis kicks off the truth and lies session by announcing that he has to touch his nose every time he says "France". Later, Silverton wants the other team to trust that she once presented the news with her foot in an ice bucket. And Fogle claims authorities on a small island interrogated him because they thought he was a spy. Worse still, he was accused - or so he says - of smuggling breadfruit plants. Laughs abound. There's even a tense moment: Revel Horwood over-investigates Silverton's foot story, perhaps failing to grasp that he's in a comedy panel show rather than an audition for a low-rent detective drama.

Often in this show a panellist manages, through artful stumbling, to make everyone else think that a true story is made-up nonsense. Much harder is to pick up a card and read a fabrication you've never seen before, then convince the assembled wits it happened. There's a solid-gold example of the latter tonight, though to say who pulls it off would of course spoil the point. Aside from that, it's a slow starter, but takes off when David Mitchell cross-examines Kevin Bridges over a horse the latter supposedly bought by mistake in Bulgaria. Also taking part, Prof Brian Cox, a giggly Keeley Hawes and Stephen Mangan.

Would I Lie To You? review

Series 4 of the best panel show on the box proves you don't need smut to get plenty of laughs.

Comedians ribbing each other about far-fetched tales - it's what Friday-night telly was made for. And this week's gathering of deceivers and doubters may be the sharpest yet. Joining chalk-and-cheese team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack are Ruth Jones (of Gavin & Stacey fame), Jason Manford (The One Show) and comedians Jack Dee and Peter Serafinowicz. In short, every one's a winner. Tonight's best round involves a mystery guest called Ian. The question is, did he save Jones's tortoise from death, sell batteries to David Mitchell via eBay, or get attacked by schoolchildren alongside Manford? Finding out is a blast. Plus there's a new round where host Rob Brydon has a go at fooling the teams himself. But did he really once steal Catherine Zeta-Jones's dinner money?

Full marks to whoever booked the panellists on tonight's Would I Lie To You?. It's a solid gold line-up this week. Joining David Mitchell, Lee Mack and Rob Brydon are Ruth Jones, Jason Manford, Jack Dee and Peter Serafinowicz - taking a break from what is practically a full-time job of filling the Twitter-verse with surreal one-liners.

This week they're all bringing their best poker faces to some very tall tales involving Ray Charles, a tortoise, a human sausage, a cheese and onion sandwich, Lee Mack's life expectancy, and David Mitchell's battery-buying habits.

And Rob Brydon's getting in on the act as well with his own true or false questions - did he really once steal Catherine Zeta-Jones' lunch money?

TV review: Would I Lie to You?

It's hard to devise a test to measure how funny a TV programme is but I've come up with one and the results are fascinating.

Would I Lie To You?: Truly Excellent

The competitive aspect of lying makes Would I Lie To You? even more engaging. Mock The Week, for all it's good humour is sometimes frustrating for its pointless use of a scoring system. It's also refreshing not to see rehearsed jokes trotted out time and again - the telling of anecdotes makes for much more spontaneous comedy.

There's a whole clutch of matey comedians, including Rob Brydon and Lee Mack, who seem to do nothing much except appear in various combinations on comedy panel shows like this. Would I Lie to You?, however, an update on Call My Bluff, is the most enjoyable format. David Mitchell and Ruth Jones also appear - their trick seems to be to tell their tall stories with deceptive incompetence, which is why the biggest-seeming lies turn out to be true - except for when they don't.

Jonathan Ross's old slot is taken up this week by the fourth series of this jovial comedy panel show - a safe play by the BBC, as they figure out how best to plug the gap left by Ross. It's hosted by Rob Brydon, and tonight features Fern Britton, Richard E Grant, Martin Clunes and Sanjeev Bhaskar alongside regular captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack, as the two teams attempt to fool each other into believing a series of plausible lies.