Would I Lie To You?

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.

On the face of it, the formula for Would I Lie to You? is almost insultingly simple - celebs and comedians revealing daft things about themselves that may or may not be true. As formats go, it's a feather duster, an airy nothing. Yet there's no other panel game on TV that so reliably creases you up. It helps when the chemistry between the guests comes together, as it does in tonight's opener for the fourth series. When guest Martin Clunes teases Richard E Grant over the latter's not-very-plausible claim to have recorded a dance version of a Shakespeare soliloquy, it feels like old friends sharing a joke. Even when nobody really believes a given tale - such as that Fern Britton briefly worked in the Post Office or that Sanjeev Bhaskar once crashed into Michael Winner's car - the fusillades of good-natured mockery are great fun. And to add to the fun tonight, there's a little hint of aggro between Clunes and host Rob Brydon.

The panel game it is acceptable to like returns with another amusing episode. The guests are mainly people who think that they're funnier than they are - Martin Clunes, Richard E Grant and Sanjeev Bhaskar - but nonetheless there's some amusing banter and a bit of a frost between Rob Brydon and Clunes, which is entertaining.

The best factoid in this show is that when he appeared in an episode of Inspector Morse, Martin Clunes deliberately called him "Cheese Inspector". That's not even one of the fibs in this week's show - it's just one of the inbetween bits of banter that gets chucked in for free. And the return of this series ratchets up the laughter quotient of Friday nights on the BBC (and Martin Clunes' career, come to that) by roughly four million per cent.

It makes you realise that all those years Clunes has spent stomping around ­Cornwall as the grumpy Doc Martin, pretending to be Reggie Perrin or making ­documentaries about dogs have been a waste of his talents. What he should really have been doing is spending his time larking about with his mates on comedy panel shows because I've never seen him enjoy himself as much as he does here.

It all adds up to a brilliant start to the series with team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack conjuring perfect comebacks out of thin air. Host Rob Brydon's impromptu impersonations add an extra coat of comedy emulsion to an already ­sparkling format. Tonight's other guests, Richard E Grant and Sanjeev Bhaskar put on their best butter-wouldn't-melt faces as they swear blind that they once rear-ended Michael Winner and made a hip-hop Hamlet. And is Fern Britton really a secret Morris Dancer?

Would I Lie to You? review

Would I Lie To You? is a more pizzazzy version of the gentle, bookish Call My Bluff of years gone by. I was barely aware of it until recently. Eventually the barren landscape of Freeview's late-night schedules resulted in me getting drawn in, only to discover that it's actually quite good. In fact I found myself laughing out loud two or three times during a single half-hour show, and I rarely laugh out loud.

Very slightly disappointing guests this week, although Lee Mack's team does manage to accommodate the widely differing talents of beaming West End musical star Michael Ball and sulphurous TV grump Charlie Brooker. Both are good value (Ball even makes a sly joke about drugs), but on David Mitchell's team Trinny Woodall and Reece Shearsmith seem, well, out of sorts. No matter. This show has no problem overcoming the handicap of less-than-sparkling guests to deliver a half-hour of laughs. Tonight the flights of fancy (or are they brute facts?) include Shearsmith's alleged spell working in a themed funeral parlour and Brooker's claim that he pretended to a girlfriend for six years that he was partially deaf. But crucially, do three members of the cabinet subscribe to David Mitchell's Twitter feed? And, if so, who are they? You'll have to watch to find out.

Tonight's is another ludicrously enjoyable edition of the fib-based panel show that will, if you're not very careful, have you giggling like a schoolgirl throughout. Mind you, there's an uncharacteristic lapse early on when guest panellist Sir Chris Hoy makes a claim that even by the standards of this series is clatteringly implausible. Do we for a moment buy the idea that Sir Chris was approached by Nasa to cycle on the Moon? I mean, come on. After that, truth and lies become harder to separate as we mull over whether Gabby Logan wears red underwear when she presents a show for the first time and whether Lee Mack was force-fed custard creams at school. Host Rob Brydon is on sparkling form and David Mitchell is, you won't be surprised to hear, effortlessly funny. But was the only time he ever went to a live music concert a trip to see Shirley Bassey?

Recently my son came up to my office with a laptop to show me a clip from what he described as "the world's funniest show". He was referring to Would I Lie to You?. This may or may not surprise you, depending on your understanding of what the average 11-year-old boy finds funny.

Having watched last night's instalment, my own professional opinion (I was recently criticised for having no TV-reviewing qualifications, but I have since started a night course) is that Would I Lie to You? is some way off being the world's funniest show, but is still pretty funny. How the game works is not important. It's been a long time since the rules of any panel show mattered, because there isn't anything at stake - not even pride. This one is basically just an opportunity for comedians to insult each other.

And that's a pretty reliable formula, because even if you don't like a particular comedian (lots of people don't like Jimmy Carr, for example), you'll enjoy the bits where everyone takes the piss out of him. Last night's panel consisted of four funny guys and Terry Christian. And Jamelia, who also isn't funny, except in the sense that she's funnier than Terry Christian. But we can all put that on our CVs.

The highlight for me was the deeply improbable claim that Marcus Brigstocke was once a podium dancer at the Ministry of Sound, during weeks off from his other job working on an oil rig. This turns out to be completely true. "So Flashdance is actually based on your life," said Jimmy Carr. I think that's funny. Sue me.