Would I Lie To You?

Team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack return for a third series of this engagingly funny panel game. Rob Brydon takes over the hosting duties from Angus Deayton, which should improve the laugh quotient even more. But can there be any more humorous skeletons in Mack and Mitchell's respective closets? I'm sure there will be. A bigger mystery, though, is why this has been shunted into the post-news slot, when it should surely be better off in a 9pm or 9.30pm point in the schedule.

Eureka! Would I Lie to You

Exec producer Peter Holmes on keeping things fresh for third series of Would I Lie to You?

Angus gets the sack

A show source said: "Angus's jokes were wearing a bit thin and his act had got a bit tired. They wanted to freshen it up."

Comedian Rob Brydon to host Would I Lie To You?

Comedian Rob Brydon is to replace Angus Deayton as presenter on the new series of BBC1's panel show Would I Lie to You?

Get Angus Deayton to chair it, get David Mitchell and Lee Mack as team captains and Bob's your uncle. Or is he?

Tonight's possible whoppers in what is very sadly the last in a howlingly successful series include the notion that when David was little he used to dress himself as an 18th century nobleman.

Possibly even funnier is his rant at team-mate Michael McIntyre for inadvertently helping the other side by asking the wrong sort of questions.

They've also cunningly managed to shoe-horn in an astounding clip of the oddball art of bottom reading. It has very little to do with anything but it's so funny, who cares about details like that?

The format may be derivative, but team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack are such masters of their (admittedly rather specific) craft that the BBC could broadcast footage of them sitting together on a park bench, bickering like an old married couple, and I'd happily watch it.

There are many reasons to distrust this panel show, and not just because the participants spend most of their time lying through their shameless celebrity teeth. There's the suspiciously enthusiastic laughter that follows each of host Angus Deayton's excruciating autocue segues; the fact that the format is essentially that of a slightly ruder Call My Bluff (Call My Guff, if you will); and the baffling 'futuristic' set that makes the panellists look as if they're sitting behind pulsating tubes of Fruit Polos. It should be rubbish.

Instead, amazingly, it's a blazingly silly, raucously shambolic joy. And the off-the-cuff guffaws come think and fast. Let nonsense-based battle commence.

The impressive thing about this featherweight panel game (apart from how funny it manages to be) is how hard it often is to tell when the panellists are lying and when they're telling the truth. I know they're all professional performers, so we shouldn't be surprised, but even so. There are exceptions, of course: at one stage Frankie Boyle, famous as a comedian red in tooth and claw, finds it hard to pretend that he once wrote a collection of love poems, but it's still fun watching him try - not very hard.

The team leaders on this Call My Bluff-style show - Lee Mack and David Mitchell - are on sensationally good form. Unassuming and immensely accomplished, once again it is the comic highlight of the week. Honestly.

The truth is greatly over-rated, I reckon. Especially when the porkies this show dreams up are so much more entertaining. Its consistently hilarious off-the-cuff banter is perfect for a Friday night.