Would I Lie To You?

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.

It may be as lazy a format as you'll find on television at the moment, but that doesn't stop Would I Lie To You? from being thoroughly enjoyable.

Some comedians dislike Mock The Week as it is - quite obviously - heavily scripted, but the whole point of this show is that the panelists have to make up stories (or make the truth sound implausible) on the spot. What's also quite cool, of course, is that we do find out funny little facts about the panelists every week.

David Mitchell is fast becoming king of the panel game. He's scarily good at them, so it's no wonder he's called on to lend his wits to shows from QI to Mock the Week, and from Have I Got News for You to a Radio 4 show called The Unbelievable Truth that's not a million miles from this.

This is the one where he and Lee Mack are team captains and Angus Deayton is chairman. The contestants have to bluff their way through various tales while their opponents work out which are true. So, for instance, did Gabby Logan really once steal red liquorice from Madonna's dressing room? Under close questioning from Rob Brydon it looks less and less likely. And is the mystery guest really Logan's former gymnastics rival, Mack's swimming teacher or, in fact, Robert Webb's ex-girlfriend?

Brydon and Mitchell make a great pair and what could be a stilted format is saved by some brilliant interplay and Brydon's flights of fancy.

Back for a new series, this hugely entertaining panel show is a variation on Call My Bluff based on the simplest of ideas. Each team member reveals a peculiar or embarrassing personal fact. The other team is allowed to cross-examine him or her to decide whether or not it's true. It features an A-list of good-humoured and quick-witted liars. With Angus Deayton caught in the crossfire, it couldn't get much better.