Would I Lie To You?

Radio Times review

No sooner has she left The One Show sofa, the ubiquitous Alex Jones is back, this time on the panel show in which participants attempt to hoodwink their opponents with absurd facts and plausible lies about themselves. It's all in good fun, and host Rob Brydon and team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack know how to squeeze the maximum amount of laughter from each absurd suggestion. Comedy actor Greg Davies, performance poet John Cooper Clarke and TV presenter Rick Edwards are also along for the ride in this edition.

Radio Times review

Last week it was judo, this week netball is the sport at which Lee Mack must feign competence, claiming to have been made captain of his (or possibly his wife's) netball team. Could he be pulling off an elaborate double bluff of the kind you occasionally get on this programme, where someone's flailing inability to sound plausible is really a smokescreen to cover the fact they're telling the truth?

Fans of the show will be glad to learn that Bob Mortimer is on Lee's team. Nobody unhitches the game from its moorings so brilliantly, this time with tales of a childhood game he claims to have played called Theft and Shrubbery. Also tonight: three different impressions of Alan Hansen.

TV review: Would I Lie To You?, BBC1

Maybe I was out when the trumpets were blowing but it seemed to me that Would I Lie To You? slipped back onto BBC One on Friday night for its ninth, yes, ninth, series without much of a fanfare. Which is a shame. This is one of my favourite panel shows. It is devoid of cynicism, packed full of laughs.

Rarely does this parlour game deliver an unfunny episode ... and it hasn't done that this week. One of WILTY's strengths is drawing out the immaculate timing that lays dormant in non-comedians: Moira Stuart says nothing for several minutes, before authoritatively laying down one of the funniest ad-libs of the night. Her description of how she enjoys a crispy jacket spud smothered in molten KitKat is also heavenly. Plus, did Danny Dyer really wear a zebra mask on a trip to the zoo to deter autograph-hunters?

Would I Lie to You? preview

It's almost the panel show equivalent of a sitcom.

Would I Lie to You? books to be published

Publishing company Faber has acquired the rights to publish two books based on the BBC comedy panel show Would I Lie to You?

Radio Times review

"I find nothing more relaxing than making scented candles," is the claim Adrian Chiles reads from his card to start the show. It's a splendid image - the football presenter dabbling with hot wax and perfume - and even better, it kicks off a heated dispute about what exactly candlestickmakers sell, which gets Lee Mack, Rob Brydon and David Mitchell barking at each other in a surreal shouting match.

Otherwise it's an episode held together by Mack's artful embroidery - right up to the point where guest June Brown almost collapses the whole format by replying in an exasperated tone, when asked if she thinks a story is true, "I don't see why it's so important!"

Radio Times review

On the face of it, the formula for WILTY? is childishly simple. Celebs and comedians reveal 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 panel game on TV that so reliably creases you up. The battle of wits between David Mitchell and Lee Mack - or rather between their adopted roles of unworldly toff and philistine oik - always chucks up comedy sparks, but something in the vibe of the show keeps it likeable, feel-good and family-friendly. There's a reason it has won the British Comedy Award for best panel show three times: it's the best panel show on TV, end of.

Radio Times review

"Do you touch the frogs?" It's the kind of question you'd only hear in a David Lynch film or an episode of Would I Lie to You? Here, team captain David Mitchell dons a helmet with a light on it that he maintains is his "frog-lamp" for wearing on nocturnal trips to check on the frogs at the bottom of his garden. If that strikes you as a rattlingly daft claim, you're in good company, but stranger things have been posited on this show and proved true. At the bottom of Ray Winstone's garden, meanwhile, he wants us to believe he has a scale model of Stonehenge. A Winstonehenge, if you will.