A press release this morning. Ed Gamble to host new panel show Unacceptable, where teams of comics lead by Joanne McNally and Richard Ayoade compete to win over an audience with their wild opinions (as a wag on Discord points out, “it’s Argumental!”). At one point absolute bread and butter stuff for Dav… U&Dave, sorry.
But it’s not on Dave, it’s on TLC, who also put out a press release this morning suggesting Mock the Week will be coming back for an extended run in the Autumn (Dara’s a given, but it’s interesting Rhys James is the named regular, presumably he fits the Venn diagram of “was a regular in the original” and “is cheap”), suggesting the current run once you add all the repeats and whatever has been doing a million a week. Everyone thought Dave would pick it up after the BBC axed it, perhaps they felt they got burnt by picking up The Mash Report, but that was always going to collapse under the weight of its own self-importance.
Comedians you’ve heard of talking shit was basically the reason everyone quite liked Dave in the first place, but I’m trying to think of the last show they commissioned that was basically this – they’ve tried so hard to find the next Taskmaster (I get it! Comedians *doing* shit!) they seemed to have forgotten their bread and butter – I’m looking forward to The Way Out as much as the next Bar reader, but without any sort of reason for people to tune in to the channel I fear it’s just going to be another Battle In The Box. You don’t even get shows making jokes about being repeated on Dave ten years later any more. Sad.
Full episodes of Mock the week have also been added to the TLC YouTube channel and do150k-200k there alone.
I’m also pleased to see The Amazing Race Australia is starting soon on E4 I haven’t seen any of the last series. There would have been a time Dave would have given that a go too.
Does seem to have been a bit of purse-pruning at UKTV of late – a cursory glance at the U&Yesterday schedule shows relentless Bangers & Cash in whatever available slot, for instance – they’ve gone down the route of sweating the most they can out of a handful of shows and taking far fewer out-of-pattern swings than they perhaps would have done in brighter times. They’re far from the only outlet doing this (paging Challenge) but it does seem Dave’s lost some of the momentum it once had when fresh new stuff was popping in fairly regularly. Doesn’t help that a couple of big bets really didn’t pay off for them (Battle in the Box, Silence is Golden – though I personally quite liked the former) and have been turned off going for anything else ‘risky’. Even relatively well-known quantities like Red Dwarf are now off the table.
The TV pendulum’s also swung away from the kind of content Dave’s traditionally been strong in, the majority of broadcasters these days being particularly keen on genres that play well in reruns and streaming – predominantly drama and reality (and particularly crime-flavoured iterations of either) – even U&Dave recently commissioned its own police drama (Hit Point), seeing which way the wind was blowing.
Whilst cheap bantery panel shows still get commissioned, including by ‘second homes’ (Sky Buzzcocks, TLC Mock) there’s so many episodes of QI, Cats Does Countdown, Taskmaster and the like hanging around on the servers that they’re essentially wallpaper now, QI and 810CDC frequently reached for when BBC Two/C4 respectively find a sudden unexpected hole in the evening schedule.
Additionally, after nearly 19 years on Freeview, Dave’s stepped back from being special to something that’s “just there”, for some it’s never not been. TLC still has the novelty of being new to Freeview, similarly as Dave did in 2007, but it too will see that wear off over time…