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.