IAN HYLAND
on last night’s telly
For Facts Sake ★★
I’m not saying BBC1 didn’t have much faith in this new panel show from Mrs Brown’s Boys frontman Brendan O’Carroll.
However, I did wonder why a brand new show took second billing to a compilation of old Peter Kay clips in this double dose of comedy. Perhaps the schedulers thought the programme title might shock those of a sensitive nature, so they decided to ease viewers in gently with some Phoenix Nights outtakes.
Then again, surely no one who has ever seen an episode of Mrs Brown’s Boys would be offended by a little F-wordplay.
To be honest, I was more troubled by the lack of a possessive apostrophe on Facts. In any case it was 10 minutes before Brendan dropped the first F-bomb.
This may have coincided with him realising he needed to do something drastic to liven things up a bit.
I’m a big fan of Mrs Brown’s Boys, so it pains me to say that, without the swearing and the slapstick, this is no more than a BBC2 teatime game show at best.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to create a format that is based on fun facts, but you have to be more fun and creative than naming its first round Thingy Majiggy. (N.B This is not to be confused with Jiggy Ma Thingy, which I believe is the working title of Seann and Katya’s freestyle routine for Strictly this Saturday.)
To be fair I did learn something. One of the rounds revealed that it is possible to run across custard.
Sadly, by the time Brendan got round to challenging Kirsty Gallacher to grunt louder than Maria Sharapova it felt more like I was wading through it.
‘‘ Without the swearing this is a BBC2 teatime game show at best