Was Have I Got News For You ever really funny, even before lockdown?
It is important, said an official at the World Health Organisation this week, for people to try to enjoy themselves while in lockdown. Dr Maria van Kerkhove, an American, was perhaps unconsciously drawing on a Hollywood-ready script in her mind when she declared: “There is no lockdown on laughter.”
Sadly, there is in fact a lockdown on live studio audiences, who supply a ready stream of laughter for many a TV panel or chat show. Few shows can have suffered as much from this as Have I Got News For You, the BBC political comedy panel show, which is trying to soldier on through the lockdown even though it has become, I’m afraid to say, unwatchable.
The show is usually recorded on a Thursday night before a live studio audience, and then aired on a Friday. It has been a fixture for as long as I have been politically aware. The regular team captains, Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, have always riffed off each other with a mixture of sly asides and surreal non-sequiturs, even if Mr Hislop has become prone to a bit of unnecessary soap-boxing in recent years.
The lockdown version has all the panellists
The result is stilted and awkward instead of being witty and silly
appearing on little screens positioned in the places they would usually sit, like a themed conference call, and then attempts to follow the usual format. The result is toe-curling. It is stilted, awkward and self-congratulatory, instead of being witty, silly and spiteful. The whole thing has me wondering whether the usual format really is funny at all, or whether I’ve been party to a decades-long scam perpetrated by clever editing and the suggestive peer pressure of audience laughter.
Anyway, if this is what professional media hacks look like in a virtual studio, then we may well be in for a shock when our “virtual Parliament” begin operations in a few weeks’ time. None of MPS’ most common modes, whether they are currying favour with the whips, screaming into a crowded chamber or reciting off a cue card, is webcam-friendly.