Panel games are so British

This is an interesting piece on why panel games are so British and of course the comments apply just as much to radio panel games as TV ones.

I like Dara O'Briain's comment a lot - "There’s an argument that what these shows really are is soap opera, as you get to know the personalities involved". The soap opera element is certainly a large part of JAM's success and I think why some people still hanker for the shows with that king of drama queens, Kenneth Williams. But even today, the clashes between say Paul and Nicholas are often the high points of a show.

From The Daily Telegraph of July 10

For an extra point, why are panel games so popular?

Over the next two days, Serena Davies can find almost nothing to watch except comedy quiz shows – which, she says, are a peculiarly British pastime

Cricket, drizzle, Yorkshire pudding: some things are quintessentially British. To that list, you could add one TV format – the comedy panel game. BBC2’s Mock the Week is back for a sixth series tonight; tomorrow, a second innings of Would I Lie to You? begins on BBC1. Also tomorrow, there are mid-series editions of BBC2’s QI and Channel 4’s 8 out of 10 Cats. Few formats can boast such abundance, loyalty or staying power –
and this in a week when the Big Daddy of them all, Have I Got News for You (next series: number 36), isn’t even on.

Dara O’Briain, presenter of Mock the Week and past participant on many another example of the genre, from Never Mind the Buzzcocks to HIGNfY, thinks there are so many panel shows because, as he puts it, “They have a format that can be pointed at anything.” He says someone’s even come up with a comedy panel show about sudoku, though that claim proves hard to verify.

In the USA, cheap television is a national pastime, yet panel shows are unheard of. “I think Americans like their funny delivered in a different way,” says O’Briain. “They do a lot more late night chat shows in America: the equivalent to getting on a panel show is getting on Letterman or The Daily Show. But we prefer the parlour game element of the panel show; it suits our dry humour. Whereas Italians like the giant variety show on a Saturday, we like people being wry and sardonic about stuff.”

For the visiting guests, a panel show can be a less intimidating prospect than a chat show appearance. “8 Out of 10 Cats is very celebratory. We want the celebrity guests to have a good time,” says Derek McLean, the series producer on both that show and Would I Lie to You?. “We don’t rip them apart. That’s very much at the front of our minds.”

Brits have also got panel shows down to a fine art. The genre plays to the strengths of many of our most popular comedians – spontaneity, and the ability to improvise. Viewers of BBC3’s Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive – in which researchers for a fictional panel game sat down before filming and fed one-liners to the guests – might imagine that all shows are scripted. But the better shows are a lot less scripted than
you might think (barely at all in the case of Mock the Week and Would I Lie to You?, although the participants do arrive with a few jokes in their back pockets). “Basically, panel shows are a chance to do stand-up on TV,” says O’Briain. “There are three hundred comics out there who are desperate to get on television, but there are very few shows where you can just do stand-up – so you end up doing it in little chunks on a panel show.” Experienced stars such as David Mitchell perform on so many panel shows because, as O’Briain puts it, “David can produce content out of air.”

It’s the talents of these comedians that make or break a show. “The casting is so important,” says producer McLean. “Ultimately what you hope when a show’s successful is that the format almost falls away. All you notice is how the characters interact and you’re almost not aware there’s a format anymore.”

The most famous example of this is Have I Got News for You, where the banter between team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton – and their torture of each week’s guest host – provides the dynamic of the show, and the discussion of the week’s news takes second place.

“There’s an argument that what these shows really are is soap opera, as you get to know the personalities involved,” says O’Briain. “There should be as much spontaneous stuff as possible, otherwise you could just email in a series of one-liners and actors could read them out.”

So the panel show may be a bit of a con, bluffing us into thinking we’re watching a show about the news, music, opinion polls or, er, sudoku – when really they’re sparring about nothing. (“Comedians are very lazy, remember,” says Mack, on this point). But with a dozen or so currently thriving in the schedules, the time when we’ll be watching actors reading out emails instead seems a long way off.