The end of the panel show.

[Chippy_Tea]

Looks like the BBC are going to scrap them, i will miss Have i got news for you but i don't really bother with any of the others, i wonder what **** they will replace them with.

The panel show’s death knell may well have been sounded by Harry Enfield. A man with an unwavering knack for zeroing in on the zeitgeist, in his and Paul Whitehouse’s 2014 tribute to BBC2, the Story Of The Twos, the pair mashed up every hackneyed panel show ingredient from a gurning, pen-tapping Ian Hislop to the Buzzcocks item where abuse is hurled at a lineup of extras into a Frankenstein’s monster of a programme that oscillated between soullessly automated performance and crowd-pleasing inanity. The echoing refrain was Paul Merton’s smug non sequitur of a punchline. “Is it a dolphin in a bathtub?” he mooted repeatedly, to deafening laughter.

When that sketch aired, it felt cathartic. At that point, the TV panel show which had been ubiquitous, wildly popular and, frequently, a joy was starting to seem stale. Fast forward two-and-a-half years, and the genre has truly fallen from grace: Never Mind The Buzzcocks has been axed, Stephen Fry has left QI, 8 Out Of 10 Cats has moved to More4 after its last Channel 4 series barely scraped a million viewers, while the past five years have seen Mock The Week’s ratings halve. Only the father of the trend, Have I Got News For You, continues to hold the fort, a sometimes relevant but hardly essential shadow of its former self.

So where did it all go wrong? Although the Harry and Paul skit was a scathingly accurate survey of the panel show scene, this was about more than individual programmes descending into smug parodies of themselves. Instead, the genre’s demise explains the way comedy itself has changed over the decade. First to desert the format was Buzzcocks host Simon Amstell, who quit the show in 2009 and used his subsequent sitcom Grandma’s House to denounce its meanness. But Amstell had not been alone in his cruelty. This panel show golden age was fuelled by a particularly furious form of banter, the kind encouraged by 8 Out Of 10 Cats’ caustic host Jimmy Carr, but probably best encapsulated by Frankie Boyle, whose Mock The Week residency made the show must-watch TV. Yet the way Boyle’s career has evolved is, like Amstell’s, indicative of how times have changed: in 2008, Boyle was making jokes on Mock The Week about the unattractiveness of young female Olympians; nowadays he’s writing op-eds for broadsheet newspapers about Conservative foreign policy.

This move within comedy towards nuance and insight and away from shouting down Hugh Dennis to deliver a gross gag about the Queen’s genitals has proved fatal to the panel show cause, and it stemmed partly from a rising consciousness about identity politics. At the turn of the decade, the combative and overwhelmingly male format began to attract accusations of misogyny from women including Victoria Wood, Mariella Frostrup (who called HIGNFY a “disgrace”) and Jo Brand (who observed that women were “perceived as window dressing” on Buzzcocks and “figures of ridicule” on They Think It’s All Over and HIGNFY). These voices of protest became so strong that in 2014 there was an edict from the BBC’s director of TV banning all-male panel shows.

By that time, the panel show was already embracing niceness. An increased sensitivity about offence combined with panel show overkill from Sky’s Duck Quacks Don’t Echo to Charlie Brooker’s You Have Been Watching, the cheap and easy-to-produce format was everywhere led to the commodification of anodyne “witty banter”. Things were changing on the comedy scene at large, too. On the Comedian’s Comedian podcast last year, Mock The Week host Dara O Briain observed that the new generation of guests Sara Pascoe, Romesh Ranganathan, Rob Beckett (also a team captain on 8 Out Of 10 Cats) were more “conversational” than vicious. This cosy style doesn’t exactly lend itself to the rambunctiousness for which the panel show was loved. Instead it favours parlour game-based offshoots of the genre that don’t rely on nastiness for entertainment 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Would I Lie To You?, Taskmaster as well as podcasts, which offer a more intimate kind of humour and are becoming increasingly popular with comedy fans.

In their day, there was something intoxicating about the no-holds-barred panel show back-and-forth. But there seems to be little room for it in a society that has begun to appreciate empathy and neither, conversely, in a more brutal political climate that is not particularly suitable for dissecting for cheap laughs. Perhaps, when the world lightens up again, they’ll be back.



https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/nov/29/tv-panel-show-format-comedy-mock-the-week

 

[Dutto]

I fear that ALL UK television programmes that take "the great and the good" to task will be removed from our screens in the near future ...

... and replaced by staged "reality shows"!

Remember Sasha Baron Cohen as "Ali G"? Whenever anyone questioned his stance on a subject, this white lad of Jewish extraction would ask, "Is it 'cos I'ze black?" ...

... and to watch the people squirm was a joy to behold. :thumb:

We seem to have too many "precious" people nowadays who want the limelight of public recognition but not the scrutiny that goes with it; be they in politics, business, entertainment or pure "celebrity".

What happened to the saying "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen!"?? :whistle:

 

[Ken L]

A format killed by the diversity agenda and political correctness.
We must (apparently) have a certain number of women on these shows (even if they're as funny as toothache) and we absolutely mustn't "offend" anybody...
The lack of decent content prompted me to give up my TV licence.
The question is, what happens to the BBC without international sales through BBC Worldwide, when their PC nonsense has finally killed all the geese that lay their golden eggs?
Top Gear, Doctor Who, NMTB, QI and now MTW?

 

[Linalmeemow]

That article is 9 months old, while it says ratings are falling where does it say the BBC is scrapping all panel shows? I'm pretty sure HIGNFY and QI won't be going anywhere soon. Mock the Week has been stale for at least 5 years and deserves to be killed off but the format itself will be around forever.

 

[Gunge]

A format killed by the diversity agenda and political correctness.
We must (apparently) have a certain number of women on these shows (even if they're as funny as toothache) and we absolutely mustn't "offend" anybody...

That's the problem - everyone has got to be 'nice' to each other. We need Bernard Manning back, he'd reyten 'em.

 

[Linalmeemow]

Bernard Manning was a c@nt.

 

[Clint]

...bed time!

 

[Gunge]

Bernard Manning was a c@nt.

He'd be the first to agree, but wouldn't get all huffy about it. I'm one too - and proud of it. C@nt Pride! I'm gonna organise a march!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

That article is 9 months old, while it says ratings are falling where does it say the BBC is scrapping all panel shows? I'm pretty sure HIGNFY and QI won't be going anywhere soon. Mock the Week has been stale for at least 5 years and deserves to be killed off but the format itself will be around forever.

Mail online -


The likes of Have I Got News for You and Mock the Week could soon become TV antiques after a BBC executive said panel shows would be ditched for formats that 'embrace technology'.

Entertainment commissioning editor Pinki Chambers said that anything that appears to belong in the 'entertainment-panelly-sort-of-quiz-sort-of-space' would not be commissioned in the future.

She said that the national broadcaster would instead look to create TV shows like The Mash Report, which was created by the authors of the satirical Daily Mash website.