Second Chances

Ten O’Clock Live returned to British TV screens last night. I've been critical of the first series, reckoning that if the intention was to create a challenging alternative to Newsnight and Question Time, Channel 4 failed as miserably as if they had hired a bunch of Amish kids to write biting satire. So were lessons learned and improvements made?

Err, no.

Jimmy Carr is still doing sketches that define “truly wretched”. Charlie Brooker still looks uneasy playing live. Lauren Laverne takes “vapid” to a new level. Even David Mitchell looked like he couldn't be arsed. Quite what the point was in him arguing the importance of football with Alastair Campbell (a devoted Burnley fan) and Clarke Carlisle (a footballer) seems pointless when Mitchell freely admits he doesn't get “it”. If they’d had another fan doing the questioning, we may have got a decent debate about whether players should be held as heroes/idols, the role they can play in fighting racism/homophobia in sport and so on.

Today, I’m struggling to remember a single laugh. Laverne was given a pathetic counterpoint to withdrawing banker’s bonuses (an argument taken apart on the Mail Watch forum last week) to read on the autocue. Mitchell and Carr offering differing political stances was akin to watching two small children who have read the Ladybird Guides to Marxism and Capitalism.

On the plus side, reading back the complaints I had a year ago, at least they got rid of the cuts to audience chuckling.

I’ll be staggered if Ten O’Clock Live gets a third series. I was surprised it got a second. Brooker, for one, looks like he doesn't want to be there. His whole “what does a banker do?” routine was tired beyond belief. In his defence, his old anger and contempt may well be waning now he’s slipping into domesticity: he’s become a TV personality, whether he likes it or not, with another celeb as a wife and a baby on the way. The days where he could sit around playing video games and spit venom at vapid TV bods in his column are long gone. After all, he doubtless has to meet those people now. You had a good run, Charles, but you’re not one of us anymore.

What annoys most of us, however, is that C4 had the best show around that mixed comedy and news: the Daily Show. And they dumped it on E4, then ditched it altogether bar the weekly Global Edition. For that, I hate everyone involved with the entire channel. To knock out the excuse that putting together a weekly show can be tricky due to occasional lack of material in the news is somewhat pathetic, especially given the Daily Show manages around 90 minutes of it over four days a week. It also benefited from having a charismatic, confident host.

Meanwhile, we're left waiting for a mainstream English satirical show that can finally rid us of that tired corpse, Have I Got News For You.