However, I now see it's not - therefore putting the responsibility of ensuring a positive reception to a poor joke rests 100% in the hands of a live audience. No pressure of nothing then.
Luckily, I managed to grab two free tickets to be in one such audience for a new Channel 4 show "The Late List" (which, with Mark Watson and Alexa Chung as co-hosts, will hopefully receive a bit of critical acclaim and consequently my ugly mug on your box if the pilot makes it to air), and the fate of the show moreorless rested in the hands of us lot sitting behind the dozens of cameras and light fixtures all focused on the celebs in front of us.*To loosen our laughing chords (these don't actually exist, but for now they do), we had a "warm-up act" - a comic solely there to bring out a few laughs from the 80 or so of us cramped into Studio B at MTV Studios, Camden. I'll hand it to him, he was pretty damn good, and I don't recall a moment when we weren't in stitches as he jokingly picked on a few golden oldies, an artist, some evil twins, and anyone else who he didn't feel was up to par in life really. To be honest, his jokes could flatten most of the shows' hands down. They were unique, they were fresh, they were now. In comparison, the jokes on the show were, well, flat.
The show lasted a decent hour, with cameras constantly rolling - something I found pretty impressive, with the presenters' warnings of an imminent ad break seemingly the cue for make-up artists and waterboys to trounce the stage and glam up the hosts and guests in this window of a few minutes, before everyone took their places once more and the show went on.
Besides a few re-takes of several scenes (such as walk-ons, and leads introducing a VT) the programme was filmed pretty damn well. The professionalism of the hosts in particular was impressive - the way they switched from laid-back banter with the crowd (Mark Watson in particular) to professionals performing like monkeys on cue was amazing - not one person screwed up... if you don't count (an anorexic-and-therefore-sadly-no-longer-that-fit-looking)** Alexa Chung's brief memory lapse during one re-take forcing another take.
The programme itself was okay. To be blunt, the jokes sapped a bit of ingenuity from it, and I think if the presenters went more off-script like Mark did a fair few times then a better show may well have been produced. There were alot of puns a father would be proud of, but the rest of the world would cringe at, and as a further kick in the ... teeth ... we had to constantly laugh at them, loudly. 'The louder the better' we were told, which was pretty hard considering I had all my focus devoted to trying to follow the impossible order of giving '200% energy' to my fake laughing.Besides this, there were plenty of jokes that were thankfully a little better, and did actually make me laugh aloud without feeling like my back was being prodded with a sharp stick as a cue. I really hope the programme makes it on air... whether or not it stays there is another matter that I don't really care that much about, but I'm going to be on TV, and that's all that matters...
The Late List (hopefully) is yet to hit the TV schedule, but is planned for an 11pm showing on Channel 4 sometime this week. Nice, vague information for you TV folk there...
*The names escape me - I know one was Alex James, Blur's lead guitarist in the 90s, but the other has slipped my mind... besides being a female impersonator.
** Sorry...
