Room 101 – review
Room 101 is not quite ready to be consigned to Room 101 yet, writes Sam Wollaston
The broadcaster Danny Baker is like a suicide bomber. How so? Because one of the things he tries to send to Room 101 (BBC2) is “panel shows with bottom-of-the-bill comedians where halfway witted people are pretending to find things funny”.
Whoa! Room 101 in other words, surely? The show has only just come back after a four-year sabbatical, and he is trying to do for it, from the inside. It’s like he is ripped off his coat, and there it all is, strapped on and wired up, ready to take them all out, himself included. No wonder the others – fellow panellists Fern Britton and Robert Webb, along with new host (and bottom-of-the-bill comedian?) Frank Skinner – are looking seriously worried.
Fortunately, Frank Skinner is an ice-cool bomb (and situation) disposal expert. Well, it’s not hard, to be fair; as host he has the right to state no and send something else (the Jeremy Kyle Show, as it happens) to Room 101 instead.
And that is just about right, I think. Room 101, back after its long break, probably is not quite ready to go to Room 101 (though you could well argue that it has less right to survive than Shooting Stars, which the BBC really has sent to Room 101). It may not be state-of-the art, cutting-edge tv any more (frankly, it never was), but there is something quite nice and reassuring about it. The new format, with three guests, makes it more dynamic, with more banter and jollity. And Skinner is a good host, too. He may not be Jack the lad anymore, but nor is he really bottom-of-the-bill. I like the maturer Frank, Jack the middle-aged man – he is softer and wiser, less snarly.
So Jeremy Kyle goes instead (hard to argue with that). And Fern Britton gets to send homework. Yay! Children everywhere rejoice … if only it was real. Fern doesn’t like the amount of time her own children spend on it. And Robert Webb’s bald patch – which he is funny about – goes. All consigned to Room 101, which itself is reprieved.
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Submited at Saturday, January 21st, 2012 at 8:00 am on Entertainment by ethan
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