A Short History Of Everything Else - TV review

I know what you’re all thinking: Isn’t it about time somebody came up with a clever new format for a television programme?

Perhaps we get a set of comedians to sit about, using a few questions as a loose forum to show off their stand-up skills.

I mean, yes, it’s a bit like Have I Got News For You. And Mock The Week. Not to mention They Think It’s All Over, Argumental, Eight Out Of 10 Cats, Out Of Their League, QI and Would I Lie To You?

But it’s definitely still a fresh idea? Right? There’s life in that particular concept yet, isn’t there?

Well, there is according to Griff Rhys Jones, last seen bumbling about on a boat with Rory McGrath, and jabbing his finger irritably at the audience during a less-than endearing appearance on Question Time last month.

He’s now in charge of Channel Four’s latest highly inventive panel show, clutching the cue cards on A Short History Of Everything Else.

You don’t need telling about the format – it’s the same as the rest – but this time the questions are loosely themed around the history of the last 30 years.

Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker (me either) are the nominated captains, joined by Micky Flanagan and Kirsty Wark.

They’re a fairly well-established crew, too. Flanagan and Brigstocke seem to spend so much time sitting behind desks on panel shows that they might have spent their whole careers without pulling on a pair of trousers for all I know.

It’s a bit light on jokes, the spontaneity somewhat drained from it by the brisk pace.

Rhys-Jones occasionally chips in with a scripted gag to link the rounds together – “1983 was the year the pound coin was introduced – good job as before then you couldn’t get a trolley at Asda” – but the rapid-fire nature of the questions give it the feeling of a highly exclusive pub quiz.

There’s lots of old footage of people accidentally mispronouncing blow-dry, Clarkson getting splatted with pies, Thatcher waving at furrow-browed crowds, that protester lobbing a shoe at George W. Bush, and Fathers For Justice scaring the wits out of Eamonn Holmes.

But there’s not much structure, and it’s too fast-paced to really take up a subject and stretch the comic potential of any round.

Brigstocke’s riffs on Elton John and Lily Allen are as close as the programme comes to eliciting a chuckle from the audience.

Some of the archive footage is interesting, but with so little to tie it all together in the studio, I’m sure it would have worked better on another programme, with a bit more context.

In the end, Charlie and Kirsty win on points – as much as one team defeating another has any meaning any more in this ridiculously over-subscribed format – after sneaking through on the final round.

If the panel show is a genre that was getting tired, then ASHOEE isn’t so much going to reinvigorate it as tuck it up in bed with a mug of cocoa.

Why somebody with the comic pedigree of Rhys-Jones – it’s easy to forget just how good Not The Nine O’Clock News could be – felt it necessary to elbow his way into such a crowded market as this, with such a flimsy concept, is hard to explain.

At one point, Brigstocke asks: “We haven’t reached the bottom of the barrel yet, have we?”

I wonder whether, as he uttered those words, he realised how close to the truth he was.

Thom Kennedy