I Literally Just Told You (new season)
★★★½
Monday, 8.25pm, SBS
In Jimmy Carr’s autobiography-cum-self-help tome, Before and Laughter, he stresses the importance of hard work and single-minded drive to success, and nobody can accuse him of not living his principles: over the last two decades he’s done a decent job of becoming the most visible man in showbusiness. The myriad panel and game shows that he has taken the helm of have made his Thunderbird-puppet appearance, gleefully barbed tongue, and bizarre laugh ubiquitous, and as long as you enjoy his particular brand of bubbly acidity, this is a marvellous thing.
Dermot O’Leary, Judi Love, David Walliams and Kerry Katona with Jimmy Carr in I Literally Just Told You.Credit: SBS
Carr’s latest endeavour, I Literally Just Told You, continues his history of twisting traditional formats around. The popular 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown combines chaotic adult panel comedy show with staid afternoon quiz staple, and he previously hosted Distraction, a quiz show in which contestants had to answer questions while being subjected to intense, often painful and sometimes X-rated ordeals.
This is a more innocent exercise than that (well, for the most part): the idea behind ILJTY is simply that, instead of having to recall facts they might have accumulated throughout their lives, contestants must answer questions written during the show, about things that they’ve been told while it goes on. This means it’s not so much about having a good memory as about paying attention to every remark, aside and piece of information that is imparted by host, announcer or even other contestants – because every little thing could come up in a question later.
A little added pleasure is that at the head of the question-writing team is the astrophysicist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, host of The Sky At Night and one of the most naturally magnetic presences on British TV. Aderin-Pocock plays a role slightly akin to Richard Osman on Pointless, chipping in with bonus interesting facts from time to time – the difference, of course, being that I Literally Just Told You is a lot more chaotic than Pointless and Jimmy Carr is a lot more inclined to insult comedy than Alexander Armstrong. The point, though, is that having Aderin-Pocock’s effervescent personality and unflagging merriness on deck is a sweet counterpoint to Carr’s penchant for abuse – academic experts turned TV stars are 10 a penny, but few have the happy combination of scientific galaxy-brain and charm of Dr Maggie.
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But back to the quiz. The challenge with launching a quiz show in the Year Of Our Lord 2024 is finding a new format, as the number of predecessors is so large, and the number of permutations on the theme so vast, that coming up with something genuinely new is getting harder. Long-lasting venerable formats like Jeopardy and Mastermind thrive on history, while newcomers desperately try to find different ways to present people answering questions for prizes. To survive you better have a strong hook, and while it’s too early to say whether ILJTY is going to join the ranks of the titans, its hook is, if we may humbly suggest, a real cracker.
The genius lies not just in the unusual nature of the questions, or the different flavour of tension introduced by having questions written live in the studio (some of the best moments come when Jimmy announces that the question writers need a moment more to complete the next round, and heads into the audience for some lovely silliness). It’s the perfect recognition of the fact that the appeal of the quiz show derives in large part from viewers’ enthusiasm for engaging in the quiz themselves. Everyone wants to have a crack and see if they can beat the contestants, and in this format, nobody is excluded from that exercise. You don’t need voluminous general knowledge to play the game: all you have to do is pay attention to what’s in front of you, and if you can catch it all, you’ll do well. It’s the most democratic quiz you’ll find, while not being dumbed down – it’s still a proper challenge.
Some will prefer more traditional, sedate quiz shows, as opposed to the kitschy set, comedic diversions and general party-night vibe that is typical of a Carr-hosted quiz. But if you’re after fresh ideas and a focus on everyone having a laugh rather than intense Mastermind-like suspense, this is what you want.
