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The Chaotic Serenity of the U.K. Panel Show

There's never been a time for better quality, more varied television to watch and fall in love with: Netflix is pumping out addictive original programming at an alarming rate, be it a trashy reality series or fantasy epics; cable drama giants like FX and AMC continue to thrive, with the former's Devs on the horizon (and, spoiler alert, it's one of the best shows of the year). It's a great time to be a TV fan, but also an exhausting one. Just a few years ago, when someone would lean in and ask me "Have you seen ___?" the chances were they were talking about some 20-second video of a monkey driving a luxury sports car instead of, say, an acclaimed Finnish sci-fi horror well into its 11th season that I'd never heard of before (thankfully, as far as I know, no such thing actually exists... yet). The golden age of television demands your time and money, but also your attention. It's less a leisure activity than, sometimes, homework—the people who dutifully watched the final season of Game of Thrones know what I'm talking about.

So sometimes you need a break, but how do you take a break from... taking a break? I've found solace in a tried-and-true TV formula that's outdated and all but nonexistent here in the U.S. but continues to thrive elsewhere: The panel show.

There's no one prescribed format for a panel show but the basic idea can be broken down to its purest essence as "roughly half a dozen clever people making jokes for a while." Panel shows lack both the formal rigidity of a standup special or the hit-and-miss mayhem of an improv show: instead, there are loose rules to follow (or flout) as contestants see fit.

The most prominent U.K. panel shows at the moment are probably 8 Out Of 10 Cats, a half-hour panel show based around statistics; Q.I., a long-running show based around pub trivia and common misconceptions; and Would I Lie To You? a more personal flavor of panel show, in which contestants share pre-written anecdotes with the opposing team, who then have to guess if it's a lie or a true story.

The above clip is courtesy of "WILTY? Nope!"—a completely unofficial YouTube channel with nearly a quarter of a million subscribers that regularly uploads full clips, compilations, and episodes of the show, seemingly for no other reason and a fervent love of the game. Elsewhere, the thriving subreddit r/UKPanelShowsOnly collects full episodes of the dozens of currently-airing iterations for people around the world to watch. In fact, you can find plenty of full episodes, and even seasons, of the most popular British panel shows on YouTube. Thanks to lax copyright enforcement (and the acceptance that no publicity is bad publicity), these are often never pulled down from the powers that be over at BBC/Channel 4. To that end, let me suggest one of my favorite examples of the form ever aired: the entire 2007 edition of the Big Fat Quiz of the Year in which host Jimmy Carr tries hopelessly to maintain order during a quiz about the biggest news stories of the year while a team comprising of Noel Fielding and Russell Brand sows abject chaos throughout not only the evening itself, but the entire studio.

There have been successful versions of the form in the U.S. before, too. Whose Line Is It Anyway? still maintains a loyal fanbase, even if its 2013 revival hasn't been a roaring success. Comedy Central also had a moderate hit with @midnight, which cleverly encouraged Twitter users to chime in with their own bad jokes as the show went on. Still, the dominance panel shows still hold in the U.K. is, frankly, incredible, often taking primetime TV slots and drawing millions of viewers. There's even a dedicated cable channel for a lot of them now with the appropriately irreverent name "Dave".

My current panel show of choice is a Dave original, Taskmaster, in which five comedians partake in some truly ridiculous challenges over the course of eight episodes. Unlike a lot of panel shows, the lineup of contestants stays the same for the entire season, and the points do end up meaning something at the end of it all. "Tasks" range from "peel a banana with your feet, fastest wins" to "Cheer up this retired traffic warden," to "Do the worst thing to Alex (Taskmaster's co-host) then deliver the best apology." It's, in her majesty's parlance, bloody brilliant, and needless to say, there was a botched U.S. version that not only deeply failed to connect, but has now been entirely scrubbed from Comedy Central's website. Savage.

In an increasingly crowded television landscape, U.K. panel shows have provided a mini-oasis of pure, frivolous, enjoyable rubbish. They're inconsequential enough that I don't feel guilty playing them in the background, paying half attention while I clean the kitchen, and they're not so mind-meltingly trashy that I can feel my brain being smoothed over while I watch, a feeling many reality shows evoke. If you too are experiencing prestige television burnout, ask a nerd which British panel show is right for you. There is, by sheer virtue of volume, something for everyone.


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Originally Appeared on GQ