What could be more disorientating for a comedian than not being able to laugh – for nine hours! – nor elicit laughter from anyone else in the room? Try all of the above on a sunny summer weekend while pretending it’s Halloween. Then force the comics to return to the scene of what one of their number, Phil Wang, calls “a cross between a gameshow and a psychological experiment”, and relive the whole ordeal for a man from the Guardian.
Is it any wonder Wang, Lou Sanders, Tom Allen and others come across as a little punch-drunk 24 hours after emerging from televised captivity on the smash comedy hit Last One Laughing? It’s the day after filming, at Elstree Studios, the show’s Halloween special which sees a unique tweak to its winning formula: contestants must not only refrain from laughter but from screaming. I didn’t know I was a screamer.
Turns out I am.” The participating comics – including paranormal obsessive Daisy May Cooper and that maestro of comedy-horror, Reece Shearsmith – seek not only to amuse each other but spook them too. Which makes sense, says host Jimmy Carr. There’s surprise in a joke, and there’s surprise in a jump scare.
Comedy and horror mess around in the same area. It’s the same bit of your brain.” Not that Last One Laughing is making serious moves into chiller territory: after all, why tamper with a format that’s given Prime Video such a huge hit? With over 2m people tuning in per episode, series one was the platform’s biggest ever UK launch.
The show later won a Bafta for Best Entertainment Programme. It’s not that kind of show. It’s ‘event TV’ – especially when it’s tied around something like Halloween – that’s great for bringing people together.” And for bringing comedians together too – the more so now LOL has joined Taskmaster as the shop window par excellence for standups making the leap from fringe to mainstream.
Alongside national-treasure veterans (Bob Mortimer in series one; Mel Giedroyc in series two), Last One Laughing reserves places for up-and-coming acts – see recent Edinburgh comedy award winner Harriet Dyer here. Getting involved, she says, was “a whirlwind, to be honest. But it was a dream come true.” All the participating comics agree, mind you, that you can’t treat LOL like a career opportunity.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
