A new panel show hosted by David Mitchell has to be worth a look. It's a quotation-based game, somewhere in tone between Radio 4's Quote Unquote and QI, as they all try to guess who said what or complete famous quotations. On one team Richard Ayoade turns out to be perfect to duel with, gainsay and generally neutralise Jimmy Carr - hilariously so. Micky Flanagan and Charlie Higson are on the opposing team.

The rhythms of the game itself are still a bit halting (it's early days) but the guests are funny enough that it barely matters - when Micky Flanagan impersonated David Mitchell being a bailiff, it's almost as if we're watching Would I Lie To You? - and in this genre there's no higher compliment.

Does David Mitchell ever catch Jimmy Carr's eye across the set of a crowded panel show and think: 'I know exactly what you're going to say here'? More opportunities for celebrity ennui tonight. This new series sees Mitchell in the chair, Carr as a guest and other usual suspects Micky Flanagan, Charlie Higson and Richard Ayoade making up the numbers.

The wild card is the slightly out-of-his-element guest David Harewood, who has presumably been selected for his boomingly stentorian voice, because the core of the show is quotes - famous ones, outlandish ones and obscure ones. It's not the most striking panel-show concept we've ever come across and, notwithstanding a couple of mildly amusing moments - including Harewood's scarily good Obama impression - it never quite gets off the ground.

Mitchell's other regular panel gig, Would I Lie to You?, has punched above its apparent weight for years now, but we'd bet against this proving similarly enduring.

Was It Something I Said?, yet another comedy panel show (this one based, with great originality, around quotations), has been hand-tooled to inherit Homeland's audience, not only going out directly after the new adventures of Carrie Mathison, but also featuring actor David Harewood - Homeland's now blown-to-smithereens CIA director David Estes - as guest quotation reader.

Host David Mitchell has, of course, been recently conducting a media discourse with Fast Show creator Charlie Higson over whether or not comedy panel shows are blocking other, rather more expensive forms of television comedy. Higson was a guest last night, so the timing of that spat makes you cynically wonder whether it wasn't merely pre-show publicity, or whether Higson had a genuinely bad time recording last night's opener.

Mitchell's riposte has been that panel shows are often more funny than scripted comedy, a view to which I'm not unsympathetic, especially when Richard Ayoade was holding forth last night, effortlessly neutralising supposed team-mate Jimmy Carr. Did I write neutralise, or did I mean neuter? These macho cockfights are the reason why female comedians give such shows a wide berth, and needless to say, all six panellists were male. Mitchell had even grown a Mumford-lush beard, while Carr appeared to be in the process of growing one - it was as if their faces were actively leaking testosterone.

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