We Need Answers, BBC Four, review

James Walton reviews We Need Answers, BBC Four's irreverent quiz show hosted by Mark Watson.

We Need Answers - Live on Twellyvision

We are launching the first ever (possibly) twellyvision experience. For, as the ninth episode of our glorious quiz airs on Tuesday night (at 10pm on BBC Four), we (myself, Mark Watson and Tim Key) shall both be watching and tweeting for your entertainment.

Frankie Boyle's been lanced, Russell Howard's wearing specs, but it's otherwise business as usual for satirical news quiz Mock The Week; a fusion of Have I Got News For You? and Whose Line Is It Anyway?, with irrelevant scoring and a weird mix of rounds that go from sitdown quiz to stand-up performances. It's all a mere conduit for ribpoking of the week's news stories, and MTW is perhaps more consistent than its contemporaries because four of the pannelists are regulars.

The downside of that consistency is that Hugh Dennis stopped being funny in the mid-'90s and Andy Parsons has never been funny, leaving host Dara O'Briain and Russell Howard to shoulder most of the comic burden. And, like a great many modern panel shows, a lot of guests just become glorified audience members, desperate to shoehorn in paraphrased segments of their standup material. This week, Mark Watson coped well as a guest (he's a veteran of this format), Patrick Kielty had the confidence to soldier through any difficulties he encountered, and while Milton Jones sometimes struggled to recycle his material appropriately, he at least didn't just sit back and do nothing. It helps that his stage persona is a spaced-out weirdo, so his weaker moments and slipups could be forgiven as part of his "act".

The top-notch panel show returns with guests Mark Watson, Patrick Kielty and Milton Jones - but how will it fare without the savage brilliance of Frankie Boyle?

No More Women:

Mark Watson, Tim Key and Alex Horne have taken the no-budget irreverence of their BBC4 game show We Need Answers to the web with this intensely competitive name game.

Filmed in dimly lit rooms around their offices and the BBC, as well as on-set, No More Women features Key and Watson simply naming famous people in turn against the clock.

The trick is for each of them to create a new rule before their opponent's next go - for example "no more names with the same letter twice in a row" or for ruthless players, "no more women".

To enliven what is essentially a pub game, Horne wittily commentates on the action off-camera in much the same offbeat way as on the main TV show, incessantly layering on graphics and fact boxes.

And as the tournament has progressed, they've roped in T4 presenter Rick Edwards and Radio 1's DJ Nihal to challenge the regular players in some "exhibiton matches".

Mark Watson responds to Political 'Think Tank'

On Thursday this week our very own We Need Answers found itself in the firing line of a report on public broadcasting from political think tank Policy Exchange.

No More Women for T4's Rick Edwards

So, after four tense head-to-heads between Mark Watson (losing) and Tim Key (winning), we thought it was time to take No More Women to the next level with what can only be described as 'An Exhibition Match'...

Comedy is undeniably a booming business again. Though it may never reach the fever pitch of rock n'roll, a legion of related book and DVD releases and a plethora of live tours suggest that it's in rude health. It may be too rude for some at times but 2010 promises no let-up.

Laura Solon and Dan Antopolski both hit the road this month. Solon, who won the Perrier in 2005, will air her 2009 Edinburgh show, 'Rabbit-Faced Story Soup', a tour-de-force of characterisation and tightly-written one-liners. Antopolski is no slouch when it comes to one-liners either and he'll be aiming to show that he has more to offer than the hedgehog joke ("Hedgehogs - why can't they just share the hedge?") that won him, via a public vote, Dave TV's Funniest Joke of the Fringe Award this year.

The ever more recognisable The Thick of It and In The Loop star Chris Addison goes on tour in February with his first brand new show for five years. Mock the Week host, Dara O'Briain has announced a massive 60-date nationwide tour from March to June culminating in dates at the Hammersmith Apollo. And, though he once told me that he didn't fancy the idea of "Leamington Spa on a Tuesday evening", the Irish comedian, and a former Edinburgh comedy award nominee, Andrew Maxwell is finally going to be unleashed on UK audiences for his first regional tour from April. Though many up and down the country will already know this dexterous comedian from his club sets, this will be the first time that his full-length excellence will have been witnessed outside of Edinburgh or of his native country where he has always been guaranteed large turnout.

Other tours to watch come from Mark Watson (from October) who recently gave a good account of himself in the chair of Never Mind The Buzzcocks, sketch troupe Pappy's and Jason Manford from June. And, watch out, the comedian that people love to hate, Frankie Boyle starts his 'I Would Happily Punch Every One Of You In The Face' tour at Glasgow's Kings Theatre in March. Perhaps he'll seal the gig with a kiss.

Inspired by Dylan Thomas's nostalgic anecdotal tale, Mark Watson's observant comedy is set in the household of young Owen Rhys (Oliver Bunyan/Mark Williams) over a series of Christmases in 1980s South Wales. Every year, the peace of the family home, where Owen lives with his gloomy father (Mark Lewis Jones) and obsessive mother (Ruth Jones), is disturbed by the yuletide arrival of Owen's two uncles (Steve Speirs and Paul Kaye) and nephew (Jamie Burch/Rhys McLellan). In a glimpse of three of these gatherings, while Owen and Maurice are seen maturing into young men, their male elders merely engage in ever-more puerile bouts of sibling rivalry.