Panel beating

First there was George Orwell, and then there was Nick Hancock. The history of Room 101 has secured it into the nation’s consciousness, whether it’s an image of John Hurt in clear discomfort during his first visit to Room 101 in the film version of Orwell’s great novel 1984, or Nick Hancock wise-cracking about how nobody likes but everybody has a Winter gas bill. It’s a familiar concept of a container for the things you hate. So obviously it’s time to re-invent it.

Having become a familiar format on TV and then radio, the BBC decided it was time to shake it up a bit and, not content with the usual shake of another new host –?in this case Frank Skinner, they also decided to turn it into another panel show instead of the pre-existing one-on-one interview format. A clear shortage of panel shows, we’ve just got to increase that number now. Let’s just go and turn Mastermind and Parkinson into a panel show too. Oh, they already sort of are, under the guise of University Challenge and The Graham Norton Show. It seems that it’s not just in the school rooms that one-on-one attention is under fire.

“It’s not just in the school rooms that one-on-one attention is under fire”

As panel shows go it’s not a bad sort. It’s more chatty than competitive, got a mix of interesting guests – the first episode sees Robert Webb, Fern Britton and Danny Baker competing in each round to get thier own particular pet hates banished into Room 101 – and it’s certainly amusing. In the same way that The Bubble, You Have Been Watching and Loose Women are. Fun enough, engaging, with little need to focus your mind too extensively and no real problem if you have to nip off to make a cuppa in the middle of it. Which it sort of was with the previous format.

When the show focused on a single interviewee and their distastes, if you missed five minutes you may have missed an entire subject and the gems of mirth and wisdom that surrounded them. It was a vaguely psychological celebrity interview, examining demons. Now that’s all a bit too passive, leaving I’ve Never Seen Star Wars to usurp the mono a mono role whilst confronting the guests to do the thing from popular culture they’ve so far managed to avoid.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Why turn something that stood quite well on its own for almost two decades into a more generic version of its former self, simply to appease those with a shorter attention span? And to get more guests on giving less away? it’s interesting that one of Danny Baker’s suggested expulsions is ‘panel shows’, with the added qualifier; “Using bottom of the bill comedians.” These aren’t bottom of the bill, but with everyone playing generic, will there be anyone left to be that special?

Room 101, BBC1, Friday 20 January
Victoria Nangle