Lie mode engaged.

[cwickham]

Let it be known that Craig’s ep of WILTY TXes on 2 Feb

https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/would_i_lie_to_you/episodes/17/6

Topic

[Flap Jack]

Ooh. OK, Would I Lie To You? isn’t something I usually seek out, but I’ll be sure to watch this one. Even if it does have Jeremy Vine in it.

I wonder if any Red Dwarf behind the scenes stories will make an appearance.

[Dave]

[Ian Symes]

[Jenuall]

[Ian Symes]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

This thread will be funnier than anything transmitted. Please carry on. 

[Dave]

[clem]

[Dave]

[Ian Symes]

[Dave]

I burst out laughing at that.

[Captain Bollocks]

[Frank Smeghammer]

Pardon the Facebook tier meme, I know G&T has higher standards but I think in this instance I have a pass

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Dave]

[clem]

Craig’s WILTY is on this Friday and there’s a clip here now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0h72037 

[Dave]

[Ian Symes]

[Stephen Abootman]

[Frank Smeghammer]

[clem]

[Dave]

[loadoftottnumb]

Ugh Jeremy Vine. 

Don’t watch this show often but enjoy it when I do, look forward to seeing it. 

[Flap Jack]

Anyone else watch? It’s to be expected of WILTY, but it was a lot of fun. Our boy did good. And he got a “Home truth” too, rather than being on the “This is my” team, aka. The Coward’s Way.

I do find it impossible to watch an episode of WILTY without getting freshly annoyed by “quickfire lies” though.

[clem]

Yes I always watch WILTY anyway, my favourite of the panel games by a country mile these days. It was a cracking episode. Craig did very well and I hope they have him on again, in more ways than one. 

I do find it impossible to watch an episode of WILTY without getting freshly annoyed by “quickfire lies” though.

You mean because it’s just another round of Home Truths? I think maybe they’ve already seen the “quickfire” cards in advance so can have lies prepared? Either way it’s a bit of a daft name for the round. 

[cwickham]

In the early series Quickfire Lies was more of an accurate name, but it’s slowly shifted over the years to basically being functionally identical to the first round except for the “chosen ostensibly at random” bit. They’re given the This Is My stories in advance because reading off a card wouldn’t work for that round but they don’t know what’s on the card in the first or last rounds.

[Flap Jack]

Right, the main annoyance is that Quickfire Lies is functionally just a continuation of Home Truths, and the lies aren’t “quick” by any metric. But also, even the “lies” part is… well, a lie. Because there’s literally only time for one. A more accurate name would be “The Final Lie” or something.

Given that they still don’t know what the card will say in advance and the contestant chosen isn’t random (because it has to be the person on the Home Truths team who didn’t get a Home Truth), I think the only difference is that a Quickfire Lie can be a possession? Or can that also happen in Home Truths?

[Dave]

[cwickham]

It used to be the case that Possessions were only in Quickfire Lies but they started seeping into Home Truths at some point.

Also, having been in the audience twice and read a lot of reports from other audience members, it’s not unheard of for a story to be in Quickfire Lies during the recording, but end up in Home Truths in the edit, or vice-versa.

[Flap Jack]

Ah, OK, interesting, thanks. So there really is no difference, even a small one.

[cwickham]

Well, Home Truths is the four guests in order, and Quickfire Lies does have an element of randomness to it. Both of the recent recordings I’ve been in the audience for had four turns in the quickfire round but there have definitely been more in the past – there used to be a very good Mitchell & Webb fansite back in the day which reported back from each recording, but this Livejournal community where they reproduced their Series 4 reports is all that remains now: https://wilty-fans.livejournal.com/

[Flap Jack]

Makes sense, but I just mean in terms of what actually makes the edit, the Quickfire Lie is just another Home Truth for whoever didn’t get a Home Truth on that team. (Unless it can actually be any of the other 4 panellists, but still, it narrows it down.)

Interesting to know that all 4 guests get a Home Truth at the filming though. Does that mean both teams get a “This is my… ” as well? That sums up to an awful lot of extra coverage.

Clearly there should be a “Would I Lie A Lot More To You?” where all contestants participate equally in all categories and the episodes are a full hour long. I bet I’m the first one to come up with that idea, too.

[cwickham]

No, they only do one This Is My. (I think in the Quickfire round they try to prioritise the two people on the team who weren’t claiming the This Is My guest belonged to them, so they’ve got more options in the edit whilst making sure everyone gets something to do in the broadcast version, but not always.)

Anyway, because I can’t pass up the opportunity, you can find my writeups of the two episodes I was in the audience for here: https://cwickham.blogspot.com/search/label/recording%20reports

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I haven’t seen WILTY in years, but really it’s a one trick panel show whereby contestants either tell a funny story or bullshit a lie.  Is it any wonder the “rounds” are all functionally the same thing.

[RunawayTrain]

I’ve just recently rewatched all of the WILTYs available on iPlayer and caught up last week – the timing was not at all intentional but a happy coincidence.  Just watched this one now; enjoyed it and it would be great if they had Craig back in the future. 

I too find it moderately irritating that the Quickfire Lies have changed over time – from my viewer’s perspective it worked well before, but maybe the guests weren’t completely happy with it or something.  But overall I do find WILTY very amusing, and during the rewatch I have genuinely cried with laughter.

[si]

Let’s face it though, nobody can match Bob.

[Dave]

Bob’s dentistry anecdote and “I do beg your pardon, but we are in your garden” are two of the biggest laughs I’ve ever had while watching TV.

[clem]

The ‘egg in bath’ one might be my favourite of Bob’s. David tying himself in knots over Bob’s stories is always brilliant. Shame Bob’s not on the current series, the first one he’s missed for ages. 

[Frank Smeghammer]

I think you have to realise that panel shows pretty much make it up as they go along.

Mock the Week was the best for this. Dara would hand a round to a team totally arbitrarily and using basically no measurable metric by which a team can win. Then you can win every round but at the end, because nobody is keeping score, he can just pick the other team because its not a real gameshow and the points and rounds do not matter.

“This weeks winners are…I don’t know….Andy’s team?? Probably??”

[Warbodog]

The ‘egg in bath’ one might be my favourite of Bob’s. David tying himself in knots over Bob’s stories is always brilliant.

In Bob’s autobiography, he says he instantly regretted saying Chris Rea had already run the bath and cracked the egg for him, thinking he’d blown it, and was relieved that they instead fixated on the temperature aspect.

[Flap Jack]

I think you have to realise that panel shows pretty much make it up as they go along.
Mock the Week was the best for this. Dara would hand a round to a team totally arbitrarily and using basically no measurable metric by which a team can win. Then you can win every round but at the end, because nobody is keeping score, he can just pick the other team because its not a real gameshow and the points and rounds do not matter.

Sure, though it does depend on the show. Taskmaster probably being the extreme counter example.

The Home Truths/Quickfire Lies bugbear isn’t really about the competition aspect, though, it’s about the theming. It would just be better if rounds with distinct names actually played differently.

Although as a sidenote I do sometimes think that panel shows with tacked on scoring systems could stand just to get rid of them. If they’re directly parodying things, like for example Shooting Stars does, then that’s fine, but it doesn’t really feel like it adds anything for WILTY or HIGNFY.

[RunawayTrain]

Sure, though it does depend on the show. Taskmaster probably being the extreme counter example. 

Currently watching the PG versions of Taskmaster (first time of watching TM all the way through – I’ve seen bits of the originals but not even a whole episode, as far as I can remember) and apart from it being utterly brilliant, one of the most satisfying aspects of it for me is Greg has – and explains – a reasoning for how he scores everything.

[International Debris]

The quickfire lies round gradually becoming less quickfire is generally in keeping with other comedy panel shows. When you watch early HIGNFY, it was fast-paced, with numerous questions per round, often including one or two without many jokes that were largely an excuse for Ian to genuinely lay into someone. As time went on, more and more time would be given over to individual questions and longer answers. It means when you get a genuinely funny bit, it’s given room to be really entertaining, but it also removes any real pretence of the show being a quiz show as opposed to just a comedy improv show.

[Formica]

one of the most satisfying aspects of it for me is Greg has – and explains – a reasoning for how he scores everything.

It has been disappointing in the last few years – although maybe it will trend the other way again soon – how flippant Greg sometimes gets with the scoring, but even then always having reasoning never really goes away.

[Podey]

My pedantic nitpick with WILTY is that “This is my” is called “This is my” even though the contestants don’t say “This is my”, they say “This is [name]”. It should be called “Who am I?” or something like that. 

[Warbodog]

one of the most satisfying aspects of it for me is Greg has – and explains – a reasoning for how he scores everything.
It has been disappointing in the last few years – although maybe it will trend the other way again soon – how flippant Greg sometimes gets with the scoring, but even then always having reasoning never really goes away.

Taskmaster was one of my favourite shows for a few years, a total joy, but when they went to 10-episode series it started to drag and I eventually had too much of a good thing. (So I understand the people who love Red Dwarf but don’t *need* to watch the Dave era, if they’re similarly full).

[Moonlight]

(So I understand the people who love Red Dwarf but don’t *need* to watch the Dave era, if they’re similarly full).

I’m very tempted to believe 95% of those people didn’t like Back to Earth and assume that they won’t like anything past it so they never gave it a chance.

[si]

In Bob’s autobiography, he says he instantly regretted saying Chris Rea had already run the bath and cracked the egg for him, thinking he’d blown it, and was relieved that they instead fixated on the temperature aspect.

They had Bob and Suggs on episodes after I’d read their autobiographies, so I already knew that certain stories were true when they came up.

[Formica]

Taskmaster was one of my favourite shows for a few years, a total joy, but when they went to 10-episode series it started to drag and I eventually had too much of a good thing.

There is something very lightning-in-a-bottle about the early short series, even in their duller moments. In my opinion that’s usually more to do with that almost every idea was completely fresh and they didn’t have to append seven conditions to each task because people weren’t all finding every single loophole yet than it is length of the series. (And that Greg was never phoning it in in the early days the way he sometimes does now.) Even still, probably 3 (or 4) of my 5 favorite series are 10-episode ones, and even the ones that are duller leave me with a great sense for more nuanced personalities and dynamics that the short ones couldn’t always.

[Podey]

I’m very excited about John Robins being on the next series, he’ll make for great entertainment value (and is about as close as we’d ever get to Alan Partridge doing it, probably).

[Author]

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