When the satirical panel show Mock the Week was cancelled by the BBC in 2022, host Dara Ó Briain ensured it had a proper send-off, with the panel sporting tuxedos for the final episode.
At the time, the Bray-born comedian and presenter said he was satisfied with the show’s farewell victory lap at the end of its 17-year run,
However, following strong audience demand, Mock the Week is now returning to our screens with a brand-new nine-episode series on the free-to-air channel TLC, with Ó Briain once again at the helm.
The panel show, which features six comedians answering questions about the week’s news, will return in a new 60-minute format, including fresh rounds devised especially for the relaunch.
Old favourites will also make a comeback, including If This Is the Answer, What Is the Question?, Wheel of News, Picture of the Week and Scenes We’d Like to See.
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Dara O’Briain (TLC)
Alongside Ó Briain, rotating guests will include Mock the Week veterans Hugh Dennis, Russell Howard and Ed Byrne, as well as Katherine Ryan, Lou Sanders, Rhys James and Sara Pascoe.
Reflecting on the show, Ó Briain (53), says the reaction was interesting, as he felt people were angry while it was on air, but then sad when it was cancelled.
“Mock the Week was a strange show, partly because it was on the BBC, and partly because the Conservatives were in government for the entire last 14 years of it,” explains London-based Ó Briain.
“We were on air during a period when people became very angry about things, and they were very angry at us all the time.
“Of course, the most vocal people are usually the angriest ones, so that’s all we ever heard. Right up until the show was cancelled, it felt like constant criticism:
“‘How dare you say this?’, ‘How dare you say that?’, ‘You’re too controversial’, ‘You’re too left-wing’, ‘You’re too right-wing’. Whatever it was, we always seemed to be stuck in the middle of that storm.
“Then the show got cancelled, and suddenly loads of people said, ‘Oh, I really liked that show’. And you think, oh, OK, because all we’d ever heard before was anger.”
He adds, laughing: “After that, people became more reflective and realised, actually, it was just a silly show, and they’d enjoyed it.
“So it’s nice to be back. We’re returning off the back of that goodwill, three years ago we ended on this lovely wave of people being very happy about it.
“Now we’re back again, and all we can really do is screw that up. All we can do is ruin people’s happy memories and end up right back where we started, with everyone being angry again. So that’s something to look forward to.”
Now we’re back again, all we can really do is screw that up. All we can do is ruin people’s happy memories
— Dara Ó Briain
Dara O’Briain (TLC)
Ó Briain says this series will be tackling the Labour government and Donald Trump’s United States presidency.
“It’s interesting that we’re coming back to this moment now. We didn’t exactly leave a calm world behind.
“We left with Trump, and now we’re essentially returning to him again. We left with the inauguration riots, and now here we are back in it, like ‘Oh, here we go again’.
“The biggest change for us is that it’s no longer a Conservative government. Now, it’ll be about Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.”
Ó Briain says the new format allows for more talking and breathing room, and with the move away from the BBC, the panel will no longer need to maintain minute-by-minute partisan balance.
“The new government changes things,” he explains.
“All the people who used to give out to us for being one thing or another, that automatically flips.
“And I know some people go, ‘Oh, well, it’s clear because you’re not on the BBC anymore’. No, mate, it’s different. It’s different people complaining about different things.
“I also don’t think that, because we’re on a commercial channel rather than the BBC, people will feel the need to literally hold a stopwatch and time how long we spend talking about one party versus another, which they genuinely used to do as if we were Question Time or something.
“People would say, ‘Well, you talked about Labour for this many minutes and the Conservatives for this many minutes, why are you so horrible to…?’ And you’re like, you’ve all got to relax.
“I remember once getting tweets from two different people at the same time – one saying, ‘I can’t believe you’re so right-wing’, and the other saying, ‘I can’t believe you’re so left-wing’.
“I sent them to each other and said, ‘You’re both saying this at the same time’. And to be fair, they went, ‘Yeah, OK, fair point’. But we really did get grief from every direction.
“I just don’t think we’ll get to the same level of that now. There’s no sense of public ownership anymore, and while scrutiny would be lovely and people actually watching the show, I don’t think we’ll get the same level of purely partisan reaction. I’m not saying I’ll miss it.”
Mock the Week has historically served as a springboard for up-and-coming comedians, which Ó Briain describes as a “finishing school” for fresh talent.
“We always loved that role, being a kind of finishing school or like a debutante ball, I suppose,” he says.
“You’d have people who’d done Edinburgh and done really, really well, and we’d basically say, we now present to you this season’s new faces.
“They’d come onto the show and, at first, there was often that moment where they were finding their feet. You could see the nerves, that sense of, oh my God, who am I here? Where do I fit on this show? But by the second series they were in, they were up and running.
“It was always really nice to be that show. If you look back, you can see people sweeping through it, passing through on their way to other things. Romesh Ranganathan, Sara Pascoe and James Acaster passed through, different generations coming through, then moving on.
“And we’d just wave them on, like proud teachers. They’d come to us, graduate, we’d shed a single tear, and then welcome in the next influx, like something out of a boarding school novel or Malory Towers.
“So that’s what’s exciting now. The headline names are always the people you already know, of course. But the ones who’ll really grab your attention are the new ones.”
Mock the Week returns on Sunday on TLC (Freeview channel 12, Freesat channel 144, Virgin Media channel 113)
Dara O’Briain is back with a new series of Mock the Week (TLC)