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2 days ago
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As you can probably tell by spending any time on it, Amazon Prime Video is in trouble. Citadel, its $300m Russo brothers-produced international spy thriller series, was met with widespread indifference. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a show that will end up costing Amazon a billion dollars, is destined to go down as one of the worst investments of all time. Everywhere you look, the platform is wall-to-wall duds.
And yet there is one glimmer of hope. The sole scrap of buzz Amazon has generated in months comes in the form of a cheap little reality show. Last One Laughing UK has been all over social media for the last couple of weeks, clipped up and shared across TikTok, Instagram and X. And this is down to its deceptively simple premise: a bunch of comedians sit in a room together and try to make each other laugh. If they laugh, they’re out. That’s all there is to it.
Last One Laughing UK has summoned some genuinely funny people for the show, among them Richard Ayoade, Bob Mortimer, Lou Sanders, Daisy May Cooper and Joe Wilkinson. You can see why they were so eager to sign up, too, because the show is about as low stakes as you can get. It follows the loose Big Brother format, where everyone has to share a common area. But the entire show only represents a six-hour commitment for them. They made multiple episodes of television in less time than it takes to watch The Brutalist twice. Even ignoring the quality of the final product, that’s an extremely efficient way to go about business.
The show presents the contestants with a chance to recycle some of their old material. Most of the viral clips have revolved around Bob Mortimer, who performed a magic act first seen on The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer 30 years ago and sang some songs he posted on social media during Covid. The fact that these routines not only found new life on LOL UK, but also pushed his fellow contestants to the brink, is testament to Mortimer’s talent.
But Mortimer isn’t solely responsible for the LOL UK highlight reel. Richard Ayoade’s shockingly aggressive pursuit of laughs was another standout moment. Joe Wilkinson’s bizarre little Stars in their Eyes sequence was punishingly funny, as was the surprise appearance of Danny Dyer.
There’s also something really irresistible in watching people trying their hardest to quell a response as involuntary as laughter. Daisy May Cooper’s attempt to shut herself down, which involved screwing up her face like she was trying not to breathe in a fart, is funny in itself. Judi Love often looked like a woman who’d swallowed a live grenade. Harriet Kemsley, who may well be the breakout contestant of the whole show, at one point looked as if she was having a nervous breakdown trying to stop a laugh from leaking out. It’s weirdly thrilling to watch something as mundane as a cracking poker face.
In truth, the UK is late to the LOL game. Like almost every other successful reality show, from Big Brother to The Traitors, Last One Laughing is a foreign format that circled the globe before arriving here – in this case, it’s based on a Japanese show called Documental that first aired in 2016. Since then, versions have sprung up in 27 different countries, from Albania to Indonesia. Trevor Noah hosted the South African version, Graham Norton hosted Ireland’s and Rebel Wilson hosted Australia’s. For us, it’s Jimmy Carr. There is an argument that LOL UK’s success hinges less on the British sense of humour than a watertight format. After all, if it works in Russia – where it aired in 2023 – you suspect it can work anywhere.
Last One Laughing UK has been compared to Taskmaster, but that isn’t entirely fair. Taskmaster is an intricately assembled series that rewards lateral thinking, whereas this is essentially just people sitting around for a few hours. But it is nevertheless very funny. More importantly – unlike most Amazon shows – people are actually talking about it. It must be strange being an Amazon executive this week. You spent all that money on Lord of the Rings, but it turns out that people far prefer the sight of Bob Mortimer sitting on a squeaky chair. What a world.
