The Bubble

BBC2, Fridays @ 10pm

 The Bubble is a comedy-news quiz where three celebrities go into a house with no connection to the outside world for four days. When they emerge they are whisked to a studio where David Mitchell shows them a series of outlandish news stories, some real and some fake, and they have to geuss which ones really happened and which ones are a load of old codswhollop.

 

The BBC kind of shot the producers in the foot by banning its news editorial staff from contributing to the show. Sky and ITN ironically have allowed their journalists to be involved.

 

The idea the creators are pushing here is that the real news has become so ludicrous that you couldn’t make up more ridiculous stories if you tried. And they have a point. Amongst the true stories this week were reports of a town in Germany selling potholes, a man who married a pillow, a chef selling cheese made of breast milk and an opera based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith 

 

Of course the Bubble has a very creative writing staff and they did manage to come up with dwarf bowling (bowling with little people as the pins), David Frost falling asleep on live TV and Banskey being outed as the alter ego of Neil Buchanan from Art Attack.

 

These kinds of shows depend heavily on the ability of their guests to create some laughs. Previous weeks have seen Reginald D Hunter, Ed Byrne and Jon Richardson all bringing the giggles. This week Marcus Brigstocke, Sue Perkins and Julia Hartley-Brewer got bubble wrapped, and that line-up resulted in the least funny show of the series. Unlike in previous weeks, none of them are just funny for a living.

 

Brigstocke is a comedian AND environmentalist, Perkins is comedian AND historian and Hartley-Brewer isn’t even a comedian, she’s a newspaper columnist. The worst part is that Hartley-Brewer got more laughs than the two comics. Add to this the fact that they all middle class, college educated white people and you get an episode that represents the problem with the BBC’s comedy since Sachsgate – everybody is safe. Nobody there has the potential to say anything controversial.

 

Each week there are a few clips of the time the contestants spent in the bubble (it’s a big fancy house in the country). Most weeks there are arguments about scrabble and X-box and fun trivial things. All they did this week was have a civilised discussion about climate change. Somebody throw something!

 

Despite the dullness of the guests, the episode was still pretty funny thanks, in the main, to the stories being mocked. If you’re into news based comedy this should fit snuggly into the gap between Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week in the BBC’s annual schedule.