On October 10^th 2019 E4 broadcast s1 episode 1 of Pants on Fire.

The show was described as “Emma Willis hosts the comedy bluffing show where three teams must convince a celebrity jury that they’ve completed their challenges”.

Interestingly C4 describes it as having 6 episodes in S1 and 2 in S2 (with a best bits show). But Comedy.co.uk show it as just being 1 series of 8 shows (plus 1 highlights show).

It was made by James Corden’s Fulwell73 Productions but, despite him asking his X followers to watch it, the show was broadcast on E4 (the “youth” station under C4’s umbrella) and Deadline reported in December that it had been “quietly rested”. It was apparently pulling in 100,000 viewers under the average for the 9pm Thursday slot and was replaced by repeats of Gogglebox and The Big Fat Quiz of Everything.

Jimmy appeared on:

• S1 Ep1 with Scarlett Moffat – shown 10 Oct 2019
• S1 Ep5 with Georgia Toffolo (Toff) – shown 7 Nov 2019. This one also featured the then married couple Harriet Kemsley and Bob Mair.

20-minute clip (craziest challenges)

This starts with some of the footage of Jimmy / Scarlett on Ep1 and later Jimmy / Toff on Ep5

10-minute clip (I will not f**k you)

Jimmy and Toff on Ep5 with Zac and Jay (SAS challenge)

10-minute clip (funniest moments)

A lot of these “funny moments” were in the 2 above

Format? IMHO…

This is just my personal opinion of why the show didn’t grab me.

The idea was that 3 teams of 2 comics would make up their own “outrageous and crazy” challenges and then they showed footage and were quizzed about it, by a celebrity jury. The 2 “jurists” then had to decide whether they thought that the challenges/stunts had actually been completed or not.

I only watched the 2 episodes that Jimmy appeared in (as a jury member) and it was really confusing.

• Some of the team members were YouTube prank content creators or wannabe comics / presenters. Judging by comments (under videos featuring Zac and Jay) they brought some streaming traffic across, but the show never quite reached the level of actually being consistently funny
• The Celebrity Jury stars (Jimmy Carr, Mel B, Joel Dommett, Katherine Ryan etc.) would be “known” to 1 demographic (probably aged 40+) and yet it was aimed at the “pranks on YouTube / TikTok generation”. It felt like something neither age range would watch every episode of. For example – the Zac and Jay fans would probably only watch episodes featuring the two of them. I could be wrong – but it felt a bit like they wanted to showcase new talent, but then also “we need some big names to pull an audience in”.
• Every now and then flame throwers, on the stage, would shoot a column of flame out. Never did work out what was going on in the show that made them decide to set them off.
• There was no scoring system, that I could fathom. The Jurists chatted back and forth and said whether they believed the thing happened or not – and that was it. No elimination, no prize money, no points awarded. Baffling.
• It was hard to accept some of the stunts happened. In S1 Ep1 Donna and Verona claimed to have crossed from Europe to Africa on a pedalo. The show claimed they actually had completed it – even though it’s rough open water, an incredibly busy shipping lane, a H&S nightmare and (apologies) but I just wasn’t convinced that they looked fit enough to achieve it (even Emma said “you don’t look like you can make it”). See in this clip.
• Other stunts felt a bit pointless. In Ep5 Zac and Jay had to keep a secret from the SAS (what their favourite pizza topping was) while being screamed at etc. (see clips above). Problem with this type of challenge is this is a TV show, with lawyers and insurers involved, and so everyone is aware that they are in zero danger.

What is probably the best indication of relative success is that LOL UK was so joyful that I’ve watched them all at least twice – and have also watched the clips on YouTube. It stands up to repeated viewing.

This show…I struggled to get through the FIRST viewing and increased the Playback speed, on the above clips, to write this post.