Well, here’s a tricksy little proposition! What happens when you give a television studio audience a prize pot of £250,000 to share equally among themselves, then tell them that all they’ve got to do to get it is remain silent (any words, gasps, laughs, exclamations will lose them £5,000 or £10,000, depending on the size of the transgression) while the show throws various acts at them precisely designed to elicit such responses?
You get Silence is Golden, that’s what – an unexpectedly entertaining, unexpectedly nerve-jangling foray into the repression of all natural instincts in the face of relentless temptation. Presenter duties are in the safe hands of Dermot O’Leary, who both introduces the guests (the main ones in the episode available for review are comediansKatherine Ryan, Seann Walsh and Fatiha El-Ghorri) and tries to trick the audience – who are individually miked and being monitored on cameras – into making the usual whoops and cheers that typically accompany such a show.
Is it a rip off of Prime Video’s hit Last One Laughing (comedians trying to make each other laugh in front of Jimmy Carr), the UK’s adaptation of Documental, the Japanese hit created by Hitoshi Matsumoto? Or is it a wholly coincidental invention arising from our universal understanding that an injunction against laughing in church is the fastest way to ensure we do just that? We may never know.
Australian comic, singer and drag artist Reuben Kaye is the first challenge to the audience’s quarter-of-a-million-pound crown, and his act is near the knuckle enough on several occasions (he says “My erection is audible” as he stands in front of a handsome bloke who does very well to keep his counsel) to draw £30,000 worth of gasps and laughs).
He also identifies the weak link – possibly the weakest link there’s ever been in the history of gameshows – in the audience. That weak link is called Will. Will likes to laugh. Will, it becomes clearer and clearer, was born to laugh. If you concentrate on making him laugh, he will laugh. If you concentrate your attentions elsewhere, he will laugh. He costs the audience a fortune. They are – silently, but very powerfully – livid. Dermot wonders if they should start looking for a security escort to take him home. Will laughs. Will shouldn’t.
Fortunately, the group’s focus is pulled from this threat to their finances by a new set of villains: those who shout out in response to Dermot’s offers of cash and gifts to enrich themselves personally at the expense of the group’s pot. Absolutely fiendish. Chief fiend is Lorenzo, who does it multiple times and looks unfazed by his decisions and the fact that if looks could kill, he would have been bleeding out in the aisle before he had finished the first “Yes, please!” and pocketed the inaugural £200. I haven’t seen the like sinceNasty Nick made his move25 years ago (yes, sorry) in the first series of Big Brother. It’s quite thrilling in a way. A way that suggests I need to get out more, or that the next series of Traitors needs to hurry up and get here because I have appetites that need slaking.
Ryan does some comedy, but her main turn is threatening a couple’s dog. The couple remain silent, knowing there is no chance that a TV production will let anything happen to their pet. I mean no disrespect to the mighty Ryan here, but I have absolutely no doubt that if the cameras were not there, or if Ryan’s own personal finances were involved, that dog would be in a sandwich the moment the first £5,000 was lost.
The final segment identifies the strongest (Deborah) and the weakest (Will, obviously) performer in the audience and one is randomly selected to face the final challenge – but it’s Will. The remaining prize money is frozen and he will win or lose it all for the group if he can just survive one minute of jokes-and-anything-else-that-might-work onslaught from previous acts. No spoilers, but Lorenzo – you’d better start sleeping with one eye open.
I’m not a big fan of the bit where they bring on a naked old lady to try to winkle out laughs or exclamations of disgust as she makes her way into the audience, but other than that it’s all good, clean, harmless fun. Probably. No, I’m sure Lorenzo will be fine.
Silence is Golden is on U&Dave