With it's "surely that's just the placeholder" title I didn't necessarily have high hopes for this one-a-day stand-up showcase but with its varied guests and relatively intimate vibe it turns out to be one of the stronger shows of its type in recent years. Shot in the idiosyncratically structured Bedform arms in Balham - each episode sees one compere and three acts perform in front of a small crowd of filming crew with a "piped in" digital audience to give the laughter more heft.
It's nice to see the acts in such a little room - and gives it a nice spontaneity, not everything lands but that's what actually seeing stand-up is like and it was the vibe sought by Stewart Lee on his Comedy Vehicle series (and his own curated showcase "the Alternative Comedy Experience" shot in the stuffy tiny room of The Stand, Edinburgh). It works well here and you can see how much harder the more practiced entertainers work to get the not-your-typical-comedy-audience crowd in the room more invested.
It's a mixed bag performance-wise - and some episodes, by coincidence more than design fall flatter than others - there are some solid acts throughout though and there's a valiant attempt to get some new faces into the mix alongside the veterans. What's more it's genuinely quite cathartic to hear them talk about how pleased they are to be performing, how much they've missed it and just to see some laughter amidst everything. Funny Festival Live is a little awkward but in managing to semi-recreate the feeling of live comedy it becomes a supremely valuable bit of TV.
