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Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, TV review: Brilliant bar-room-style show consistently delivers

 

Ellen E. Jones
Friday 20 June 2014 00:37 BST
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More laddish in tone, and therefore more likely to suffer from the World Cup scheduling, was Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled on Dave. Still it's your loss, not Dave's, if you missed it. This bar-room-style show is brilliant, despite probably costing less than a pub round to produce.

It consists of the Jonathan Creek star sitting around a table with other comedians – and that's it. No scripted gags, no buzzers and no Stephen Fry informing us of the surprising history of the dung beetle. The quality of bants is obviously reliant on the quality of guests, but none of the line-ups in this short-run, five-night-a-week series has disappointed.

Last night, Isy Suttie of Peep Show fame boasted of her GNVQ in wine tasting and Bill Bailey told the story of kazoo-smuggling career. It was stand-up Craig Campbell, however, the only guest I hadn't heard of before last night, who won the evening.

His not particularly funny but fascinating anecdote about the head of the Iraqi police was better than anything you've ever heard down the pub. And not once was he interrupted by someone checking their phone for a text.

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