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Richard Ayoade

The Cambridge-educated son of a Nigerian father and Swedish mother, Richard Ayoade first came to prominence starring in and co-writing the 2000 Edinburgh Fringe show Garth Merenghi's Fright Knight with Matthew Holness, winning the Perrier Award for its sequel, Garth Merenghi's Netherhead, the following year. The show transferred to Channel Four in 2004 as Garth Merenghi's Darkplace, before spawning the spin-off 80s chat show spoof, Man to Man with Dean Learner, fronted by Ayoade's 'smut-peddler' character.

Appearances in The Mighty Boosh and Nathan Barley were followed by his highest profile role to date in Graham Linehan's sitcom The IT Crowd, playing socially inept tech support worker Moss, a role he reprised for an unaired US adaptation in 2009.

Establishing a parallel career as a music video director for the likes of The Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian and The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, he directed his first film, the coming-of-age comedy-drama Submarine in 2010, and his second, The Double, a nightmarish, dystopian comedy-drama, loosely based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella, in 2014.

Ed Gamble to host new panel show Unacceptable

With Richard Ayoade and Joanne McNally as team captains

Ed Gamble is to host a new panel show in which teams of comedians compete to win a live studio audience over to their most outrageous opinions.

Richard Ayoade and Joanne McNally will be the team captains in Unacceptable, which will air on free-to-air channel TLC this summer.

McNally and Ayaode

Each week they will be joined by guest comedians who must convince the audience to agree with views that are, as the title suggests, deliberately daft, niche or ill-advised.

The show uses a live ‘swingometer’ to track how many audience members each team wins over, with Gamble also introducing challenges that force contestants to act on the opinions they’ve been defending.

The series, which runs to six hour-long episodes, is produced by Ranga Bee Productions, the company founded by comedian Romesh Ranganathan and producer Benjamin Green.

In a statment they said: ‘We are delighted to be making Unacceptable for TLC. It’s a new format that allows comics to debate the sort of opinions they normally only discuss backstage.

‘With Ed helming and Richard and Joanne leading the teams, it’s going to be an incredibly sharp and funny series. We realised that as comedians rarely admit they’re wrong, the only option was to create a show that lets the people decide.’

Gamble said: ‘I’m absolutely buzzing to be hosting this brand-new format for TLC. It’s always been my dream to see some of the biggest comedy legends around expose and justify opinions that really should’ve stayed in the group chat. Dreams can come true!"

The commission is one of several comedy formats TLC has announced since relaunching as a free-to-air channel at the start of this year including Mock The Week, which has just been recommissioned for a second series.

The channel has also ordered Zero Stars, a series fronted by Roisin Conaty and Sara Pascoe, though full details of that show have yet to be announced.

Graham Lafferty, who oversees content strategy for Warner Bros. Discovery UK and Ireland, said: ‘With Ed Gamble as host and Richard Ayoade and Joanne McNally as team captains, we think this is a great addition to TLC’s line-up.’

Unacceptable was ordered by Lafferty and commissioned by Charlotte Reid.

Published: 5 Mar 2026