It’s a strange quirk of scheduling that U&Dave’s Silence Is Golden follows so closely on the heels of Prime Video’s Last One Laughing UK, given that both are based on the premise of trying not to laugh at comedians’ antics.
The formats are different enough, though. With Amazon’s show it was comedy mates locked away in a shared space who engaged in ‘normal’, if silly, interactions, which is where the joy lay. Whereas in this new Dermot O’Leary-fronted show, it’s an audience of real people who have to keep completely silent.
It is not just titters that are verboten, any noise comes at a price, even a reflex gasp at a cheap shock tactic. The crowd starts with a £250,000 prize pot, diminished by £5,000 or £10,000 by every sound, depending on its volume.
We should welcome any show that indulges in the surprisingly rare practice of booking stand-ups to actually do stand-up – and not just the usual faces either. Series regular Katherine Ryan notwithstanding, episode one gives rare telly outings to Reuben Kaye. Emmanuel Sonubi and Laura Smyth.
But it’s unsettling to hear them play to silence, reminiscent of those clips that sometimes circulate of sitcoms like the Big Bad Theory with the laugh track removed, rendering them creepy and eery. So it’s probably not the best showcase for the comic’s material.
At least we get some reaction shots of the crowd trying to stifle a laugh and, wisely, plenty of cuts back to the green room to see the comedians guffawing away. Seann Walsh is a generous laugher, certainly when compared to the third regular, the more circumspect Fatiha El-Ghorri – currently having something of a moment with her Taskmaster series and her BBC comedy pilot Donkey out now.
Stand-up is not the only device deployed to try to get a reaction. In this opener we see an impressive knife-throwing act, and a weird and awkward interlude where Ryan threatens to harm one audience members’ dog if she doesn’t speak up – even though it's quite clearly an empty ultimatum.
Meanwhile, some of the sillier devices like a Santa cracking dubious cracker-style gags, a naked older woman prowling the room, a psycho clown and Tickle Monster pass by in a blur. Thankfully.
The show has strong reality TV elements as characters emerge from among the 70 audience members. In this opening episode, poor old Will in seat 24 attracted the ire of the rest of the room because of his entirely natural propensity of finding comedy amusing. Meanwhile, Lorenzo was more self-serving, happily taking bribes to enrich himself as the expense of the communal prize pot. Interestingly, he got off lighter under mob justice. A halfway break giving the audience a few minutes to speak their minds brings all these dynamics out into the open.
Format points like this make Silence Is Golden – as devised by former Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon – interesting. Yet it still seems more like an imaginative experiment than must-see entertainment, despite the best efforts of tall he stand-ups involved. Walsh’s bus routine, especially, was an hilarious slice of observational comedy. Never has the consoling platitude ‘deserves more’ been more apt.
• Episode one of Silence Is Golden is streaming on U now. Read an interview with Richard Bacon about the series here.
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