Beloved comedian confirms Channel 4 show is axed after ‘everything went wrong’
One of the incidents saw someone on set ended up needing first aid!
James Acaster has revealed Channel 4 won’t be going forward with a game show he presented.
The stand-up comedian is best known for co-hosting the Off Menu podcast with Ed Gamble, the panel show Hypothetical and appearing on Taskmaster.
He was next set to front the programme People Person – which followed a panel of comedians attempting to answer questions about members of the public, who were in with the chance to win a share of a prize fund too.
The pilot was filmed last summer however James, 40, has now said the series won’t be going ahead.
Explaining why, he said the initial episode had faced a series of disasters.
‘It was three hours of filming, and I’d say everything went wrong that could have gone wrong,’ he said during a recent appearance on the Always Be Comedy podcast.
The comedian had been set to present the programme People Person (Picture: Gregory Pace/ Rex/ Shutterstock)‘At one point I said to the audience, “I think what they should do is just take these three hours, cut them up into six half hours in real time and put it out as a series”.
Some of the mishaps that unfolded while filming included one of the contestant’s boyfriends – a wrestler – needing needed multiple takes after breaking a sugar glass vase too early and also requiring first aid.
That incident left comedian Phil Wang ‘laughing so hard’ and with ‘tears streaming’. James also said he was left ‘stepping on all this, like, broken glass’.
Meanwhile Larry Dean was given a ‘cube’ that had been meant to light up but wouldn’t turn on at all.
Despite the chaos, James said he still ‘absolutely loved’ the experience but admitted he knew pretty quickly the show wouldn’t be going ahead.
However the filming of the pilot episode was a disaster (Picture: Channel 4)‘Then the commissioner at Channel 4, who, you know, it’s no secret at the moment, they’re not swimming in cash, comes up to me afterwards and goes: “Are you serious about that?”,’ he recalled.
He then replied: ‘Yeah, I don’t care that I’m only going to get paid for a pilot, because it was great!’
On Reddit, several people who had been at the filming weighed in too.
‘I was at the filming of the test pilot about a year ago now, this isn’t all that surprising. It was fun, but it didn’t really feel like it had legs to be a full show,’ one commented.
‘The game format seems a bit… meh. While he could make the first few episodes funny, I imagine the laughs would have dried up halfway through the first series,’ another added.
The Off Menu podcast host has previously competed in game shows like Taskmaster himself (Picture: Channel 4)The format for the series had been based on a game James had come up with for the Dave show Question Team in 2021.
In it, he would ask other comedians which of the people he’d assembled had things like ‘the biggest garden, the most battery life left on their phones and the most friends.’
When the show was announced, it was labelled ‘raucous and energetic’.
Channel 4’s head of reality and entertainment, Steven Handley and commissioning editor Cimran Shah said it was a ‘simple, scalable and clever concept with stellar talent attached and a clear opportunity to develop a new generation of channel defining comedians’.
Metro has contacted Channel 4 for comment.
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