LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland — Amazon’s dismal Irish comedy show is nothing to laugh about

What do you get if you lock a bunch of Irish comedians together in a room for six hours and let the cameras roll as they try their darndest to make one another laugh, while at the same time doing their best to not laugh themselves?

The answer is LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland (Amazon Prime Video, streaming from Friday, January 19). Unfortunately, you get something else, too: extremely bored, and very quickly.

Amazon’s first-ever Irish series is the latest localised iteration of a long-running Japanese format that has already been exported to multiple European countries, as well as to Canada, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, India, Nigeria and a few other places. A UK version is in the pipeline.

There’s also an unauthorised rip-off show running on Russian television.

I have no idea what the Russian sense of humour is like, but if their version is as excruciatingly bad as this one, I’m guessing Putin uses it as an instrument of torture against dissidents.

“What is it to be: electric shocks to the testicles or six episodes of LOL? The choice is yours.”

“Wire me up!”

The 10 herded into a Big Brother-style space are Aisling Bea, Jason Byrne, Deirdre O’Kane, David McSavage, Paul Tylak, Emma Doran, Tony Cantwell, Catherine Bohart, Martin Angolo and non-comedian Amy Huberman, who presumably qualifies because she can be funny in scripted comedies.

Presiding over it all is Graham Norton, who sits in another room, watching on a bank of screens and doling out yellow and red cards to anyone who’s caught laughing. A smirk or a smile earns a yellow. Red means you’re out of the game.

The last one standing at the end of the six half-hour episodes gets €50,000 for their chosen charity, which is laudable.

Still, there has to be a less painful way, not least for the viewers, of raising dosh for a good cause through a TV show. Televised naked backwards hand-walking up Croagh Patrick in the middle of January would be an enticing alternative.

The irony is that Norton’s off-the-cuff observations are funnier than anything that’s happening in the other room.

This, to be honest, is not saying a whole lot, since what’s happening in the other room is marginally less amusing than dunking your genitals in liquid nitrogen and then whacking them with a toffee hammer.

A few of the comedians have brought along props. Jason Byrne, a man so constantly amused by his own jokes he doesn’t even require an audience, straps on a big rubber nose and sticks frankfurters up the nostrils.

Tony Cantwell disappears into the dressing room and reappears in a bright green bodysuit with his hand up a puppet Dubliner who talks in a terrible French accent about buying stuff in “eclairs accessories”.

Cantwell uses this gag three times. It doesn’t get any funnier with repetition.

Aisling Bea sings A Woman’s Heart with nonsense lyrics. Paul Tylak reads out poetry, which is really just some dreadful puns.

David McSavage pours breakfast cereal and beans into his pocket, and shouts “I’m an alcoholic!” at the denizens of The Den.

That’s right, Ray D’Arcy, Dustin and Zig and Zag turn up, and are wasted. A little later, Chris de Burgh — or as we call him in my house, “Christ! Eeeurgh!” — is wheeled out to croon the ghastly Lady in Red to Amy Huberman.

There are frequent cutaways to the comedians talking about how close they came to laughing at various points, yet none of them seems to have much trouble staying stone-faced.

By the end of the two episodes I watched, a few yellow cards had been handed out.

Whatever made them slip up and laugh, it wasn’t the feeble routines they were trying out on one another.

If the comedians couldn’t find much to laugh at, it’s unlikely the viewers will either.

LOL didn’t make me LOL. Nor did it make me ROFL or LMAO.

Some of the people here are regarded as the cream of the Irish comedy scene, yet the show is a humour vacuum.

The only thing that could possibly make it any worse would be if The 2 Johnnies were involved. Maybe they’re being saved for season 2… if there is one.

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