Your Face or Mine?

Hey, let's watch couples and random pokerfaced people get humiliated in tasteless and humorless ways, or watch them humiliate themselves for a few thousand pounds! That's the entertainment! Superficiality, non-stop cringe and second-hand shame, spiced up with a bit of proudly committed undermining of relationship! Demeaning yourself while laughing is not demeaning, because everyone is having so much fun, right? I think I saw the Antichrist clapping in the back row...

The show is so nauseatingly grotesque and infernal that if you added an android it could easily be an episode of Black Mirror. The saddest thing is, when it comes to the quality of television, this is the rule rather than the exception.

A couple enter a game show that involves rather the relative looks of various people. Round one sees the couple selecting the better looking of pairs of celebrities – winning money if their selection agrees with the majority of the audience then they win cash. The next round sees them ranking their own looks against pictures of normal people. The round afterwards see each person having to judge their partner against various mystery guests (who sit between them on the sofa during the round).

Aiming for the post pub audience, this puerile relationship game show is hardly rocket science as it is based on entirely superficial assessments of people. The theory is sound but really what is all about is embarrassment and awkwardness. It shows this by spending only one very quick round on comparisons between famous people just to introduce the concept. We then launch into the round where the individuals rate themselves against strangers and the niggling bits of personal attacks begin. Here we start to see the egos a bit knocked about where people say the pictures are ugly, only to be voted second by the audience! Of course this is nothing compared to the next round where various first loves, ex's and flings are wheeled out for one half to compare against their current partner. Here we see feelings really hurt and few contestants are able to hide it although almost all of them try and laugh it off.

If you are looking of people humiliated and spat out the other end just for the sake of being on telly and earning little more than £1000 – which, lets be honest is not a huge amount of money in these days, nice, but not huge. It is painful to watch and outside of this aspect it doesn't offer much in the way of entertainment value. Carr and Sarpong are served with weak material and generally they just go for the obvious crude jokes whenever they get the chance and the canned laughter being used (despite the live audience) is testimony to how weak it all is.

A very basic game show then that offers nothing more than the chance to see two young people embarrassed, awkward and hurt. Outside of this it is not funny, clever or interesting. All reasons why it was canned after so little time.

Worst thing to hit TV since the advent of reality TV. Distance yourself from anyone who can apologize for TV of this quality.

If someone came to me and explained the idea of this game show, I would laugh and tell them it would never work. But having Jimmy Carr and Katherine Ryan hosting is the only reason this is entertaining, funny, and works. Their quick witty responses, jokes and Carr's laugh make this work. I just randomly stumbled on this show one late night and I'm hooked. 8/10 from me.

I hate anything reality/trash TV normally but this show is a guilty pleasure. Not normally a fan of Katherine Ryan but she is a brilliant foil for Jimmy on this one. They both make fun of each other's looks and flirt up a storm with the contestants.

To the people rating it poorly - the 2002-2003 Jimmy Carr/ June Sarpong version ran for 45 episodes and then Jimmy/Katherine made another 66 episodes for Comedy Central UK (from 2017 to 2019) - so it must have been pulling in audiences to keep getting commissioned (and Amazon Prime and other channels have bought it).

From comments that I've seen, after the shows aired, the people that were contestants said they had a great time. Yes, it was cringe-inducing (to the max). But it's also INCREDIBLY funny, if you can get past the awkward premise.

Go ahead and judge...I love it.