What I like about Annually Retentive, is that it is a show of many layers, all of which are utterly indistinct from one another.

There’s the real Rob Brydon, the actor in this show; there’s the off-stage Rob Brydon in the show, and there’s the Rob Brydon that appears on the quiz. Then the guests – there’s the fictional persona we see in the programme, the preconceptions we have about them and, buried in there somewhere, the real person themselves. The show lives and dies off how these layers mingle and flow, and subvert our expectations – and the place where this works best is on the panel show. There things get really complicated.

And that’s because the panel show is simply filmed like a panel show. Apart from the bits which are clearly intended to fit in with other, scripted strands of the programme – like the team captains refusing to look stupid just to get in a few more gags, or Rhys Thomas hating on Rob – it appears that they’re actually playing the game, and treating it as a normal panel show. Which makes you wonder – is there real antipathy between Richard Herring and Jimmy Carr? *That* didn’t feature elsewhere in the show, they came up with that all on their own. And that’s why, at its best this show really is very good. It was clear that the Eamonn Holmes storyline was crafted and scripted, and as such, wasn’t very entertaining, but when you honestly, heart of hearts can’t work out whether a look of disgust, or a throw-away insult is real or not, then you’ve got something good.

As for the new additions to the show – Katy Brand as Debbie the guest booker, and Russell Tovey as Ben the producer – I think they worked out really well. At first you thought that Ben is a bit of a Nathan Barley-Idiot, and he is, but he’s also clearly a clever and popular guy, and Rob can’t stand it.

As I said, the Holmes storyline was a little laboured, and that Rob would be uncomfortable with homosexuality was already, I think, taken as a given, But overall, this was a really positive start to the new series… better than I remember, in fact. [annawaits]