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The comedy panel show is a bankable TV medium.
The subject is utterly unimportant; it could be based around food additives, 17th-century French court costume or international property law; all that's needed are a couple of reliably witty people, a deadpan master of ceremonies and a couple of other vaguely controversial guests to act as stooges.
When it works, as it usually does on Have I Got News for You, you see a magnificently entertaining romp as quick-witted, fast-thinking contestants tear strips off each other. When it fails, as it usually does on They Think It's All Over, you cringe through your fingers as a pre-scripted line is ballsed up by an athletics bronze medallist with a diction problem.
As these shows continue to sprout like well-watered cress from the night-time TV schedules, it's obvious that there's a dearth of people who are able to deliver the funnies when the cameras point in their direction.
And riding to the rescue comes a slightly repressed, disgruntled ex-Cambridge student in an unpleasant brown suit. In a recent TV interview, David Mitchell was asked "You, er, go on rather a lot of those panel games, don't you?"
Yes, he does, for one simple reason - he's incredibly, disgustingly witty. "I'm just incredibly witty," he said in a recent episode of That Mitchell and Webb Look, and he's incredibly, disgustingly right - he's even starting to make Paul Merton look slow on the uptake.
While a typical panellist - an ex-member of Bronski Beat or a budding stand-up comedian - looks as if their careers depend on everything they utter, Mitchell's bons mots are shoulder-shruggingly effortless.
Whether he's putting himself in the position of insurance salesman to the Russian Army, pondering how Beethoven could be used to sell soufflés or assessing the suitability of the name "Proctor & Gamble" for a new-born child, you're guaranteed a stream of unwilting wit, a torrent of failure-based monologues that combine self-deprecation with pedantry, and smut with one-upmanship.
After a while, you start wishing everyone else would shut up in order to give him more airtime, and I start gaining some perverse pleasure from imagining a dinner party scenario where I'm ritually humiliated as he delivers a devastating hammer blow of wit as I spill the gravy on the tablecloth…
Sorry, I'm dragging you into my own rather grim private fantasy. Peter Cook could be funny without trying, but he generally couldn't be bothered. So, David Mitchell, please continue being bothered. There's a lot of half-arsed panel shows out there. And they need you. Desperately.
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Now take a look at our full Peep Show guide.
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