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Scene from »LOL«: Is the show facade crumbling?
Photo: Michael Ostermeier / Amazon Corporate
Hell has to look something like this, at least if you are someone from the comedy world: You joke and joke, you kick, wriggle, grimace - and look into dead eyes and sallow faces: Nobody laughs.
Ten comedians are locked together for six hours in the new, six-part Amazon format "LOL: Last One Laughing", they can only allow themselves one laugh or grin slip during this time in order to stay in the competition.
Michael "Bully" Herbig watches over every corner of his mouth by means of a monitor wall in the next room and escorts those who have left the show if they grin.
The originally Japanese format was already running in Australia and Mexico, for Germany it has now been adapted by Constantin Entertainment for Amazon with a very good cast: Anke Engelke, Wigald Boning, Teddy Teclebrhan, Torsten Sträter, Barbara Schöneberger, Carolin Kebekus, Max Giermann, Kurt Krömer, Rick Kavanian and Mirco Nontschew are fighting for the prize money of 50,000 euros, which will be donated to a good cause.
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Ten comedians in one room: exhibition of humor and craftsmanship
Photo: dpa
“Last One Laughing” is fun because the format offers different levels of reception: later humor archaeologists find it a broad spectrum of what can be considered funny today.
Because the individual comedians take turns in the spotlight to improvise small numbers, while the others watch politely, but ideally show no emotion.
Highly virtuoso fartimitos
Like a performance show of the craftsmanship of humor, the show fans out a spectrum that ranges from very tangible noise gags (Mirko Nontschew) to comedy characters (Kurt Krömer) to almost disembodied, carefully structured set-up fun like a complex Domino Day motif (Torsten Sträter) .
And somewhere in between, Carolin Kebekus proves to be a highly virtuoso fartimitose with fluttering sociological undertones.
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If you zoom in closer, you can watch each and every comedian how they deal with their programmed failure: If the expected and accustomed laughing reaction fails to appear, continue indefatigably, or if they sway, fine crumbs trickle gently from the show facade ?
Finally, the interactions are also interesting.
Who can find what - and who?
- funny?
The comedians involved work in a similar way to Pokémon, which can be wounded more effectively by certain other Pokémon than by others, and which in turn can be used particularly effectively against other comrades.
It's fun to watch who reacts to whom: Whose humor center trembles the hardest when Teddy Teclebrhan in his parade role as emo-frisette Percy shouts at his plush hamster that he should "hold the ball" now, ey?
Who starts to cackle in an uncontrolled manner when Torsten Sträter explains that Wigald Boning's sometimes erratic clothing style results from the fact that he simply slips into the clothes that "a trained duck randomly pulls from his Nick Knatterton pool every day"?
Who is Max Giermann's pathos-rich but technically skinny magician dangerous to whom he improvises together in the locker room?
And how well do your comic fictional characters go together?
Face of a painful Mother of God
This can be observed wonderfully when Carolin Kebekus suggests an arsenal of synonyms for female masturbation in a small stand-up (»clean the sausage compartment«, »ring the clam«) and a few colleagues improvise cover versions of it: Max Giermann reads the list as Karl Dall in front, Anke Engelke unpacks Popsofa-Ricky, Mirko Nontschew a rap.
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Comedian Wigald Boning: Erratic clothing style
Photo: Michael Ostermeier / Amazon Corporate
One would like to see all of this in real time; in fact, the six hours of challenge time are cut in half in the final version.
It is a shame that the production does not allow the viewers to observe more detailed, undisturbed periods of observation and that they do not expose them to more torture.
That the abundant cameras no longer stay on and on when Kebekus' face moves from the face of a painful Mother of God to the agony of someone slurping too hot soup in the almost painful effort to keep the laughter tight warps, and one cannot observe how long exactly Giermann can hold his grotesque grimace, into which he always takes refuge when the urge to laugh threatens to overwhelm him.
Instead, individual interviews are often incorporated as annoying stoppers in which the participants explain, for example, that it is really difficult not to laugh.
Of course, one would rather see that more closely than hear it.
Again and again there is cut to Herbig, who is in his control room together with the laughing people who have already left, and as credible and likeable as that may be that he is happy about his own show: The nice thing about »LOL« is, after all, that you simply find what you see so funny without the animated laughers, smirkers and other reaction recommendations that are usual in TV comedy, because many scenes are funny in and of themselves, voluntary or not. One is almost touched when the comedians finally surrender, one after the other. Like a Dali clock, Kurt Krömer flows defeated from his armchair after a simple recorder has finally made him laugh. "You don't laugh at dead dogs," he will later rule strictly on another occasion. The fact that this iron law is shaken with "LOL: Last One Laughing" speaks for the format as an exception.