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The Rob Rinder Verdict takes Judge Rinder‘s Rob Rinder (since that’s his first name) and gives him a news-based panel show which wasn’t available for preview as it’s filmed very close to transmission.
There were references to Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and so on, and I thought this would be quite good, but there’s a ton of innuendo jokes which just aren’t landing. And when he said that the Amazon Rainforest burning might get so bad that Sting will put a concert together… it all felt like he was only going for the easy hitters.
And yes, Rob Rinder, we know you’re gay. You don’t have to keep shoving it in our faces every two seconds!
Jonathan Ross was brought on to moan about the shutdown of Parliament, before banging on about how Boris is “unelected”. Well, you don’t elect a Prime Minister. You elect MPs, and one of them might become a Prime Minister.
There was a load of crap about so-called “man-made global warming“, and a news report about how you should only do a No.2 every OTHER day, and not daily. At least I agreed with Ross that pooing (or ‘pooping’, in America) is something that should happen SEVERAL times a day.
Then the “Why is he famous?” Tom Allen came on. We were reminded that he’s also gay. As if we cared. He was only brought on to self-promote Channel 4’s Bake Off spin-off, as he’s on that. Again, who cares?
To make matters worse, it then started relying on showing ‘humourous clips from the news’, which is the schtick I remember first coming from Clive James in the ’80s on ITV. However, since then, we’ve got Youtube, so all those clips have usually been seen already.
Add in a place called Sealand, more poor innuendo, a supposed comedienne called Judi Love – also a Remoaner – whose schtick was to sit there and look miserable, plus the electrocution of Rinder’s own mother.
Also, the C-word was bleeped, even though it’s Channel 4 at 10pm(!)
However, the only point of interest was a Death Pod, in Venice, which allows you to auto-euthanise yourself. Perhaps they can test it out on Jamie Oliver? And Piers Morgan? And Naga Munchetty? And… well, it’s a LONG list.
Score: 1/10
Host: Rob Rinder
Guests: Jonathan Ross, Tom Allen, Judi Love
The Rob Rinder Verdict continues next Friday at 10pm on Channel 4. The series is not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but you can watch each episode on All 4.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.