What a view | Hitoshi Matsumoto’s Documental shows the Japanese will laugh at anything, except perhaps US$88,000
- High-stakes televised game show on Amazon Prime might be silly, but it is hard not to chuckle as comedians try their best to remain po-faced in pursuit of grand prize
Back down the rabbit hole again this week and into the parallel universe of Japanese televised game shows.
In Documental, Hitoshi Matsumoto, one of Japan’s most venerated comedians, hosts a challenge for 10 fellow small-screen comics, with a winner-takes-all prize of 10 million yen (US$88,000). Entry, however, costs a million yen each, lending a desperate edge to attempts at triumph.
The contestants gather on a set that looks like the Big Brother “house” reduced to a single room, where they must remain for six hours in pursuit of one goal: to make their rivals laugh. The last straight-faced comedian standing wins.
Matsumoto (having also contributed a million, perhaps of the production company’s money) referees this second-series Amazon Prime contest remotely on a bank of television screens. Infringements are reviewed and ruled on with the aid of action replays, and further football allusions follow with the brandishing of yellow and red cards for offenders.
Which prompts the question: when is a laugh not a laugh? The squabbling comedians pull all manner of stunts to trick their rivals – stripping almost naked, smacking heads with kitchen implements, screaming insults at each other, almost anything but telling actual jokes – inevitably contorting their faces into rictuses to avoid capitulation when they feel a chuckle coming on.
This is not the show for a philosophical discussion of what constitutes comedy, but like laughter, it is infectious and once the general insanity and lowest-common-denominator buffoonery take hold, it’s impossible not to join in – so let go, safe in the knowledge that it won’t cost you a cent.