The Unbelievable Truth (radio show)

Rules

As David Mitchell often says, "the rules are very simple". The panel is made up of four players. In the game each of the panellists is given a subject on which they give a short lecture. Most of the lecture is composed of lies, but during the course of the speech the lecturer must try to smuggle five true statements past the rest of the panel. The challenging panellists must buzz in when they believe that what the lecturer is saying is true. They must state what they believe the fact was. If it was true, the challenger is awarded one point. If it was a lie, then they are deducted one point. One point is given to the lecturer for each truth they smuggle successfully without it being detected at the end of the lecture. The winner is the panellist with the most points. A perfect score is 20 points (by hiding all five of their truths, and spotting the five truths in all three of the other players' routines without making any wrong challenges), plus additional points for "unintentional" truths revealed during the monologue. However, nobody has reached this score yet, and in fact many contests have been amusingly low scoring, with most panellists having a negative number of points due to high number of guesses. On occasion, panellists have included more than five truths during in their talk, often unintentionally, although Jo Brand included an extra fact about Henry VIII as she thought it was so fantastic.

Reception

Reaction to the show has been generally positive. Many reviews praised Mitchell's presentation of the programme, saying, "Mitchell's quick, intelligent wit gives it an edge that it would otherwise lack." Elizabeth Mahoney in The Guardian enthused that "From the first moments of its plinky plonky theme tune, 'The Unbelievable Truth' is a delight ... the success of the format isn't about how convincingly you can spin a tall story, but how well you can sneak incongruous true facts into a lot of silly nonsense. The pleasure here – David Mitchell's endearing squareness apart – is the depths to which this silliness sinks". Jane Anderson in The Radio Times described the show as "the funniest thing I've heard on Radio 4 in years and I'm considering suing the network for irreparable damage to my sides" and Chris Campling in The Times called it "The most consistently entertaining comedy panel show of the past few years" and praises David Mitchell's chairmanship.

However, some critics have complained that the programme is "too scripted" and would benefit from more improvisation. One review said, "However most of the programme is essentially listening to four rather silly pre-scripted stories, as if it's story time at primary school, and as such the real facts are often rather easy to spot in comparison. It may [sic] have been more dangerous fun if the contestants were supplied with their facts to be smuggled just before going on air, to allow even the pretence of some improvisation."

Ian Dunn for One Giant Leap also wrote a mixed review of the show saying that it, "may not be the best panel game in the world, but it is enjoyable. It is a way of merrily passing away half-an-hour." He commented on how the show managed to be successful in the same slot as other Radio 4 panel games Just a Minute and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (ISIHAC), although he mentioned there was a connection between ISIHAC and The Unbelievable Truth as the latter is created by the producer and one of the regular panellists from ISIHAC. Dunn also referred to the lack of input from Mitchell despite him being well known for good performances on other panel games, saying: "This sadly means that Mitchell is almost redundant and is reduced to the roll [sic]) of an umpire."

In The Guardian, Zoe Williams was critical of Mitchell, writing: "The Unbelievable Truth, for instance, should never have been recommissioned. It's only funny when Clive Anderson is speaking. They could more profitably devise a show that was just Clive Anderson, speaking. Its failures as a quiz are admirably demonstrated by the fact that the scoring is now inverse to the drollery, so that Clive scores no points at all, and Lucy Porter sometimes wins. I don't care about scoring when it's like I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and it's meant to mean nothing, but they can't all be spoof game-shows. Some of them have to be actual games that work."

The BBC received "almost 50" complaints after Mitchell opened the 26 October 2009 episode with the line, "There is absolutely no truth in the rumour that the last line in Anne Frank's diary reads: 'Today is my birthday; dad bought me a drum kit.'" Complainants branded the line "insensitive".

Recent series of the show have been described in The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Mail as a pick of the week, being "brilliantly chaired as ever by David Mitchell. More wide ranging and inventive than its TV equivalent ... this is a classic format which might well just last as long as say, Just a Minute", and Sarah Montague on Pick of the Week describing series six as "Radio 4 doesn't always get comedy right, but its comedy series The Unbelievable Truth is so funny that most presenters of this programme want to include a clip". In addition, the show received the highest AI, or Appreciation Index, figures of any comedy show on Radio 4 for 2010, and has been nominated for the 2011 Sony Radio Academy Awards. It won the category of "Best Radio Panel Show" in the British Comedy Guide's 2011 awards. In 2015 The Unbelievable Truth was nominated for the Rose d'Or in the "Radio Game Show" category.

The show's accuracy was playfully rebuffed in an episode of the television programme QI, itself having been forced to accept corrections at times, when Mitchell, one of the panellists on the subject of film and fame (Series F, Episode 11), found himself supplying answers based on information gathered from The Unbelievable Truth. The answers received klaxons on QI, causing Mitchell to acknowledge that some of the show's "unbelievable truths [turn] out, unbelievably, to be untrue." Mitchell then added in comic resignation, "People give you this shit and you read it out", and later jokingly accused QI's host Stephen Fry of trying to "kill off the medium" of radio. The show was nonetheless praised by Stephen Fry and fellow panellist Emma Thompson.

QI and The Unbelievable Truth now have something of a running gag criticising each other's lack of accuracy. Mitchell in his scripted comments for Episode 6 of the twelfth series complained that QI had referred to a lavish medieval dinner as "serving '100 eaglets' where it should have been '100 egrets'; it would be stupid to serve the offspring of eagles, whereas to serve up herons is far more sensible", and jokingly accused QI of getting "all its facts from Wikipedia".

Theme tune

The programme uses the introductory riff from Jim Noir's song "My Patch" as its theme tune.

Subjects

The following subjects have been repeated on The Unbelievable Truth. Each of them has appeared twice, except where noted: Beards (3 times), Bears, Bees, Cats (4), Cheese, Chickens, China, Dancing, Dogs (3), Football (3), Frogs, Hair (3), Hats, Kissing, Marriage, Milk, Penguins, Pigeons, Pigs, Potatoes, Queen Elizabeth II, Shoes, Teeth, The Brain, The Moon, Women (3).

Recordings

In general. recording two episodes together takes about three hours. Free tickets can be applied for from the Lost in TV website. Recordings are usually at the Shaw Theatre but in 2016 the show used the far larger Logan Hall in Bedford Way Bloomsbury for several recordings.

Scores

As in most British panel games, the scoring is not taken particularly seriously and the show is played for its comedy value and not as a point-scoring exercise. In Series 5 Episode 1 the panellist Graeme Garden was announced at the start as "the co-creator of the show, and tonight's winner".

The quirky scoring is part of the attraction of the game. While the maximum possible score is 20 (not including spotting truths accidentally included by the other panellists), contestants have many opportunities to lose points since they lose one for every incorrect challenge. The highest total score for any game was 9 by Lloyd Langford (in Series 13 Episode 2) and Graeme Garden (in Series 8 Episode 4), who also had the highest non-winning score of 6 (Series 1 Episode 6). The lowest game total was -6 in Series 4 Episode 4.

Of the forty-nine players who have appeared up to Series 6, the highest individual score is 11 by Graeme Garden in the pilot episode – Garden, who is the co-creator of the show, is also the most frequent player with 22 appearances.

Lucy Porter has 5 wins from eight appearances and therefore has a better win rate than Garden. She smuggled five facts past the panel in her discourse on Japan, in Series 12 Episode 4, leaving the host Mitchell to deprecatingly remark on the lack of knowledge the British have for other countries.

The most successful players are Sandi Toksvig and Simon Evans who both have a 100% winning records and average scores over 4, but have only played two and three games respectively. Series 15 Episode 06 marked Holly Walsh as the least successful player with -7, taking over the score of -6 jointly shared by Tony Hawks, Arthur Smith and Adam Hills, who also failed to post a positive score in either of his two appearances and has an average of -4.

The only players to win with a score of 0 were Rhod Gilbert and Reginald D. Hunter who tied at the top in Series 4 Episode 1, Victoria Coren Mitchell in Series 15 Episode 4, and Clive Anderson and Vicki Pepperdine who tied at the top in Series 17 Episode 3. Series 1 Episode 4 featured the only ever four-way tie, described by Mitchell as a scenario called: "Everyone getting three".

Jo Brand, Victoria Coren-Mitchell, Alan Davies, Phill Jupitus, Rhod Gilbert and Lucy Porter are the only players to have ever managed to smuggle all five true facts past their opponents, although in Brand's case in Series 1, Clive Anderson scored a point during her lecture thanks to an incidental bonus truth she had written in. Davies has managed all five twice, once in the New Year's special, and once in Series 7. Jupitus managed his shut-out in the second episode of Series 8, Gilbert in the second episode of series 10 and Porter as previously mentioned in the fourth episode of Series 12. Coren-Mitchell did so during series 15.

The German-born comedian Henning Wehn has a distinctive clipped German accent which he plays for comedy value. He tends to be given subjects that a stereotypical German would know nothing about, such as a sense of humour or, most recently (in Episode 6 of Series 12), "The British". Wehn rarely wins, but has the studio audience's sympathy with the British stereotype of backing the underdog; these stereotypes are played for laughs and are not meant or taken as racism. He also usually introduces his talk with a mention of how something was invented by Jesus.

Often attempts are made to hide the truths in lists, with the decoy items in the list reflecting the plausibility (or implausibility) of the true item being smuggled. This can often lead to "points carnage" as the guests each try to guess the true item.

Episodes

Winners are highlighted in bold.

International versions

Members from the Australian comedy group The Chaser, including Craig Reucassel, Andrew Hansen and Julian Morrow, have produced a TV series based on the British series.