Ooh, another BBC show starring David Mitchell. That's certainly something worth keeping an eye on, right? The show in question is The Bubble and it features the aforementioned comedian as the host of the show. It started its run on February 19th and is a four part show that will run until the 12th of March.

The show itself is an interesting concept. You grab hold of three celebrities and keep them in an isolated spot for four days. Well, it's not so much isolated as cut off from any new sources. Thus, these guys will be blissfully unaware of what was happening in the world when they were holed up in that location. Hence, you know, the title 'The Bubble'. Boy, I'd hate to be these guys if there was a zombie take-over of the country and they were uninformed of evacuation notices.

So, four days later, if there is no zombie takeover, everyone comes to studio and faces a round of questioning from David Mitchell. Here, he would throw in fake stories along with real ones and try and see if they can guess which is authentic. Funnily enough, this is harder than you'd expect.

The overall concept is pretty interesting. After all, it is another chance for comedians to analyze the news. Or at least the way it was reported. It was quite funny to see the participants analyze each story, trying to decide whether it was fake or real. In this way, they pointed out some weird little aspects of each story. And when it happens for one of the actual news stories? Classic!

I must say David Mitchell is brilliant as the host. His comments to the contestants' arguments are witty, as can be expected. These bits don't appear to be scripted and thus, adds to the appeal of the show where it comes across as a rather fun discussion. My favorite bit was when Reginald Hunter, Victoria Coren and Frank Skinner (from the first episode) were debating about the BBC's refusal to providing fake news stories for The Bubble. Mitchell had to bring the discussion back to topic, pointing out how, yes, their mug-shot photos in the paper looked great in what was a production nightmare for his show.

The show has started out promising to be a bit cerebral which is a good sign. Admittedly, it is just starting out and thus, needs to be built up some more. It seems like there is potential to add more categories into the show and perhaps give it a bit more variety. It is good the way it is but the show comes across as a rather short one for now. I guess we'll see how it goes.

There is something I am rather wary of. After airing the second show, a lot of viewers apparently wanted to see more of behind-the-scenes action of The Bubble. Well, that's what I read on Ed Byrne's Twitter feed (in case you are wondering, he was one of the contestants on that week's show). What happened was that, for that particular show, clips of what went on in the Bubble was broadcast during the show. Thus, everyone got to see Ed Byrne and Germaine Greer fight over Scrabble and other such moments. Within the context of what they were saying on the show (about them wanting to be right etc.), these moments made sense. And seemed appropriate. However, I'll be disappointed if they eventually went for the reality show angle for this show. After all, isn't that sort of what some folks ended up liking?