LOL: Last One Laughing UK

That such a simple, even lame-sounding format was responsible for three hours of the most transcendentally funny television of 2025 might well have been down to an alchemical accident. Spoiler: it wasn’t. Series two of the UK version of this Japanese reality-gameshow is very nearly as sidesplitting as the first.

There’s no bigotry, filth or deliberate cruelty here, just the helpless kind of “I might actually wet myself” infantile hilarity that you might remember from your carefree youth. It’s a show that’s good for the soul.

The doldrums of the early episodes make way for light-headed mania.

LOL is a reliable entertainment juggernaut based, essentially, on an old playground game. There’s a reason those games endure, and it’s the same reason that Last One Laughing proves to be functional, if uninspired, comedy.

A slow start, then, but warming up.