10 O'Clock Live, Thursdays on 4

I thought Charlie Brooker's Andy Gray item was superb. The Serco bit was oddly shoehorned in, and I'm still not convinced that David's interview sits well that early on in the programme. Apart from that it was quite good

Mmm, a definite improvement this week. Though the Serco bit was indeed a little odd - they could have easily painted them to be a lot more sinister than they really are (and maybe throw in some references to other mega-outsourcers like Capita and Veolia) rather than turn it into a Nick Clegg rant.

I wonder if the Alastair Campbell interview was early on to try to catch people who'd otherwise have switched over to Question Time?


Incidentally, is the programme on Channel 4 HD? My tellybox claims it's only in SD, but I know it's in an HD studio (TC6), so it seems odd that they wouldn't broadcast it as such.

Watched it this morning and really enjoyed it. Would echo the comments about Laverne - she's not bad, but she lacks the conviction (vitriol?) of Brooker and Mitchell - and the sardonic delivery of Carr. Just wasn't buying it.

Brooker's piece on Gray and Keys was brilliant, and I thought the interview with Campbell was pretty good considering it being clunkily planted into a show of topical satire.

Pretty slick for a live show, too.

Taped it and was in two minds whether to actually watch it, but I'm kind of glad I did. I agree the interview and to a lesser extent the debate segments with David Mitchell don't fit as comfortably into the show as for example the interview Jimmy Carr does, whilst the Serco segment was odd and I think could have been presented in a much more light hearted way and got the message across better.

On the whole I do think Lauren Laverne holds the show together superbly when anchoring the round table segments - though Brooker, who excels in his own segments, seems to struggle when they all come together. In the opening part he seemed unable to get his voice out over Mitchell and Carr, and when he did the topic suddenly switched from being I think about control orders to being about 24 hour news.

I think the Serco piece was also delivered from the wrong set, it may have worked better if done from one of the desks. The Serco logo could then have been displayed on the monitor, instead of being superimposed. I'm not entirely sure Lauren was comfortable doing the piece as she was moving about quite a bit. By contrast I thought the 'secret recordings' of her and the following piece to camera leading into the break was more relaxed and worked well.

I'm assuming the sections where they're all around the desk during and at the end of the programme act as slack to cover for in case they're overrunning or need to fill time.

Yep, and having referenced the headline, Charlie was just about to make a comment about the picture on the cover of the newspaper he was holding (which turns out to be Key's wife making tea for the assembled photographers camped outside her home), complete with the quote, "boys will be boys - they never grow up!" - which would have been a dynamite piece to make another sarcastic gag with in the closing seconds.

But credit due to Laverne (who cut his line short) - she brought them out on time and was pretty smooth with all of the necessary business of moving the show from cue to cue.

Could she be the only one wearing an earpiece?

Yep, it is broadcast in HD, despite it never seeming to be flagged as such on the EPG.

Also thought there was a big improvement this week. There are still issues around the sudden changes of tone and items often not seeming to have enough time, but overall it's moving in the right direction.

It always shows up with an HD tag on my Sky EPG.

Me too...that was very funny.

Thought it was pretty good tonight, and finally Lauren's presense doesn't seem like an afterthought.

Starting to wonder though if Charlie needs a dictatorwipe set of titles for his segment the way the world's going!

Yes, a lot better tonight. It seemed a lot tighter and the ordering of the items was a lot better - starting off with monologues from Carr, Brooker and then Mitchell worked much better.

Charlie Brooker's take on the Egypt riots was excellent as usual