Graham Norton has described his new Prime Video show LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland as "a runaway train".
The new six-part series, which starts on the streaming site next Friday, sees ten Irish comedians cooped up in a room for six straight hours with one challenge - make your fellow comic laugh without laughing yourself.
The ten comedians taking part all come from very different schools of laughs - Aisling Bea, Catherine Bohart, Amy Huberman, Deirdre O'Kane, Emma Doran, Tony Cantwell, Martin Angelo, Paul Tylak, David McSavage and Jason Byrne.
The challenge is clear - if you laugh, you lose but if you make it through six hours of sight gags, funny masks, novelty props and eh, comical poetry without ne'er a grin or a titter, you walk away with the LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland title and €50,000 for your chosen charity.
The show, which has already had hit Italian, French, and German versions, was filmed in a location in south county Dublin and overseeing the whole mad comedy challenge is Norton. The merry mirth maker sits in a control room watching the ten comedians’ every move and facial expression to see if they laugh or even half crack a smile.
In front of him are two large buttons - one red and one green in which Caesar-like he can stop and start the game.
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment at the launch of the new show in the Dublin Royal Convention Centre on Friday evening, Norton said he didn’t see his role as host as a power trip.
"It didn’t feel like one," he said. "I felt guilty because my job was so easy compared to everyone else’s so I was there for the same amount of time but I really didn’t have to work very hard. I mean, I literally had to watch television for six hours which is what I do in my spare time."
As viewers will see, LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland also includes some surprising and quirky celebrity cameos - all of whom are also on a mission to leave the comedians in fits despite their best efforts.
"When you see the show, it is linear and what’s great about it, and it must be terrifying for the people producing the thing, but for me and the comedians is that I press a big button and the show starts and it goes till it goes and it’s over," Norton said.
"Making telly can be so painful because you have to repeat things, let’s pause for this, let’s reset . . . there was none of that with this show. It’s a runaway train and it was exciting."
Graham provides a running commentary on the laugh contest and he says he was amazed by the perma-smiling Amy Huberman’s ability to stay poker-faced as the likes of Jason Byrne got up to his usual gonzo hijinks.
Asked who surprised him the most, he said, "They all surprised me in a way because it was such a hard thing to do and they all performed brilliantly. You never felt sorry for them. I initially thought watching this is going to be tragic but actually they all did very, very well."
Prime Video’s first Irish original series, LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland, launches Friday 19 January on Prime Video.
