In general an advantage of the game show format is that it provides a strong obviously and openly scripted framework. That means that you can keep the actual funny bits largely unscripted – or alternatively create a better illusion of them being unscripted.
Being amusing for a whole show without any structure is impossibly difficult and if you try to hide the scripted elements then there is always a chance that it backfires and makes the whole thing seem contrived and artificial.
In a similar vein, you might like Says You if you can find it on a local station (or just find someone who plays it at a convenient time and listen to their web stream).
Achren already mentioned the issue with licensing the images. I sometimes wonder if an American version would work. I think Bonnie Hunt would make an excellent host.
Or in the German episode, he could have just mentioned the war a couple hundred times.
It’s a parlour game for the age of electricity.
“Everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.”
StG
Which, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, comes from another show based on a British panel game show…
WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP
(NOT a klaxon, as we learned in the last episode)
I didn’t. Look again. I quoted urban1a.
If you look again you’ll see you qouted both of them.
I think one of the closest things to a panel show in the US was Hollywood Squares.
And me.
It was very silly of me to quote Mahaloth without first asking, perhaps by singing telegram, whether I have his permission to do so.
Everyone should know that no expansion of any explanation of Mahaloth’s, by linking to a source, would elicit nothing but extreme displeasure.
I think we’re just confused since your link was not related to my post. And that you said you didn’t quote me.
That’s all.
(An originally British show, remade in USA with *some *of the same cast.)
I briefly tried some of the earlier episodes (they are on YouTube) but decided that I preferred the longer XL ones. I’ll go back and try the earlier ones, thanks for the suggestion.
I was aware of Jonathan Creek (and that’s where I first saw Alan), but hadn’t seen him in anything else. I don’t know whether I saw all the Creek episodes, and, now, don’t remember where I saw them (maybe Netflix). I preferred the earlier episodes of that with the dumpy female reporter rather than the hot woman.
Bob
Oddly enough, Jonathan Creek is also all on youtube.
There have been a couple of recent one-off Jonathan Creek specials, and a whole new series is now in production, of three episodes I think. Frustratingly they eliminated the magic and windmill angle of his character in the last one. I hope that’s not permanent.
There’s some of Alan’s standup on YouTube, although it’s from quite a few years back.
He doesn’t seem to be exactly amazingly prolific, but looking at his Wiki page and adding up the comedy stuff, QI, Jonathan Creek and various drama and documentary things for TV, I suppose he keeps reasonably busy. He’s written a book as well. It also says he’s planning a new comedy tour.
No doubt you are right, but in the case of British comedy panel games, what really opened the floodgates was Have I Got News For You, about twenty years ago. There were comedy panel shows on radio before HIGNFY, to which it undoubtedly owes a lot (e.g. The News Quiz, and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, which is an out-an-out spoof of panel games). And on TV there were panel games such as Call My Bluff in which being funny was important, but which still had real scoring and proper winners and losers.
But those shows were quaint, minority interests. Like it or not, the audience for clever radio shows and panel games from the 1950s is small. Have I Got News For You vaulted comedy panel shows into the mainstream. It rode on the back of the alternative comedy boom of the 1980s. After HIGNFY’s success came many imitators of varying quality. QI is one of the good ones.
Also Around the Horn. Four sportswriters “compete” on various topics and get awarded random points. The prize is to be the last one left and get the last word on any topic they wish.
Coincidentally I just watched this episode where Jonathon Ross scores I think 4 million and Alan scores minus 29 million.
Oh, right, I forgot about that. Yeah, I guess those are the record high and low scores, and not likely to be beaten. 
Also, Jonathan Ross displays some pretty impressive knowledge about comics in that episode.