The rules of Last One Laughing are cruelly simple: put a group of professional comedians in a room, let them try to crack each other up, and eliminate anyone who laughs. For Halloween, Prime Video has dressed the format up in costume with a special edition, and the line-up suggests nobody will get through it with a straight face for long.
Who is in the room
Two familiar faces return: Daisy May Cooper and Lou Sanders, both veterans of the UK version, come back for another round of facial self-control. They are joined by a strong batch of newcomers to the house: deadpan legend Jack Dee, stand-up Phil Wang, Inside No. 9 co-creator Reece Shearsmith, actor and comic Harriet Dyer and the quick-witted Tom Allen.
Presiding over it all is host Jimmy Carr, who watches the chaos from behind the monitors. Judging by his reactions in the previous seasons, he is likely to be laughing much harder than anyone he is supposed to be judging.
Spooky surprises
The special promises guest stars and surprises designed specifically to break the contestants’ composure. Halloween is the perfect excuse for the format: costumes, props and over-the-top characters give every comedian new tools to ambush their rivals. A well-timed rubber bat or a ridiculous vampire accent can be just as deadly as a carefully crafted joke when everyone is trying desperately not to react.
Why the format keeps working
Last One Laughing started in Japan and has since been adapted across many countries, and it endures because it flips stand-up on its head. Usually comedians are judged by how much they make the audience laugh. Here, the best moments come from watching skilled performers suffer, holding their breath, staring at the ceiling and biting their cheeks as someone across the sofa goes all in on a terrible bit.
The viewer, of course, is under no such restriction. That is the whole joy of it: you get to laugh freely at the exact moments the people on screen are not allowed to.
If your Halloween plans involve the sofa rather than a costume party, this is a cheerful alternative to the usual horror marathon. It is spooky in name, silly at heart and very likely to leave at least one famous comedian with tears in their eyes.