Worming its way out

What is the point of Can of Worms? Its ever-changing format suggests it doesn’t know itself. Maybe that’s its point? It’s there to test every possible permutation of the panel show format until it gets it right? Well, good luck with that, meanwhile we’ll be over here reading a book about grammar. Apparently we’re bad at that.

Oh, alright, Can of Worms is probably better now it’s live…if you’re the kind of person who’s really into the “second screen experience”, or if you just like making sarcastic comments about lame telly on Twitter. But if you’re of the increasingly old-fashioned view that one screen is all you need to be entertained and informed then there’s not much on Can of Worms for you.

Want some views on drugs in sport? Or the horse meat scandal? Read a newspaper, or a blog, or listen to breakfast radio, or watch a TV show that’s on nightly…chances are the same sort of people who turn up on Can of Worms are giving their comments there. Even better, some of those people are giving informed views rather than angling their comments to get to a punchline.

We’d complain less if the punchlines reached were any good, obviously. Or if the serious parts of the conversation contained the sorts of views you couldn’t hear anywhere else. Can of Worms came close to that last week when they invited an expert on the issue to say a few words in favour of drugs in sport, but he didn’t get much time to say his piece. They presumably had to cut back to Julie Goodwin or something. Fair enough, she’s the real expert on the topic.

In its early days Can of Worms tried to get an audience by being a bit controversial, now it can’t even manage that – partly because nobody’s watching. This is Can of Worms‘ third series, and you have to wonder whether this is its last. It’s never quite worked, it’s never rated brilliantly, it’s changed itself more times than we can count, and these days we only tune in when there’s nothing else for us to blog about that week. You’re presumably the same, except you don’t write a blog about Australian comedy and therefore have no reason to watch it at all. We wish we were you right now, we really do. They had Rebel Wilson on last night, for heaven’s sake!