Whose Line Is It Anyway?: Episode 1.9

Whose Line Is It Anyway?: Episode 1.9
Channel 4
18 November 1988
Improv Game Show
DVD
B

This is the best, and in many ways the most interesting, episode so far, so let me just bullet-point it as a way to unpack it:

• After almost a full series of not particularly funny (sometimes even painfully unfunny) Americans, Mike (or "Micheal" as he's credited) McShane is a revelation, funny in his own right but also playing well with others, even the aloof John Sessions;
• Mike and Tony would genuinely become friends in later years, but here they're just meeting and getting acquainted;
• Mike and Josie, on the other hand, have instant chemistry, not so much hot as warm, and that they twice play a married couple is completely plausible, as is their harmonizing, even in FATS;
• Tony/Josie shippers also get some material here, with Josie amused if a bit shocked by Tony, while he is definitely aware of her and her reactions;
• Tony/John shippers, for that matter, have some stuff to work with, especially in FATS, even if Tony does offer the disclaimer, "I'm not a homosexual"*;
• The first game is the best version of Authors so far, perhaps ever, with the performers (even John!) ricocheting off each other and the title, The (K)Night of the Crumpet;
• Remote Control is the relative weak spot of the episode but it doesn't drag things down too far;
• At last American Musical finds a good line-up.  OK, John is admittedly a weak link, but at least he allows Mike to work in one of the polysyllabic words he's fond of ("microcephalic").  After Mike and Josie's duet, the part with Tony is golden, and if you don't at least smile at Tony's reply of "no" to Josie's musical question, "Did he make you drop your pants?", then you probably shouldn't bother with the British version of this show.

*Watching this programme back in the '90s, for some reason my gaydar failed to register for anyone less obvious than Julian Clary, but in my defense, I was young and without the Internet.  Now WLIIA looks chockful of gay, bi, and flexible-for-the-purposes-of-comedy performers, especially but not exclusively the men.