... And we can't let this one slide

Perfectly normal behaviour. Photo: Channel Seven Source: Supplied

I EXPECTED Channel Seven's SlideShow to be the peerless, beautifully pointless lovechild of Wipeout and Thank God You're Here - mindless slapstick comedy on the one hand and witty improvisation on the other.

That assumption was bang on for about 10 minutes of the hour-long program. Ten measly, hopelessly glorious minutes. Beyond that, exactly zero per cent of SlideShow actually consisted of people sliding.

The SlideShow itself was nothing but a sideshow.

Most of the program was devoted to party games of the sort you'd expect to find in any improvisation lineup. The contestants mimed, cast shadow puppets and played a basic form of Pictionary, all the while managing to stay needlessly upright.

The show kept hopping from one semi-entertaining mini-game to the next like a caffeine-pumped frog when it should have been focusing on the main event.

"There's nothing funnier at the end of the day, no matter how smart we pretend we are - there's nothing funnier than someone falling over," SlideShow host Grant Denyer told news.com.au reporter Charlotte Willis before the program aired.

See, Denyer gets it! The show was supposed to be about people falling over. In the end, it was just a bunch of admittedly funny people trying to guess what their teammates were acting out.

There were some wonderfully lame moments mixed in, such as when Kiwi stand-up comic Cal Wilson introduced teammate "Johnny Ruffo who's rather buffo", or when Toby Truslove and Anh Do became entangled on the floor, desperately trying to form the shape of "a little n" without humping, sorry, bumping up the show's PG rating.

And when the floor did tilt as promised, SlideShow was memorable. Singer Johnny Ruffo leaped through hula hoops in a one-piece gymnast's uniform. Who wouldn't want to see that? Then mock groom Anh, bridezilla Tiffiny Hall and hapless best man Toby kept sliding out the door on the side of their set.

If only the contestants had spent the whole hour sliding around on those slanted floors. At 22.5 degrees, "specifically and scientifically the angle at which a human being can only just stand up", there was just enough leeway for the comics to keep their heads but enough stress to ensure they were puffing through the whole ordeal.

"On paper it's stupid, it doesn't make sense, how could this work?" Denyer said. "It's ridiculous, but you know what? It's been the most fun show I've ever had, no doubt. I've never laughed so loud."

"It sounds dumb, it is dumb. It kind of just says you know what, chill out, we'll take your mind off things for an hour and we certainly won't educate you but you'll have a lot of fun."

SlideShow is wonderfully self-assured. It's intended as pure entertainment and nothing more. The show certainly does entertain, but the first episode failed to meet our expectations, and we simply can't let that slide.

Gosip Pesbuk