HAVE YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION? ★★★
Series return, Monday 8.30pm, Ten

Celebrity quiz shows are funny things, and not always in the way they're intended. Pull together some crafty comedians pondering odd trivia led by a charismatic host and you get QI. Have friendly music buffs play parlour games with guest artists and you get Spicks and Specks. Invite various experts to indulge in wordplay and you end up with short-lived ABC experiments that shall go unmentioned. Or, round up some of the country's hottest comics to riff off the week's headlines and you have Network Ten's six-season strong hit, Have You Been Paying Attention?

When this simple yet popular show first aired, fake news wasn't nearly as much of a thing as it is now. And yet that's the nub of the concept. Regular panelists Ed Kavalee and Sam Pang join in the fun of sorting the factual but outlandish from the hilarious but fictional with the likes of Jane Kennedy, Kitty Flanagan, Urzila Carlson, Anne Edmonds, Peter Helliar, Celia Pacquola, Wil Anderson and Mick Molloy. There's an art to knowing how far to run with all the possible explanations for a Queensland pollie's doorstop grab and when to come clean with the real – and often just as ridiculous – deal. It's a knack that host Tom Gleisner honed on The Panel, and in his years of writing much of Working Dog's extensive output.

"You often hear me say, 'Come on, somebody must know!'," laughs Gleisner. "I start sounding like a slightly disgruntled relief teacher at a secondary school. But at the end of the day, it's a balance. We're clearly there to entertain but we don't want to lose sight of the fact that there is a question and it needs an answer. With the possible exception of Sam Pang, most of them seem capable of answering at least half a dozen questions on the night."

Pang plays a watered-down Alan Davies to Gleisner's reserved Stephen Fry, the faux friction between them a running gag. It's a banter they first struck up in 2010 running a daily sports quiz on local radio during the London Olympics, along with Gleisner's fellow Working Dog, Santo Cilauro. It was then that the seeds of HYBPA? were sown.