Viv Groskop warmly greets each audience member as they enter the room for her show Anchorwoman. It’s a lovely way to start a show and the antithesis of the afraid-you’ll-be-heckled feeling of some comedy shows.
Groskop’s show is a reference to her childhood ambition to become an anchorwoman and her actual career as a print journalist. This show takes in everything from Trump, fake news, Twitter spats, and the Whitehall cats.
Groskop is a very watchable entertainer and she delivers this show, unsurprisingly after that welcome, with a real warmth and you can sense that she really loves what she does. The format of the show feels a little like a series of BuzzFeed articles – not a bad thing – as we’re quizzed on true/fake news stories, given a list of light-relief local news stories and given the low down on a celebrity Twitter spat.
This personal story about a Twitter spat with Piers Morgan is one of the highlights of the show, being both very funny and having a satisfying level of revenge at the end of the tale. It displays Groskop’s personal politics and her take-no-shit attitude, something that we definitely could have seen more of.
Other elements of the show are just not as funny, including a fair few mentions of Donald Trump.Of course, it’s hard to talk about modern politics without referencing him a little but Groskop is far funnier when she’s sharing personal anecdotes than trying to make jokes about the unpopular President – he’s just too easy.
The show highlights the prevalence of fake news and our desire to believe the unbelievable when sharing fake stories and Groskop does a good job of tying all the elements of the show together and giving us a satisfyingly funny and happy ending. This is an enjoyable show from a talented performer.