Amazon’s new show, Last One Laughing (LOL), has been billed as a “first-of-its-kind comedy social experiment”. But while it’s definitely a kind of experiment, the show is not the “first of its kind”. LOL is like a shared screenshot of a quote-tweeted meme that’s been run through Google Translate. It’s still pretty funny, it just takes a while to make sense of what you’re looking at. The six-part series follows 10 Australian comedians locked in a baroque Big Brother-style apartment for six hours. The premise: no one is allowed to laugh. The comedians – Dilruk Jayasinha, Frank Woodley, Nazeem Hussain, Anne Edmonds, Ed Kavalee, Becky Lucas, Joel Creasey, Nick Cody, Sam Simmons and Susie Youssef – go to extreme lengths to provoke each other and if anyone cracks, Rebel Wilson barges in to kick them out. The last one left stands to win $100,000. LOL is a redeveloped version of Documental, a Japanese show hosted by comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto with pretty much the exact same premise, tone and aesthetic. Documental is now in its seventh season, and it was first exported as LOL to Mexico in 2018. Notably, the comedians in Documental put in their own money to play: 1 million yen each. This is the reason the set has a very late-night World Poker Tour vibe, and without that context in the Australian version, LOL feels extra strange – like a series of elaborate “you laugh, you lose” viral videos arbitrarily filmed in a vaudeville-themed escape room. That doesn’t sound very appealing at face value, but the thing about “you laugh, you lose” videos is: they’re funny. Despite your best efforts, you often can’t help giggling at something incredibly dumb, cringeworthy or shocking. And LOL delivers on all three. Its first two episodes, on which this review is based, feature endless prop comedy, purposefully bad one-liners, and one instance of full-frontal nudity. The screaming surrealism of Anne Edmonds and Sam Simmons is the real highlight, and the pair provide the show’s funniest moments. Dilruk Jayasinha is also a standout for gross-out gags, and Frank Woodley is … well, Frank Woodley. It’s hard not to at least smile at the slapstick antics of Australian comedy’s dorky dad. Inevitably in what is essentially a six-hour improv show, many gags do not land. And that cringe factor is made worse by the fact the other comedians can’t break the silence and laugh it off. Rebel Wilson is left to carry these moments, with commentary from a control room out the back. If a Rebel Wilson-only episode of Gogglebox is not your jam, that could be enough to throw you off the show completely. It’s strange that a show featuring some of the most familiar faces on Australian TV can feel so foreign. For those unfamiliar with Japanese TV, the series will feel quite American: it’s competitive, overstylised and full of gimmicks. That’s out of whack with Australia’s existing improv tradition – Thank God You’re Here always had the sweet and daggy energy of a talent show at school camp. But Amazon is releasing this show globally, so it needs to have global appeal. As the first variation of the format to be made in English, LOL could easily become popular as a novelty show in the US: crazy Australians shouting about “chunder” and calling each other “dumb cunts”. LOL is part of a new and ongoing investment in Australian content from Amazon, for a market that’s desperately in need of original, homegrown content from diverse and emerging creatives. So far they have released 10 local standup specials and a documentary about the Australian test cricket team. An AFL doco and a reboot of Packed to the Rafters are also on their way. With the exception of the standup specials, that looks like a standard slate of content for any one of our commercial free-to-air networks. Amazon’s investment in local comedy is great, and LOL will bring these comedians to a global audience, but the next step is investment in new ideas. I can already watch Ed Kavalee and Joel Creasey make dick jokes on Channel 10 most days of the week.