Buckethead gives Boris the finger, but Johnson gets last laugh – election night TV review

At 12 minutes past 10 last night, BBC One interrupted a funeral with a tombola. The results of the exit poll had just landed like an anvil, knocking the wind out of everyone in sight. Anchors and pundits stammered and stuttered as they tried to grasp the magnitude of the predicted Conservative majority. Huw Edwards, scowling beneath a pristine Peaky Blinders haircut, was even more sombre than usual.

But then POW. It was off to Newcastle, where Naga Munchetty was leaping from foot to foot like a first-time firewalker, roaring with excitement because some people were about to count some ballot papers really quickly. Maybe 45 minutes! Maybe less! There was a new computer system! Imagine! Munchetty was far too enthusiastic given the circumstances. Was this her Supermarket Sweep audition tape?

If it was, it was misjudged, especially since the actual Supermarket Sweep host Rylan Clark-Neal was on Channel 4 calling for Scottish independence since Britain was “an absolute fucking shitshow”. In general, Channel 4’s Alternative Election Night was a more emotional offering. The exit poll was greeted with boos from the studio audience and the subsequent stabs at comedy – at one point Katherine Ryan winced through a monologue about what it would be like to have sex with Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn at the same time – tended to land like a sack of farts. She may as well have been performing for corpses. She might have even preferred that, on the basis that corpses can’t up and leave in the numbers that the audience did throughout the night. By about 3am there was barely anyone left.

Over the course of the night, on all channels, the overriding theme quickly became Labour’s injured soul-searching. On ITV – which stuck to its guns by hiring showbiz Charlies like George Osborne and Ed Balls as pundits – Jess Phillips processed her grief in real time. On BBC One, Andrew Neil settled into a nice groove of repeatedly asking Labour figures when they were going to resign. Jon Lansman was bounced around the channels like a sort of groovy uncle piñata, taking lumps from New Labour grandees like Alastair Campbell (BBC) and a legitimately furious Alan Johnson (ITV). The navel-gazing was spread so thickly across the channels that they quickly became indistinguishable. Highlights were few and far between. Lord Buckethead giving Boris Johnson the finger during the Uxbridge count gave the night a brief boost, but it soon faded in favour of more of the same.

With one exception. Because Sky News had a secret trick up its sleeve: the Election Social. Billed as a millennial-friendly vegan accompaniment to Sky’s meaty main dish, the Social ran as a live feed on Facebook and YouTube. How did it cope with one of the most sweeping landslide victories in decades? By getting a pair of pundits to see how quickly they could count some pretend ballot papers. I checked back again at midnight. They were doing a quiz about a funny dog. Perhaps I should have stuck with it from the beginning.