Following the success of the first series of Last One Laughing UK, the second series slightly fizzled out, so it is nice to be able to report that the first of four special Halloween episodes finds the format very much back on form. It’s a real scream. Or rather it isn’t because screaming gets you kicked out.

The line-up this time is Jack Dee, Phil Wang, Reece Shearsmith, Harriet Dyer, Tom Allen and back from the dead aka season one, Lou Sanders and Daisy May Cooper. Roisin Conaty and Jimmy Carr are back on ghosting, sorry, hosting duty.

It’s difficult to pick out a stand-out stand-up in the first episode. There’s good value for funny all round, whether it’s Tom Allen’s impish flute playing, Harriet Dyer’s feeble attempt at lip reading (no wonder she uses a hearing aid) or Reece Shearsmith suggesting that his biggest fear is getting a bat tangled in his (pubic) hair.

I think my personal favourite so far is Jack Dee, dubbed 'Night of the living deadpan', who has a quick-as-lightning comeback for every question and accidentally – is it accidental? – puts peas in Phil Wang’s mug (Lou Sanders has the gift for reading peas and had just done Jack’s peas…).

As a bonus we also get a cameo from Catherine Tate giving the inmates a lesson in screaming, reviving some familiar characters.

But perhaps the real highlight of the first episode is Daisy May Cooper flying around the stage while her real-life cousin from This Country, Charlie Cooper, reads Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. It’s supposed to be a spooky poem but the setting is so hilariously slapstick I can't speak for the cast but I know that I fell off the sofa I was laughing so hard. 

Last One Laughing Halloween is streaming on Prime Video.