Holly Willoughby’s new YouTube venture is off to a wonky start

Holly Willoughby’s adventures in non-terrestrial television have been a mixed bag to date. After her departure from ITV’s This Morning, she somehow found herself in Costa Rica with Bear Grylls as presenter of the atrocious Netflix series Celebrity Bear Hunt. This was not only a career low for Willoughby and Central American jungles – it was potentially the worst show Netflix has ever put out, which is quite a boast as those of us who made it all the way through House of Guinness will attest.Bear Hunt was quickly put out of its misery and now Willoughby has gone from wilderness survival to kitchen coziness with a new series, Holly Willoughby Together (YouTube). The twist is that it’s going out on YouTube and sees her returning to her ITV persona of unofficial best friend of you, the viewer – here for a natter and a laugh and nothing too heavy (such as Bear Grylls crashing through the undergrowth with his underpants over his head as protection from ants).Holly Willoughby Together has been compared to another Netflix show: the found-footage horror film that is (or, rather was) With Love, Meghan. That was Meghan Markle’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to parlay her mega-fame into a Martha Stewart-type lifestyle brand.With Love was immensely annoying – largely due to Markle’s trying-too-hard energy, which made it feel like you were at a house party where the host attempts to top up your wine glass before you’ve even taken a sip. Netflix subscribers agreed and despite all the hoopla it failed to crack the streamer’s top 300 most watched programmes and has gone the way of Bear Grylls’s jungle jamboree.READ MOREWilloughby’s new venture is off to a similarly wonky start. It opens, a bit alarmingly, with an outpouring of “spontaneous” banter between Willoughby and her crew that has obviously been scripted to death. There is a swear word, she talks about drinking wine while her accent seems to have been modulated to a less cut-glass register.Things improve when her guest, Stanley Tucci, breezes in, hefting a vast bottle of olive oil as a gift. He’s an old pro and treats the 50-minute segment like just another assignment, chatting at length about his love of Pot Noodle and sharing his favourite pasta recipe.Alas, his magic doesn’t quite work on Willoughby, who has the energy of a coiled spring. It is as if she is coming to terms in real time with the daunting responsibility of not just being the face of a popular show but embodying the brand itself.That said, it’s nowhere near as disastrous as Bear Hunt, and as the lights fade and Tucci says his farewells, Willoughby can console herself with the knowledge that things could be worse. She could still be stuck in that jungle with Bear Grylls rather than in the cosy setting of her own YouTube channel.On the other hand, it isn’t as if the internet is in a hurry to hear her thoughts on pasta preparation. Thus far, Holly Willoughby Together has notched up a mere 49,000 views – an underwhelming return for a presenter of her stature. She is still an enormously capable host – but whether she and YouTube are made for one another is a question yet to be answered.