Hearing Holly Willoughby swear is a bit like hearing your teacher let one slip at school. It feels illicit and taboo. Everyone giggles because it’s a break in the rules, a diversion off script that should never happen. And yet here we are on a Tuesday morning, not even 8am, and Willoughby is dropping the F-bomb and pouring a glass of Pinot Grigio with Stanley Tucci on the first episode of her new YouTube show Holly Willoughby Together (with Voy).

Suffice to say, we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. And by Kansas, I mean This Morning – the wholesome ITV breakfast show on which Willoughby made her name before departing three years ago in the wake of a scandal involving her co-presenter pal Phillip Schofield, with Willoughby’s “Are you OK?” address to the nation being memed to oblivion. Billed as a lifestyle chat show – some episodes will focus on cooking, others on fashion and human interest stories – Together is an all-out, sponsor-backed attempt at relaunching her career after previous efforts, including a Bear Grylls survival show on Netflix, fell flat. (Voy, if you were wondering, is a health app specialising in weight loss). But more than a relaunch, it’s also a rebrand – hence the swearing, the wine, and the oh-so-casual peep-behind-the-curtain shots of the crew at work.

There is a vicarious thrill in watching Willoughby unfiltered. And yet paradoxically, something valuable has been lost in the removal of ITV’s kid-friendly guardrails. It was when Willoughby brushed up against those that she shined comedically – the way she’d fight to keep a straight face at an inappropriate innuendo (remember “cock-a-chon”?) or how she’d try desperately and often without success to press on after a particularly funny on-air blunder. It goes back to the school teacher thing: everything is funnier when you’re not supposed to laugh.

This brings me to my main criticism of Together. It’s not funny. Or fun. As its first guest, Tucci brings star power and some admirable banter – at one point the actor cracks a phallic joke about a courgette – but not once in these 50 (!) minutes does the duo come close to the comedic heights reached on This Morning by Gino D’Acampo’s “if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a bike” carbonara saga. It’s clear Willoughby is missing a co-presenter to riff off; it’s not long before conversation dries up and the pair must bring in props for reinforcements.

Say what you want about Meghan Markle, but she never subjected us to a dramatic reading of the ingredients in a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie – which is precisely what occurs around the 34 minute mark. But the Duchess of Sussex’s series is a fair point of comparison. Like With Love, Meghan, Together is a lifestyle show whose main (only?) selling point is the very famous woman at its centre. Where Willoughby has the edge on her American counterpart, though, is her natural charm – something that takes no effort on her part, and in fact flows freely in the moments of Together when she’s not so focused on doing things differently for the sake of a rebrand.

Production-wise, Together could do with a bit of Meghan’s Netflix budget. In addition to the static studio cameras, footage is also shot on what appears to be a shaky handheld. Ostensibly, the goal is to evoke a more approachable lens than the high-gloss look of This Morning, but the result is something like The Blair Witch Project filmed inside a Habitat store. On that note, too, the set feels unsuitably stilted for the laissez-faire vibe they’re going for. Blush, beige and more beige, it’s a millennial Pinterest board come to life. This is a kitchen no one has ever set foot in, never mind cooked in.

Around the halfway mark, Together starts to elicit the same soporific effect as a bowl of spag bol (or as is proper in Italian culture, according to Tucci, rigatoni bol). Willoughby’s voice and his lilting laugh blend into one, as cutlery clinks and chimes in a sort of ASMR-y way. It’s not totally unpleasant. It’s even a little soothing if you close your eyes. But it’s not what you want from a breakfast show at 7am – and certainly it’s not the marker of an exciting new era for Willoughby.