Yes, The Hundred are wearing pants.

“We’ve got a new segment this season called ‘Am I wearing pants?’ executive producer Hayden Guppy says.

“The biggest question Andy Lee gets asked on his socials is ‘Are the 100 wearing pants?’

Pants were the least of his problems when mounting an ambitious idea to produce a television show with 100 people on Zoom all live at the same time, in the middle of a pandemic.

With so many moving parts, The Hundred with Andy Lee very nearly didn’t come together for its first episode last year.

“One of the technical concerns for when our 100 log on is making sure that they’ve got the right bandwidth. So we’re at the mercy of what service provider they are using,” he recalls.

“Can we actually make this work?”

“There was a point, six or eight weeks out, we’re like, ‘Can we actually make this work? Can we actually get 100 people streaming in to one channel and all talking and participating?’

“We had the occasional drop out, but it’s been smooth sailing.”

The show, in which celebrities try to correctly guess popular answers to questions posed to the ‘100’, partnered early with Zoom and Video Technology Company TDC. While the first season was produced in Sydney, the show has now moved to NEP Studios in South Melbourne.

2021 may have been challenging but there was also an unexpected upside.

“We got very lucky in our first series because people were on stay-at-home mandates. So they really didn’t have anything else to do, and we were finding a lot of people skipping work to be a part of the show,” he explains.

“There’s no auditions. We send out a survey that involves things we’re touching on and the areas that we’re looking into, and we try to build out facts and data around their responses.

“We do some tech checks and jump through a few hoops, they log on and for the next three hours they’re completely at the mercy of Andy Lee.

“By the end of this series, we will have spoken to 2000 people.”

“Every episode, they’re a different 100. By the end of this series, we will have spoken to 2000 people. We’ve got a database of around 10,000 so our team of zoom producers wait for the responses that come back from the surveys. Sifting through that in two days is no easy feat.”

This season also introduces a small studio audience, which has changed the dynamic somewhat.

“The audience adds a different level of energy. So with the 100 and another 30-45 audience in there it’s been quite funny for the comedians to figure out who to play to.

“It’s also the biggest theatre wall on a set. We’ve extended it and made it even bigger this series just to make Andy feel even smaller on set. I think it’s 8×10 metres, but when you put one person up there, it’s the size of a two story house!”

Joining regular panelist Mike Goldstein this season are Sophie Monk, Hamish Blake, Luke McGregor, Celia Pacquola, Dilruk Jayasinha, Nazeem Hussain, Abbie Chatfield, Anne Edmonds, Jacqui Lambie, Becky Lucas, Jean Kittson and Tom Gleeson.

“Tom Gleeson said, ‘No-one ever asks me. I’d love to sit on the other side of a panel,” he continues.

“And Sophie is just real. We’re very appreciative that she’ll come on our show because she’s such a great fit. She can knock around with comedians and she’s very funny in her own right. She could be on any stage telling jokes but then she’s unfiltered, telling these stories like whether she looks at poo before she flushes it!”

Guppy (pictured below) met Hamish & Andy when he was a runner on Rove, becoming a Second Assistant Director on Real Stories then co-creator /director of Luke Warm Sex.

He’s grateful to Nine for taking a second swing at the series and hopeful it could become a regular light entertainment staple for the network.

“It feels like we’re apart from programs like Have You Been Paying Attention? and Andy brings all of his radio experience to it. So we’ve just found this really sweet spot that feels quite unique.

“We’re hoping that we might come back towards the end of the year”

“We have a great belief in this show so we’re hoping that we might come back towards the end of the year as well.

“There’s so much material in the show, and we never tire of it. We started quite broad last year but this year, we’ve gone really into some specific habits of Australians and finding such great responses to come out of it.”

The Hundred with Andy Lee 9pm Tuesday on Nine.