One of Britain's best-known presenters did not build her return to screen on ITV or Netflix. She built it on YouTube, where the first episode got one star. That rating says more about the criticism than about the show.
Holly Willoughby launched the lifestyle series Together on 28 July, with actor Stanley Tucci as the guest of the first episode. The show runs twice a week, and new episodes come out every Tuesday and Friday at 10am on YouTube and with podcast providers.
The format rests on five pillars: Talk Together, Cook Together, Look Good Together, Better Together and Hang Out Together. It is filmed in a purpose-built studio.
What Together is and who stands behind it
The series is produced by Hungry Bear Media, which is run by Willoughby's husband Dan Baldwin. According to her representatives, she has a digital audience of 16 million. The first wave of guests includes, alongside Tucci, Katherine Ryan, Joanne McNally, Emma Bunton and Nicole Appleton, and the founding brand partner is the medical technology provider Voy.
The choice of platform matters more than the cast. After leaving ITV's This Morning, Willoughby returned to presenting on ITV and Netflix, where she hosted Celebrity Bear Hunt with Bear Grylls. Together is her first major step that bypasses broadcasters and streaming services and goes straight to an open platform.
That step makes sense for her in particular. Willoughby has been through difficult years: first the aftermath of the scandal involving her former This Morning colleague Phillip Schofield, and then the threat posed by a man convicted over an alleged plan to kidnap and murder her. The audience nonetheless follows her across projects and platforms. The bet behind Together is that this audience is an asset she carries with her, and that no broadcaster is needed to unlock it.
She is measured about the project itself. “I'm so proud of the work all the team who make Together have put into this exciting new project. We've had a lot of fun developing it and look forward to seeing what you think,” said Willoughby.
How the first episode fared with critics
British critics were harsh at the premiere. Anita Singh wrote a one-star review in the Telegraph: “Holly Willoughby's dire YouTube show makes Meghan look good... Not even Stanley Tucci can redeem this 50-minute borefest of awkward small talk, forced swearing and pie tin trivia”. The review gave it one star and targeted the fifty-minute running time of the first episode.
The rest of the field was milder, but in the same vein. Carol Midgley gave two stars in The Times and wrote that “Willoughby fell into the trap that so many female TV presenters do [and] gushed too much”, adding “I think it will have to become edgier than this to make its mark in a very crowded field”.
Stuart Heritage was more lenient in The Guardian, with three stars, summing up that “Holly Willoughby Together (With Voy, don't forget) is extremely With Love, Meghan in tone and presentation”.
The reviews judge a single episode as a finished television product. That is precisely where they miss how YouTube works.
TV talent moving to YouTube is not new
The route from linear television to an open platform has a fresh precedent in Britain. Piers Morgan ended his daily show on TalkTV and moved Uncensored to YouTube, arguing that “the commitment to a daily show at a fixed schedule, with all the editing and time sensitivities that involves, has been an increasingly unnecessary straitjacket”.
His decision rested on the finding that his interview with the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, drew many times the reach on the open platform that it did on the linear channel.
The logic of both moves is the same. The asset is the audience that the presenter takes with them, not the channel where they have broadcast so far. The market supports that bet. According to Ofcom Media Nations 2026, streaming services have reached the level of the public broadcaster as the first choice British viewers turn to, and they have clearly outstripped it among younger viewers. The broadcaster as the starting point where viewers begin their search is weakening across generations.
Why the launch playbook and YouTube do not match
Together came with a broadcast launch playbook. A big announcement, a global guest in the very first episode, and a single show that has to land first time. That is how a television season is introduced, where the first episode carries everyone's expectations and a second chance does not come soon.
YouTube rewards the opposite movement. A channel is built through iteration, and the first video is a minimum requirement, not a peak. Format, rhythm and tone are tuned to how the audience responds, and that takes dozens of episodes. A review of the first episode therefore measures a finished television product on a platform where no finished product exists at the start.
For a brand considering a collaboration with a creator or running its own channel, this is a concrete signal. Launch-day metrics and headlines about a first episode do not show whether a format will succeed on YouTube. That becomes clear only from the retention curve and from how the show changes between episodes. Piers's move showed this from the other side, where one interview drew many times the reach on the open platform than on the linear channel, and that is a metric that launch day does not capture.
Voy as founding partner of Together is not buying a single fifty-minute evening. It is buying a series that has yet to settle in. Anyone who reads creator plays through the reviews of a premiere is reading the medium wrong.
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