Unlike the United States, Britain has not been doing leader debates for very long — and it shows. Aired live from an ITV studio, the aesthetics of last night’s leaders’ debate hewed closer to a game show (with computer graphics for a backdrop and even a quick fire round) than to the comparative grandeur and high production values of US presidential debates.

With a Q and A format — which hardly seemed to necessitate Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn even being in the same room given the lack of space for rebuttals — it was a piece of television that seemed well designed to provide material for the wearisome “gosh, aren’t both sides awful!” thinkpieces churned out with metronomic regularity by Britain’s centrist commentariat.

Nonetheless, in spite of the format, the debate revealed much about the two candidates and the respective strategies of Labour and the Conservatives for the coming election. Johnson is of course most at ease when he’s talking about Brexit — indeed, he’ll try to steer every conversation back to it. Corbyn and his party have strong answers in response. But they will have to make their case, both on Brexit and the plethora of Johnson’s lies on every other topic, much more forcefully in the continued lead-up to December’s election.