Before I start I just want to mention that I've only seen three episodes of this so far, so my opinion is subject to change.
I don't find John Wilson an engaging or funny narrator. In fact his delivery actively annoy me, for the same reason that I can't get into Joe Pera's work. I find them both too affected. If the script was strong enough perhaps it wouldn't bother me as much, but there have been multiple times where the joke appears to at least partly rely on the incongruous way he's talking and it always falls flat. In episode three there's a part where Wilson is talking over some footage and then a dog comes on screen and he distractedly trails off with a "...so yeah". It's such low effort humour, and feels like they couldn't think of something funny to write, which I have trouble believing considering the talent involved in the production of the show.
I understand that due to Wilson's nature of filming everything, the show comes to life in the editing bay. However, again I don't think the writing is strong enough to support a lot of the footage. For instance, the Kyle MacLachlan appearance in episode one is funny, but if you examine the way it's used I feel like it's actually shoehorned in rather shoddily. Wilson is talking about ending small talk by "touching and going", shows a few examples of that happening, then says "but even once you've touched and goed, your problems might still not be over" and it cuts to Kyle MacLachlan having trouble getting through a subway barrier. Many of the jokes in the episodes are essentially just word association with what's on screen, and they often feel ham-fisted to some degree.
There is probably a better format for the footage than the ostensible How To concept, which so far has completely fallen apart outside of the first episode. Nirvanna The Band The Show also uses clever editing to recontextualise existing footage, and even though it's far more narrative driven, the episodes are similarly always shifting and adapting, in a way that feels both more impressive and more natural than when How To does it. The Mandela Effect stuff in episode 3 wasn't funny enough to spend so much of the episode going off on a tangent about, and I think that's partly because I don't believe Wilson gets the best out of the people he interacts with, unlike Nathan Fielder or the aforementioned Nirvanna crew. Nathan Fielder has spoken in interviews about how regular people act differently and say crazy things when there's a camera pointed at them, but it seems to me that doesn't hold true when they're having to interact directly with the person holding the camera. It appears to put up a barrier that can't always be overcome with a personality like Wilson's behind it. Whether this personality is a deliberate choice, or just the way he is I don't know and I'm not interested in psychoanalysing him. Either way, I'm reminded of the scene in The Blair Witch Project where Heather talks about how as long as she keeps filming she feels separated from the world and her situation.
Anyway, despite talking so much shit about it, I don't completely hate it and have laughed multiple times each episode. I'm going to keep watching because there's only 3 more episodes, and it's still far more inventive and interesting than the vast majority of any comedy that's being made in the UK, but I think that says more about the state of TV here than anything else.
Edit: Just watched episode 4 after writing this post. The first half was pretty dire, but the circumcision part was very funny and I was glad it didn’t overstay its welcome. Something I forgot to mention in the post is how much I hate New York and New Yorkers, something which was affirmed multiple times in this episode (his friend who had a meltdown because brushes touched his car, the family with the shoes in the case, all the instances of anti-homeless architecture).
