Weekdays, 4pm,
ITV1
Apparently the memorandum on TV shows not bothering to sound like Jerry McGuire’s “show me the money” because it sounds rubbish was ignored by ITV and Shiver who have done exactly that, hopefully it will be more successful than their recent Cook Me The Money.
Richard Bacon hosts as a team of three civilians take on a three celebrities (captained by TV’s Chris Tarrant) in a television quiz, pondering whether people who watch the television know as much as the people who make it. On the line is £3,000 with the civilians playing for themselves and the celebs playing for charity. It’s Eggheads meets Telly Addicts, basically.
We like a good TV quiz and we also like Richard Bacon, but are aware that that’s far from a universal opinion. Chris Tarrant must be due his one-in-fifty hit format. Shiver were recently responsible for a very enjoyable documentary on newsflashes (amongst a host of other things), so we’ll see if they can translate that to a general television sphere.
A couple of interesting programme queries came my way for this during production – it should at least have some interesting questions. Hopefully it will be half as good as either Eggheads or Telly Addicts.
I hope when people watch the show they realise that it is a fun quiz show and not to take it sooooo seriously. Ok there is at the end the potential for the civilian team to walk away with a very nice £3,000 and I hope the show gets good ratings because for me it deserves it.
I say all this because in the series I’m on one of the civilian teams (Yes if you remember my last televisual quizzing exploits it was Taking on those retched Twisters and losing out on victory by £200) and obviously I can’t say anything about how I did but I had an absolute laugh doing the show.
I believe there is another friend of the Bar who is on the show during this week.
And there may be another 😉
I was working in studio for one of the recording days for this, I don’t want to say much as I’m always fearful of never being employed again, but it’s a fun little show. Perhaps more in the panel show end of the spectrum than daytime quiz as most of the fun comes from discussions with the celebrities rather than anything else. I’ll be curious to see how it edits.
Zipp. Anorak on. The credits offered no clues. Wondering in the more slower bits of the show – Where was this recorded?
I’m guessing as Dickie Bacon hosted it, and probably combined it with Five Live duties – MediaCity?
You are Correct! 🙂
I thought that was entertaining enough, once they got down to the actual quiz. Bit too much chat at the start for my taste. The final is quite dependent on the luck of the draw, I think – maybe it would be better to allow a category selection, or even just a choice between two sets of questions?
So it’s my first day on a new job 200 miles from home and I see Show Me the Telly is in the very next edit suite to mine!
Can you tell them to add some graphics for the scores please?
And Chris Tarrant gave up hosting Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? for THIS???!
Seriously, over at TV Cream they brilliantly billed the show as ‘a daily version of the Christmas special of Telly Addicts’ and it’s hard not to argue.
A few points of note from me. (contains incidental spoilers)
To the production team – television did actually start before 1970 you know. Oh, and if you have built up the team captain’s appearance on WWTBAM, and talked about his ‘other’ career as an extra in Downtown Abbey..
When he can point out exactly where he was stood, in probably ITV’s biggest breakthrough drama in ages – show the frekin’ still of him from the show – or ring up Victory television and ask for the on-set photo of him with Tarrant. Even if you have to do that in post prod. Don’t let the audience try and imagine what he looked in the shows for themselves.
To Paul Farrer – nice annoyingly catchy theme tune, Sir.
To the set designer – good re-using of the back drop to Charlie Brooker’s ‘You have been watching’.
To Chris Tarrant – close your legs, mate.
And yes, you would actually have been the better host and Richard as the regular tv people team captain.
To Richard Bacon – holding the cards out in front of you in a Julian Lepers style, means you need to think about putting on some reading glasses. Still I’m glad that you now don’t deliver every sentence like it’s heavy with irony.
To the graphic designer – Testcard motif for the show. Wow, that didn’t use up to much paper sketching out ideas for the show logo did it?
So all in all. Typical ITV low budget daytime quizzer.
Almost degenerated into a chatshow which I suppose helps pad the hour out – and a format with a semi explained time element, and a win rate of somewhere around 1 in every 4, maybe – And inconsistent canned laughter.
Frustrating to watch, because it could be better with a little more thought (like putting the scores on the screen at the Family Fortunes style podium in the head to head round, for example). 6/10
Mmm. OK, Richard Bacon remains an acquired taste and the show will live or die largely based on personal reaction to him. Personally I like him, there was a lot of chat in the show but it felt natural and quite entertaining – light. Tarrant is good value, suppose it’s quite handy that there are two DJs in the mix, but I think it was eight minutes until the first question is asked and if you’re aiming to appeal to quizzers it needs to start much faster really, even Pointless was faster than that!
What didn’t feel natural and entertaining was the canned audience, and I think something quite chat heavy would have benefitted from actual reactions, it felt very off.
The questions were fine, although with questions on the easy side to claim a draw as a block from the celebrities feels rather mean (success in the end game is as much the celebrities being rubbish as it is the team being good), would it really have been difficult to include a tie break for each round? The third round notwithstanding it’s not much in the way of competition so much as two teams playing solitaire (which fair enough was also how Telly Addicts worked) and one team can potentially have no chance of winning (which isn’t how Telly Addicts worked).
Lack of score graphics didn’t bother me, surprisingly. They would have aided in round one but I thought Bacon did a decent job keeping people abreast of the scores.
I thought the endgame was OK. I always enjoy it when they give lifelines irritating names. It felt a bit like the end of Didn’t They Do Well? It was nice of Bacon to prompt the contestant to use his pass at the end.
I thought the press release suggested the celebs were playing for charity, although apparently I’ve just made that up. I wish they did have something on the line.
It’s not as good as Telly Addicts – it features slightly less content with twice the airtime to fill. I thought it was fun enough, but I can’t see it keeping Tipping Point’s figures.
1.44 million (13.8%) including HD and +1
Cheers. I think it will have a little bit further to fall, evidently quite a lot of the Tipping Point audience didn’t bother hanging around when they discovered it wasn’t on.
Ratings for yesterday: 1,150,000 (11.1%)
including HD and +1.
Comfortably behind Paul Hollywood on BBC One and only 85,000 ahead of Deal or No Deal on C4.
850k (12.2%) for Pressure Pad.
Half a Tipping Point! The big news there is that DoND must be over a million.
Pressure Pad approaching the dizzy heights of Beat the Pack, but it seems to fluctuate.
Show Me The Telly 1.21m (11.7%)
Pressure Pad 740k (10.5%)
Both seem to be struggling to gain momentum. The Channel need to give any new quiz time to find it’s feet… wonder if they will?
The BBC would….but ITV tend to bin things very quickly if they don’t succeed quickly..
True up to a point, but with quizzes which are especially ephmeral the early trend tends to be correct.
Just watched it (no thanks to ITV player refusing to realise that I have switched my adblocker off).
It’s an OK show but I doubt I would ever be watching it live if I were home (because I’d be watching Deal at 4pm and Pointless at 5.15pm)
I really don’t know what to say about SMTT, it’s just ‘meh’ to me. That seems to be a recurring theme with new game shows these past few months, not quite good but not quite bad either. It’s going to make it REALLY hard for me to allocate my votes for the Halls of Fame and Shame at the end of the year.
It was entertaining fluff, though it’s a shame that the rest of the show wasn’t as inspired or original as the “pause”/”record”/”delete” lifelines in the end game.
As for its worth as a quiz: I can’t have been the only viewer who answered every single question correctly.
To be fair I don’t think it’s trying to be a high end serious quiz, more a panel show meets light quiz show with an excuse to get some decent archive in and I do love anything archive. I enjoyed it actually, inoffensive, some funny moments, thought Richard Bacon was pretty good and it was a change from what is usually offered at that time.
Relevant video for Pat fans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnvpzkSdGII
Have had official confirmation today of when my show is on and feel free to watch either Monday, Wednesday,Thursday and Friday shows next week 😉
Show me the Telly – down to 1.12m 11.3%
Dropped a little…
I’ve got 1.21 (12.1%), which I guess includes +1
That fig Will include HD and +1.
Hmmm, if it continues like this I doubt this will be back at all…..even if there has been no promotion for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-361YYdJWo
Think Tank from 1995.
Oh, wow. That’s the greatest star prize I’ve ever seen.
Damn right, forget money or a holiday or any of those other kinds of prizes, THAT’S what I want to win!!! 😀
A clip from Tarrant’s unbroadcast pilot of Stars In Their Eyes on today’s show
Ooh, ta.
Really fun clip! Loved that they got to pick their own clothes.
Hope you enjoyed today’s show especially as little old me was Team Captain for the TV lovers and had a lot of fun doing the show especially as we won! 🙂
Watching it now. Well done!
Ratings fell again yesterday. 1.12m
Shame because I think it’s a really nice show.
I think there are things I would do differently, but I’m greatly enjoying the relaxed atmosphere and some of the clips that have come out of it.
Good show in the wrong slot I think (I think it looks a bit too…shiny? for mid-afternoon), would be intrigued to see how it would fare early Sunday evening, say.
Curious you say that: I understand there are 25 episodes, but only 20 are appearing in the 4pm weekday slot. One will be going out at 2.35 on the afternoon of Sunday 22 December; I wonder if the other four might slot in at teatime in January.
Correction there were 20 episodes made not 25 so I suspect the one they are showing on the 22nd December more than likely will possibly be a repeat (I hope it ain’t mine!)
It is a shame that the Ratings are yoyo’ing because it was a fun show to do and I’m not saying that because my team won the £3k but the whole crew at Shiver were fantastic and it was a very relaxed atmosphere all around and I would like it to get a second series because I feel it deserves it but ITV like with another show that I did in the form of Take on the Twisters can be somewhat fickle if a brand new show does not do well in the ratings!……
I’m enjoying this show but after sitting through the full first episode I think my enjoyment is helped by having a fast forward button to hand – it must take 7 or 8 mins to get to the quiz!
Decent questions and good clips though. Can stand or fall a bit by the middle round – TV or Not TV is quite fun and can bring out some humour, as can “fill in the blank in the title” but the daily pick 5 from 9 and the Catchphrases round are fairly standard and come up a bit too regularly.
One thing that does rather jar is how they do some rather tenuous links to questions off the back of clips – virtually no clips actually ask about the clip just seen but a surprising amount don’t even ask about the SHOW we just saw – I think I counted only 2 of 9 clips today where the question straight after the clip was about the same show!
Tenuous link of the day: “That was a clip of Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman interviewing Michael Howard. On The Andrew Marr Show, Newsnight presenter Eddie Mair said to which London mayor “You’re a nasty piece of work?”
I’m not saying don’t do this but it happens rather too often!
Otherwise nice to see a bright, colourful, pleasant show rather than going for something unnecessarily dark. 7.5/10
Yes, was going to point out the questions in round one are rarely associated with the clip, show or even the selected genre half the time, which rather makes category selection a bit moot.
I don’t mind the chat at the start – yes if you’re aiming at quiz addicts it shouldn’t be there, but as someone not so hardcore in the quiz arena the chat is at least breezier than any other show I can think of of late. I accept I’m likely out of step on this, similarly I quite like Richard Bacon’s minutiae of the mundane schtick but fully understand that not everyone can stick the schtick, which is a great line I was hoping to use when Fifty 50 are going to do an episode on this but probably won’t bother now.
I’m enjoying the show as well and agree with some of the points raised here. Especially the wrong slot for it.
Unfortunately, with the ratings as they are, I pretty sure this won’t be back, which is a shame, because with a bit a tinkering I think people would eventually “get” what the show is, accept it and enjoy it more
Interesting point in today’s second round as Richard asked Chris whether he wished he’d got Deal Or No Deal with Tarrant dismissing it quickly as a “silly programme” like Find the Lady at the seaside.
There was also a contender for question swerve of the series after a clip of Celebrity CDWM featuring Janice Dickinson and Calum Best the question was “…Lesley Joseph took part in the series in 2011 – in which sitcom does she play Dorien Green?”
(Lesley Joseph wasn’t even in the clip!)