If you missed it, here’s your chance to watch the entire broadcast again!
The Full write up is up at UKGameshows.com and afterparty stuff can be found after the cut.
Well what a year! Thanks to everyone who voted and commented, as is trad here are the top twenty for the Halls of Fame and Shame, followed by the Top 30 (34 as it turns out) for the Golden Five (Sorry, new WordPress doesn’t seem to like Excel 2016 tables right now, will tidy this up later…).
As you could give shows double votes the theoretical maximum is 40%, although blank and unused votes and votes for shows which aren’t eligible do not count towards totals.
Hall of FAME Percentage
1000 Heartbeats 17.6
Taskmaster 9.6
Beat the Brain 8.3
Wild Things 6.6
Hive Minds 5.5
Benchmark 5.0
Rebound 5.0
Almost Impossible Gameshow 4.7
Ninja Warrior 4.7
Decimate 3.6
One Hundred and Eighty 3.3
The Edge 3.3
Pick Me 3.0
Hunted 2.2
You’re Back In The Room 2.2
Let’s Play Darts 1.7
The Great Pottery Throwdown 1.7
Freeze Out 1.4
Bring the Noise 1.1
I Survived a Zombie… 1.1
Hall of SHAME Percentage
Freeze Out 10.8
Pick Me 7.5
Prized Apart 7.5
Stars in Their Eyes 6.6
Decimate 5.7
5 Star Family Reunion 4.5
Benchmark 4.2
The Edge 4.2
The Quizeum 3.9
You’re Back In The Room 3.9
Almost Impossible Gameshow 3.3
Play to the Whistle 3.3
Rebound 3.3
Flockstars 3.0
I Survived a… 3.0
Hive Minds 2.7
Eternal Glory 1.8
Frank Sinatra Our Way 1.8
King of the Nerds 1.8
Safe Word 1.8
Golden Five Percentage
Pointless 17.7
Only Connect 14.9
The Chase 10.9
1000 Heartbeats 5.2
The Great British Bake-Off 4.6
University Challenge 4.3
Tipping Point 3.8
Two Tribes 3.5
Countdown 3.3
Taskmaster 3.0
Fifteen to One 2.4
Release the Hounds 1.6
Deal or No Deal 1.4
QI 1.4
Strictly Come Dancing 1.4
The Apprentice 1.4
The Cube 1.4
Wild Things 1.4
8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown 1.1
Win Your Wishlist 1.1
Almost Impossible Gameshow 0.8
Beat the Brain 0.8
Mastermind 0.8
Round Britain Quiz 0.8
The Link 0.8
Would I Lie to You 0.8
Catchphrase 0.5
Eggheads 0.5
Hive Minds 0.5
I’m a Celeb 0.5
The Jump 0.5
The Million Pound Drop 0.5
Who Dares Wins 0.5
Here are the final results of all the mini-polls conducted during the broadcast:
What is your involvement with gameshows?
Viewer/Fan – 79%
Work in the industry – 12%
Former contestant – 9%
What is your age range?
18-30 years – 56%
31-45 years – 35%
<18 years – 6%
46-60 years – 3%
Was 2015 better or worse than 2014 for game shows?
Better – 62%
The same – 32%
Worse – 6%
What is the best UK channel for commissioning game shows?
BBC2 – 30%
BBC1 – 27%
ITV1 – 18%
CBBC – 9%
Channel 4 – 9%
ITV2 – 3%
Challenge – 3%
What particular thing makes your favourite game show unmissable? (top 5 listed)
Like testing my knowledge – 44%
Humour – 15%
Visual spectacle – 12%
The host – 9%
Drama – 9%
How to you treat interactivity when watching broadcast television (select all that apply)
Use the official hashtag – 41%
Watch a Twitter feed – 41%
Play on an app – 28%
I don’t like interactivity – 25%
Play on red button – 22%
Post a message on Facebook – 12%
Phone voting – 6%
What is your favourite genre of game show? (top 5 listed)
Comedy panel games – 24%
Academic quizzes – 24%
Children’s – 17%
Other – 17%
Family quizzes – 14%
What format from abroad would you like to see in the UK in 2016? (popular answers listed)
5 votes – The Genius
3 votes – Crime Scene, Race to Escape
2 votes – Wheel of Fortune, The Mole, Schalg den…
Hidden gem award – Outside of the main shows, which game show of 2015 is the most underrated?
7 votes – King of the Nerds
6 votes – Let’s Play Darts, The Fanatics
4 votes – Safeword
3 votes – Money Pit
2 votes – The Quizeum, Guitar Star, Guess This House
(Beat the Brain disqualified as it rated well in the main poll)
And finally as promised I thought it would be a pity for the vitriol for 5-Star Family Reunion to go to waste – some of you seemed to really hate it…
* Entropy set in more quickly in this format than in Newton’s Cradle, the star of this show. Might be the worst (quiz) show Nick Knowles has ever fronted.
* Just incredibly bland. In a similar way to some people’s description of Decimate, this too was pretty much just “answer some questions.” Didn’t build to much of a climax and its unique aspect seemed to be its Newton’s Cradle!
* Even the good bit of visual TV – using a Nelson’s cradle as a timer rather than a tacked-on digital readout – couldn’t rescue this rather ‘why-bother’ humdrum quiz – and sitting the supposedly-on-another-side-of-the-world family members in front of a cheap backdrop just made it look like they may as well have been sitting in the next studio across…
* For a long time, I thought Prized Apart was the obvious winner for this year, but then came along a show so bad, so rancid that I had to change my mind. This show is worse than Face The Clock – Bothers Bar faviourite show to hate (which by the way is still better than Take On The Twisters, but I digress), a show that if even thought about for mere moments makes little to no sense. The money can buy them the holiday. WHY ARE THEY ALSO PLAYING FOR MONEY. The fact that none of the early rounds matter, because it does bugger all for the final round really. The hilarious fact that they obviously wanted a huge metronome but then realised ‘physics don’t work that way’ and had to focus stupidly cclose up on an office toy in the first place…which also had absolutely nothing to do with anything. This was a horrendous mish-mash that was not thought through or playtested before it went to air, and boy did it show. Comfortably, and I mean COMFORTABLY one of the worst gameshows of all time. So bad, that I just had to tweet about it, even though that should probably frowned upon. A lot of shows irk me, this one made me genuinelly angry. That puts it in a category of about five to ten shows!
* Just rename it ‘Watch a Newton’s Cradle for 40 Mins with Nick Knowles’ and no one would tell the difference.
* Is it bad that I’ve put 5-Star Family Reunion mostly because of Nick Knowles and the Newton Cradle. Because I don’t care.
* 5-Star Family don’t know the capital of the Netherlands but still get a trip to the Maldives Reunion
* Tensionless. Gimmicky. Vapid. And mostly isn’t anything to do with the holiday.
Nick Knowles, a sub-genre unto himself. Until next year!
If you hanker to see previous votes, all the Polls from 2005 onwards can be found here.
Is someone doing Bother’s Bar Poll Winner’s Party Backstage The Gossip And Then Some on Bother’s Bar 2 +1 this year? “You should do a series” gag on standby.
*hastily edits ending of write-up*
We should use the hashtag #bbcpoll just to confuse people if we really get it to be trending
The impossible Pointless final question about Scottish football that Brig couldn’t recall the details of asked for opponents of Hibernian FC from a particular season. The answers were a Hungarian side – not Italian, so even less guessable – and Auchinleck Talbot.
I thought playing along at home that my suggestions of Dumbarton and Montrose were quite good, but it turns out that the only way to win the jackpot was to go a trillion times more obscure. Hardly fair.
Inspired by one of the tangents in the broadcast: Are there any shows out there which have an all-or-nothing gamble endgame which gets easier the better you had done in the early game (and hence the higher prize fund that’s at risk), to make the gamble more tempting?
If, for instance, Tipping Point were to give you one bonus endgame counter for every £500 you’d banked prior to that; or a mechanic like Every Second Counts, where your cash from the main quiz becomes the timer in the final?
The Chase is a good example of early performance influencing the endgame, but of course there’s no option to take-the-money-and-run there. That said, I suppose while it’s not an all-or-nothing final gamble, the Chaser’s offers being proportionate to the cashbuilder performance would somewhat fit the bill; I’d be interested to know if the low offer is influenced by the cashbuilder or if it’s more driven by strategy – or production!
The Mole Belgium returns february 1 on VIER in Belgium (obvious), and is with unknown Belgians in Argentina, 1st promo:
http://telebizz.be/video-de-mol-trekt-naar-argentinie/
Is anyone willing to subtitle this series for us?!?!?! *hopes*
French news : Questions pour Un Champion’s new set has been unveiled since tapings with the new host are starting. It looks quite nice
https://twitter.com/julienlalande/status/690127420012281856
That is quite pretty. in this instance I’m not sure that that alone and odd choice of host will bring in younger viewers though.
Yay! My ‘Discovery Sheds and Landmines +1’ line made it! I actually thought that no-one else would vote for Harry Hill’s mis-firing reboot of Stars In Their Eyes, and it would be lost forever.
Which reminds me. As I found it easier to be A) critical and B) Funny at the same time, for the Hall Of Shame voting, there must be a fair few laugh out loud comments for shows that didn’t make the top 5 stinkers, that are now, otherwise lost.
So next year, and maybe a few days after the main reveal, what about giving us a selection of funny (or well observed) comments from those shows that didn’t make the top 5 cut?
If not, no matter. Thanks to all for running it, counting it, and summarising it. Looking forward already to sharpening my electronic pencil in the first weekend of 2017.
This is true up to a point but the 5 Star Family Reunion comments were the best ones by a country mile, which is why I put them up here as a bonus.
Pointless is good – but is it really that good? THink it says more about the lack of creativity and ambition in UK gameshows than the show itself that it is winning by quite a clear margin.
For me the fact it seems to be more often in repeats than not marks it down – no issue with it not airing new episodes as regular as The Chase but at least once in a while try something else in the slot.
Glad 1000 Heartbeats did well and don’t think Freeze Out deserved to top the Hall of Fame. It wasn’t brilliant but at least it tried something different and has some decent variation between the rounds.
The appearance or non-appearance of Rebound is interesting – it not making the top five of either list suggests it’s rather forgettable. Benchmark at 6th too in the Hall of Fame list is quite interesting – had no chance up against ITV’s offering but what I saw of it was quite enjoyable – certainly preferable to Deal or No Deal plodding on.
I think the reason that other shows don’t tend to do so well is because The Chase and Pointless have been going for YEARS now, and while BBC are content to keep showing repeats instead of trying something new as they have BBC2 for that, whenever ITV tries something new, people hate it because ‘it’s not The Chase’, cry blue murder for it to come back and the new show is seen as a flop.
Personally, I’ve gone off both of them for some time now. I’ve gone off The Chase because I got so fed up of people taking minus offers when it seems no other version I’ve seen does that, plus the fact that I got shafted out of being a contestant for it after 4 years of waiting patiently on their shortlist. With Pointless, I’m not sure what made me stop watching it, but I think the barrel of categories and questions to do is getting dangerously close to the bottom being scraped. If you ask me, I think they’ve both been on for long enough and I feel it’s time for something new. At least 1000HB has broke new ground and people seem to enjoy it, which is great to see.
As for last summer’s offerings, I personally preferred Freeze Out to Rebound. I enjoyed the different rounds and the gimmick of the ice table was different, but it didn’t do very well because, what a surprise, ‘it’s not The Chase’. I found Rebound to be quite a boring game, truth be told. I gave Benchmark a go and I quite liked it, just a shame that Channel 4 kept messing about with it in the schedules.
I think it was the obsession with the Periodic Table that did it for me with Pointless, and really don’t like the revised final round either.
Agree The Chase have made a mistake by making the minus offers a regular thing – it should be held back really for extreme circumstances or contestants The Chasers take a particular disliking too. On the whole though just find it a more entertaining and varied watch – The Chasers are all very likeable unlike the Eggheads and they have a great range of questions on. Bradley Walsh is probably becoming more important to it as time progresses too, though I can’t say anything bad about Alexander and Richard either.