Some old school Bother’s Bar style content tonight as the alternative is watching Handcuffed With Jonathan Ross and I can’t be bothered.

I’ve been ill the last few days and this popped up in my Youtube feed and I thought it was quite fun even if the fact nobody had ever really bought it up before probably tells its own story (a cursory search suggests 1989-1990 and that’s it). Everyone knows Blokken, the Flemish quiz based on Tetris that’s been running since 1994 and is still going, but what about a Dutch quiz based on Pac Man?

Labyrinth sees two couples gobble dots and race to get to the centre of a maze. The maze is split into various hallways linked by white doors. On their go a team moves their character any number of spaces in a direction (they can’t go back on themselves on the same go) earning 10 Guilders for each dot they eat. However if they want to go through a door they have to answer a question or do a challenge – these seem to have a lot of variety and are rather jolly, some quick general knowledge, some involving guests, film clips, some involving picture puzzles and at one point a don’t touch the wire game. Succeed, and they can continue. Get it wrong and control passes to their opponents. However, it also looks like some of these doors are locked/fake, and if you try and go through one your turn ends immediately. There seems to be some business if the two characters meet each other although I hadn’t grasped what. Presumably you win if you get to the middle, as both teams were trying to do that, but if time runs out than the team with the most money is the winner.

And they get to play an end game that might be familiar to fans of The Crystal Maze – a virtual labyrinth is imprinted on the floor that one half of the couple can see but the person walking the labyrinth cannot. They have to be carefully guided to the middle to meet the host within 2:30 for a prize, but any time the contestant touches one of the virtual walls they’re immediately assessed a time penalty.

The technology makes for a slightly strange bedfellow with the otherwise fairly jolly daytime quiz set-up, perhaps the Netherlands wasn’t ready for it at the time. All we’re saying as it was a John De Mol production, perhaps there’d be something in a reboot.

A press release this morning. Ed Gamble to host new panel show Unacceptable, where teams of comics lead by Joanne McNally and Richard Ayoade compete to win over an audience with their wild opinions (as a wag on Discord points out, “it’s Argumental!”). At one point absolute bread and butter stuff for Dav… U&Dave, sorry.

But it’s not on Dave, it’s on TLC, who also put out a press release this morning suggesting Mock the Week will be coming back for an extended run in the Autumn (Dara’s a given, but it’s interesting Rhys James is the named regular, presumably he fits the Venn diagram of “was a regular in the original” and “is cheap”), suggesting the current run once you add all the repeats and whatever has been doing a million a week. Everyone thought Dave would pick it up after the BBC axed it, perhaps they felt they got burnt by picking up The Mash Report, but that was always going to collapse under the weight of its own self-importance.

Comedians you’ve heard of talking shit was basically the reason everyone quite liked Dave in the first place, but I’m trying to think of the last show they commissioned that was basically this – they’ve tried so hard to find the next Taskmaster (I get it! Comedians *doing* shit!) they seemed to have forgotten their bread and butter – I’m looking forward to The Way Out as much as the next Bar reader, but without any sort of reason for people to tune in to the channel I fear it’s just going to be another Battle In The Box. You don’t even get shows making jokes about being repeated on Dave ten years later any more. Sad.

According to Variety. Because nothing says “contracted for a third series in the overexcitement but the second series got really disappointing numbers” than throwing celebrities – and the returning “fan favourite” contestant who was meant for series three – at it. Will also feature Dylan Efron and Mel B.

As suggested in The Rest is Entertainment this morning, so he can concentrate on his books (I haven’t listened yet, if this seems a bit glib). This felt inevitable really. Ed Gamble’s House of Games here we come.

Still, you can always watch Jeremy Vine’s House of Games on Five every night at the moment.

…and nobody cares.

Or don’t they? BARB suggests that episode four of Beast Games S2 “did” 773k in +28. That’s not nothing! That puts it in “mildly disappointing Sunday night Channel 4 Studio Lambert-esque reality show” territory. Actually a higher figure than I was anticipating in my head.