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.
Weeknights, 6:30pm,
BBC2
New series of cozy post Richard Osman quizzing hosted by the unlikely pairing of Vernon Kay and Paul Gorton off of The Traitors. Every night across a week, three celebs (in week one it’s Anneka Rice, Shane Todd and DJ Remi Burgz) are asked to sort fact from fiction about different places in the UK (week one includes Whitby, Cardiff, Bolton, Jedburgh and Coleraine), in a bid to see who knows the UK best, presumably. Vernon hosts from the studio, Paul has been out and about doing the VTs.
How much more there is to the show remains to be seen – maybe its simplicity will be enough. Let us know what you think in the comments.
Sorry, the Winter Olympics has made everything boring, but at least next week we’ve got comedy local geography true-or-false quiz Do You Know Your Place? starting on BBC Two on Monday. In news nicked from TV Zone in brief: Picture Slam recommissioned, Romesh’s Parents’ Evening recommissioned and You Bet! axed (well done to the 99% of the audience who predicted that).
On Sunday, Dan Peake is having a conversation with Iain Weaver from Weaver’s Week to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary on Dan’s Twitch stream, that’s Sunday from 4pm GMT, which I shall hope to watch on catch-up in due course.
First fortnight Tues and Weds, 9pm,
Then Tues 9pm,
ITV1 and ITVX
Well, not sure what anybody’s expecting with this, it’s been a non-hit in the several places it’s been tried and actually was originally down to go out last year, but for whatever reason was pushed back to 2026.
Fourteen people have fourteen days to climb to the top of a mountain in New Zealand, each initially carrying an equal share of the £200k prize fund. If people can’t hack it, the money they’re carrying is lost as well. At various points the mysterious Mountain Keeper will instruct them to do some sort of jumped-up Go Ape-style traversal task, and at periodic camps they’ll need to vote each other out. If they run out of time they all win nothing, so there’s an element of strategy in being popular and not being too weak. “£200k divided by 14, £14,285.71, that’s an unusual amount for people to be carrying isn’t it?” Yes. And that headline figure will not be given away. In fact making it to the end won’t guarantee anyone gets the £14,285.71 they’ve been lugging all the way if other versions are anything to go by, for reasons you can spoil for yourself if you want.
Ben Shephard is at least a believable host of this having done charity mountain climbs before and being quite a sporty guy so no issues there. Whether this will outperform how the format tends to do internationally remains to be seen – hey it sort of did with Destination X. Let us know what you think in the comments.
It’s another 1% Club app. But don’t turn over! Because this marks the return of Bother’s Bar favourite gameshow app developer Barnstorm Games! Of all the ones that do a really good job of letting you just play the show on an app like The Chase, Tipping Point et al. It’s been ages since they last seemed to release something, and we’re thrilled to say that if you want a version of The 1% Club to play on your phone, The 1% Club World Challenge is the best one, it is £1.99 on the Google Play store at the time of writing (and is presumably the same on Apple).
It plays a 1:1 version of the TV show albeit without Lee Mack’s crowdwork. It’s “schtick” is that you’re playing against 99 other people from around the world, however you’re clearly not playing them live and I don’t know if you’re being shown their actual response or they’re just there as AI figures – basically I recognised quite a few names in the games I played, don’t be alarmed if you come across me getting a stupid question wrong (ahem). Answers where you have to type a word might be a bit easier than the show in that you tap the first letter and then it comes up with six options – I suppose this is an easier solution than having to parse misspelt answers or whatever.
It will also track statistics for you. It promises over 1,000 questions – I presume these have been asked on the show rather than bespoke. I absolutely will take paying £2 for a full package over a microtransaction wait-for-six-hours-to-get-some-currency model. It’s another barnstormer from Barnstorm, welcome back!