Saturday 7th December 8:15pm,
Sunday 22nd December 7pm,
ITV1
It’s actually been a while since we last had a show that was a bit like You Bet! – Epic Win with Alexander Armstrong and Joe Lycett, Go For It! with Stephen Mulhern were 2011 and 2016, it was probably only a matter of time in our age of reboots that You Bet! was going to get a go, and I think certainly the expectations for this mini-series (of two shows) is high, certainly it would be near the top of many people’s “shows they’d like to get a reboot” lists, so now we get to live with the reality of You Bet in 2024. And there’s no real reason why it couldn’t do well – the yearly Wetten Dass…? specials were still absolutely huge until Thomas Gottschalk called it a day recently.
The format’s not really changed from the show’s latter Darren Day years – people write in with outrageous challenges, a panel of four celebs (one of whom is Rob Beckett as a regular) must decide whether the challenger will succeed or not, the audience votes and points are awarded to panellists who predict correctly. The celeb with the most points gets to donate £10,000 to charity, the lowest scoring celeb must do the comedy forfeit, different to the old shows but in line with the German one, the audience gets to vote on which challenge they thought was best and that challenger will also win £10,000.
Feels like there’s a lot of will to make it succeed – it took ages to film (into the early hours) so look forward to seeing them hide the diminishing audience towards the end of the show. As it stands, surely if it’s got a decent reworking of the theme and a decent reworking of the “da-da DUH-duh-dah” clock music, and success and fail tunes for the nostalgia they’re trying to tap into (and if it hasn’t something’s gone wrong somewhere) the rest of it ought to fall into place. Also it’s 75 minutes which is unusual and makes it hard to repeat, but should give it the same amount of content as the show would previously have (and some more adverts).
Let us know what you think in the comments.
Although as previously pointed out, the Sunday repeat of tomorrow’s episode is only a 60 minute slot, so I don’t know how they’re going to square that circle.
Good challenges, typical ITV editing. Cutting away every three seconds to keep the runtime down.
And they’ve gone for generic LE theme tune rather than a remix of the original.
It looks quite cheap. Shots of the judge’s desks from above and behind reveal the unvarnished plywood of the seating and desks.
It’s not kept my attention. It’s too over-produced. If only they’d dare run it live. Start at 7pm, schedule until 9pm, allow it to run later if necessary. Some live music while other challenges are being setup…yes, do it auf deutsch.
I honestly really enjoyed that. This is what you call proper saturday night entertainment the challenges were very thrilling to watch and unusual things that you don’t see everyday and at times very tense and edge of your seat stuff, I like the way they got straight into the show without waffling on. Stephen and Holly work well together as a presenting pair although I think Stephen could have presented it on his own because he seemed to get more air time than Holly did, seemed they got him involved more than holly. I can agree with the camera cuts and edits which could have been tighter maybe a mini shot in the corner of the celebs reactions and more focus on the acts. It felt very cosy viewing and family friendly something which everyone can sit and watch I can see this as a 1hr 30 minute show rather than 1hr 15 minutes so they can fit at least one more act in gives more competition and people for them to choose from could have easily fitted in Saturday Night Takeaways slot instead of extended BGT. It was absolutely hilarious at the end seeing Alison performing proud mary unrehearsed. Can’t believe it’s only 2 episodes long we need more Luckly season 2 applications are open! Bring it on
It got off to a really poor start ditching the theme tune, going for the generic intro of spending two minutes showing you what’s coming up instead because research shows people won’t sit through a 30 second theme tune, and then the first challenge was really poor and the editing had far too many cutaways, but I think they were as a result of the challenge actually being boring television.
From there though it did pick up – the editing of the rest was much better and the climber v car was genuinely tense and the game board challenge interesting, with the cacti ticking the obscure box. Not sure the Quick Bets really worked, and clearly would have taken over an hour to film, but appreciate they tried to add something new to it.
Not sure it really needed Stephen and Holly – but the panel was good and Alison and Rob especially kept it flowing. Also You Bet is fairly unique in having two formats during it’s original run – one like this where the forfeit was determined by the lowest scoring celebs and another in the early years where the celebs and hosts would each back an individual challenge and face a forfeit if they lost. I certainly think with two hosts especially it would benefit if there was some jeopardy for them too.
Oh noooooo it was an open goal and they’ve largely stuffed it up. Sure let’s ignore it’s the first nostalgia reboot that doesn’t bring *any* of the old show into it, the editing absolutely kills it – starting the show effectively in media res felt horrible and is really a synecdoche for lack of warmth and overproduction felt throughout. It felt like it had been made for American TV. And Christ nobody’s going to remember any of the music from this one are they? Charmless theme, charmless soundscapes.
By and large the challenges were OK but there was not enough confidence that you wouldn’t sit through the action ones without lots of quick edits and cutaways – really annoying. Hate removing the clock because you can’t be bothered to edit cleanly. Just show us the thing! The car park climbing challenge – I understood why it was done as a race, but you couldn’t direct it to make it easy and obvious to follow so it just looked like a hot mess.
Here’s the German bet that may have been the inspiration – so much cleaner and so much clearer, you can actually visually follow it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeOaUsgRI4g
Didn’t like the lack of physical reveal in the cactus challenge, the only reason the board game one had one was because there was a ready made box. If both challenges were “name four out of five” the graphic only having four pictures in the cactus one and five in the board game one made the latter more obvious that something was going to be incorrect so cheers then.
The Quick Bets are stupid. Why are you putting the thing with half the show’s entire points *before* the end, so that the final round has little-to-no-significance at all? I’m also *not quite* sure I like the new flat £10,000 payout, I know people don’t like maths, but at least the old way meant decisions carried some sort of weight.
I’m annoyed more than anything. I don’t doubt the first one will do pretty well, if only because of everyone tuning in early for I’m a Celeb. I’m fascinated to see how the second one does in comparison.
It was good enough that I’ll watch the second episode. It has its issues, particularly the Quick Bets round. Maybe it was thought to include this to fill time or give the show a burst of pace but with the forfeit/charity in mind it could perhaps have been used to increase the excitement for those, particularly if a panellist was so far behind in the scoring to allow them to catch up or if someone was too far in front to prevent it looking like a foregone conclusion.
This would only work if people could make their bets significantly different from the rest so maybe there could have been a reward based system for placing a bet first e.g. buzzing in first with ever decreasing multipliers to then multiply the audience score, as contestants carefully reveal how exactly they are going to perform a challenge. Or perhaps all points accrued at that stage to be matched, which could then be split between the quick challenges, the original scores being kept, potential all or nothing bets to add jeopardy? Something to address ALL of those points.
The boardgame challenge is a direct lift from Wetten Dass as well. Did any of the challengers come up with their challenge or did the producers steal them all from Germany and find relevant people to fit?
Considering TV channels are trying to shove Remember Berries down our throats at every possible opportunity, not having some aspect of the original theme tune is a crime.
2.82m overnight for ep 1, helped by I’m a Celeb no doubt. I suppose it could have been worse. It *should* have been better.
Edit: helped by I’m a Celeb in quite a big way, I’m informed.
Edit edit: Have also seen 2.6m floating about so don’t know. Nothing to shout about at any rate.
I think starting it that late was a bizarre decision. It’s a big family show – so logically, you’d stick it on earlier so younger kids can watch it.
I agree with this up to a point with a few mitigating circumstances – it does have a 6pm repeat today, and kids will stay up for I’m a Celeb.
The next one is getting a first run at 7pm after Bullseye.
Once the repeat and +7 are added I’m sure it’ll be spun as a massive success so there’s that to look forward to.
The repeat did almost 800k, I understand.
So here’s more fun, the cactus licking and the digger lighting were on the German one as well (thanks to Mr E on the Discord for the links): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8FzjyIc14s (cactus) / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKiH5EtlEuk (digger).
So what actually are people voting for at the end? They’re not the challengers own ideas, so we’re not rewarding creativity and interest. Are we really handing people money, in the context of You Bet, for being in the right place at the right time? For being the most emotional? Absolute rubbish.
It’s a very modern presentation of You Bet, isn’t it? And not entirely in a good way. Objectively it’s probably actually better television than what we enjoyed lo those many decades ago, but it’s… well, I’d say “hard to like” but it’s probably more accurate to say “just less to my taste”.
The show was edited to within an inch of its life; I just wanted to see the challenges take place and to feel confident that we were seeing something happen as it happened, not all the cutaways to the hosts and the guests and their commentary – back in the day, people only spoke when they were spoken to and it all felt orderly. The scoring system has the traditional odds-the-wrong-way-round flaw, which probably can’t really be changed, but playing for a fixed prize misses something – what’s the incentive for the audience to guess correctly if it doesn’t mean more money for charity? The atmosphere was surprisingly Britain’s Got Talent, too.
But… I’ll be honest, I got into it as the show went on. The quick bets weren’t unwelcome. I liked the board game challenge and recognised Perudo from its noise, but none of the others. The forfeit was very slickly shot and more interesting than the forfeits used to be. So I’m weirdly looking forward to the next one, even if it’s making me feel very old.
Betting *against* the audience is something I don’t think I’ve ever considered, and I’m intrigued by it now.
If a challenger is considered to be 80% likely to succeed in their bet, it has long struck me (and others) as weird that the return for betting on the odds-on favourite is four times as high as the return for betting against them. I’m also tempted to wonder whether it might make more sense for the audience to vote first if we’re using them to set the odds, so their predictions aren’t influenced by what the panel have chosen.
Rob Beckett’s hairstyle and specs were… distracting and unexpected choices.
You want a Parimutuel betting formula. Sounds scary and mathsy and a right pain to explain, but its basically the system Twitch use for their predictions feature, and everyone can intuitively ‘get’ that.
Two other thoughts:
1) I’m OK with the new version not being a shot-for-shot remake of the original, but if you had to make a list of iconic elements of the original to retain, I would have put having win and lose fanfares, with the losing fanfare including some sort of descending crescendo, as elements pretty high up on the list.
2) Live events are the most reliable ratings bankers for TV these days, so your argument for making You Bet! as a big live event of variable length makes a lot of sense – and you’ve seen how much time UK audiences are prepared to put up with very long early Strictly and X Factor shows are. On the other hand, UK broadcasters seem to set very high standards before being prepared to host shows of uncertain length and putting the rest of their schedule into danger. You know who is making inroads into live broadcasting and doesn’t have a schedule problem to worry about? Netflix – or streaming platforms more generally. If they were prepared to throw a lot of budget at it, get utter A-listers on board, get A-list stunts and prepare a show with as many performances and as much filler as need be for the challenges to get set up, a live open-ended show on Netflix which might run for hours could be revolutionary. (Eventually. It might need a few goes to get going.) Feels like it might be a job for, say, Neil Patrick Harris and his showbiz chums. Unless Stefan Raab wants to try to crack the rest of the world…
I’m also slightly baffled by the idea that these took eight hours to record. If the German one can wrap up five bets and all sorts of business, live, in three hours or so, how are you taking eight hours to record three live bets of which two were memory ones you could bring out on castors (the fourth was a pre-record), a couple of “quick” ones with few props and a musical performance?
German efficiency? More experience filming these kinds of shows over there, maybe?
Still doesn’t excuse the long filming time here though!
Especially as none of that time showed on screen. A 90-ish minute time slot, packaged videos introducing the players, “banter” with the slebs – that’s a third of the runtime gone.
In layman’s terms, they’ve messed it up. You can be overproduced and keep it tight – somehow they’ve managed to overproduce it, AND still have it feeling baggy and unfinished.
Compare to Gladiators – that’s a show that could easily have expanded to a 90 minute slot (and boy, I bet they were tempted), but for whatever reason they stuck with 60. It flies by, without feeling over-produced and by-the-numbers.
Honestly, I’d love them to do You Bet properly. Let it run live, for hours. Have some live bands and comedy bits to fill in during setups. Effectively, run it as the Takeaway replacement ; and doing it live means you’ve also got the possibility of tie-in viewer games (though with that comes problems)
I’m not bothered about the theme tune – though it would’ve been nice to have it – it’s the more important things that feel wrong.
Also, drop Holly. She’s not needed (and arguably, she ain’t as popular as she was), isn’t sincere enough to commiserate, isn’t funny enough to entertain. Mulhern might not be Mr Sincere, but big bollocks format like this is just right for him. Just not the way they’ve done it.
Suspect episode 2 will have quite a significant drop-off.
When I heard they were finally doing the revival I never even considered that they wouldn’t even try to remix the old theme. Especially since the BBC just fully reused the original Gladiators theme and got huge numbers out of it. To have no nostalgic hook in the intro and then try to go “It’s the classic digger challenge!” made it feel like it was trying too hard. Either make a clean break with the old show or don’t, this halfway thing makes it feel fake especially since even as someone who watched the show all the time as a kid I only really remember the cup of tea pouring challenge and that was done with multiple heavy plant vehicles over the years.
Also agree that Holly just isn’t needed, Mulhern is the Kelly of the 2020s and this kind of thing is exactly what he’s best at.
Episode 1 consolidated to 3.15m, Thinkbox hasn’t updated yet so I don’t know about demos.
You’d probably hope it did a bit better than a repeat of The Hit List, but there we are.