Saturdays, 8pm(ish)
BBC One
I almost forgot about this but DON’T PANIC 12-YARD STAFF, I have remembered.
Families split by geography do a quiz to win cash and hopefully get a lovely reunion.
Nick Knowles hosts.
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I don’t think I’ve seen a Newton’s cradle for timing purposes before on a game show – it’s a shame the laser appears to be a thin strip of red LEDs rather than a real laser.
The show itself? A distraction from the Newton’s Cradle…
I will say one thing- using a Newton’s Cradle as a timing device is pretty unique…
Might be unique, but not great… In fact dreadful.
Why didn’t they at least supersize it…
Complicated and dull…. Big contender for hall of shame
Plus they could surely pay for the trip with the £17k?
The format is serviceable and an easy fun watch, but pretty unremarkable. The questions are exceptionally easy too, making it one of the easiest quiz shows I’ve ever watched. I’m not exactly great at quiz shows but got pretty much every question correct.
Since the show has officially aired its first episode, may I please have a complete rundown of the format as usual?
Just out of curiosity, why DO you ask for a complete run-down of every new show that comes on? Don’t take it the wrong way, it’s good to get a grasp of a new format when it comes out, I’m just curious 🙂
He lives abroad?
That is correct. I live in America and I am a huge fan of game shows from around the world, especially in Britain.
I’m amused to see there’s ANOTHER American Andrew (alliteration!) trawling this website. I suppose I can no longer use the name “Andrew, the Yank” (which I had adopted to replace simply ‘Andrew’ because there were already two other Andrews!)
Haha, yes, I am from America. And I’m not really trolling in a bad way, I just like to know rundowns of the formats of these shows because even after the first episode of the show airs, Wikipedia doesn’t immediately post the full description of the show nor is a full episode up on YouTube yet so that’s why I’m always curious about these shows.
I didn’t mean ‘trawling’ in the ‘trolling’ sense, just in the sense of hanging around/seeking out info! But yes, I too like to check in here to hear about overseas shows. I totally understand. 🙂
Even after the first episode airs, the rundown of the format isn’t entirely posted on Wikipedia yet nor is a full episode. That’s why I’m always curious about the complete rundown of the format, no offense.
I’d had the Wikipedia article written up within ten minutes of the show’s finish time, and it’s largely in the same state it was when I saved that edit. What’s missing from it?
And if there’s money involved on that game show (which is the case for most game shows these days), I always like to know what the top prize is for that particular game show.
Well, I thought I’d try and supply this. Nick is joined by four members of a family in the studio. We see a film to introduce them, and they talk about the other members of their family who live overseas – four of whom then join via satellite from, in this case, Sydney (although they could have been next door for all we knew*).
Although the show is based around winning the titular reunion, that actually doesn’t come into play until the final with the rest of the game devoted to attempting to win up to £30,000. They do this via four rounds, the first two worth £5000, the other two £10,000.
In each round, the overseas team are asked five In It To Win It-style multiple choice questions, and because it’s a 12 Yard show they discuss these at great length. Each one they get correct sees the first ball on the Newton’s Cradle moved up a notch. In addition, in one round only the team can use their “Powerplay” and move it up a further notch.
Then, one member of the UK team is picked (between themselves) and they choose one of four categories (only four are featured, so all are used). They then have until the Newton’s Cradle stops to answer questions, with the cash increasing (from £1000-£5/10,000, with gaps on the ladder). Osentensibly you have to answer six questions correctly to reach the top of the ladder. Some top daft answers in this bit (“Which Irish actor first played James Bond in 1995?” “Sean Connery”) and the first contestant seemed to forget it was against the clock and was talking through their answers for a bit.
After four rounds of that everyone’s had a go and the overseas team’s work is done. For the final the Newton’s Cradle is set as high as it can go and the four UK players are asked questions in turn against the clock to win the reunion. Again, basically they need to get five right. The reunion last night was in Dubai (someone on Twitter asked why the reunion wasn’t just in Australia, but it wouldn’t have been a very good prize for the Australian lot, would it?).
So pretty bog standard but Nick does his usual professional job and there are some randy old ladies for him to flirt with.
* I often wonder if there was any scope for a quiz that actually makes use of a satellite delay as a mechanic, surely if there was any opportunity to try it it would be here.
A show built around a broadcast delay? I expect that’s an idea being toyed with…
Sorry, but I don’t get this idea at all. You have a show that is based on winning a reunion. This takes up precisely 2 minutes of the show. The rest is effectively padding.
And it’s expensive padding: as mentioned above, £17k would get you a very nice reunion no problem. What has winning cash got to do with it?
The timer is a really clunky device because you need to keep cutting to it, the contestant and the money ladder to understand what’s going on. Maybe the balls could have been put in a video box at the bottom of the screen sometimes. I guess they didn’t supersize the device because the physics didn’t work as well (and it would have been bloody noisy to boot). And to my eye, the laser seemed to have precious little to do with when time ran out.
I know Saturday night quizzes have to be fairly relaxed, but this is YET ANOTHER quiz with multiple choice and quickfire questions. Surely there can be some variety, please. It’s not that hard.
At least this show had a game show ‘first’ – it was the first ever game show to have an Experimental Physicist in the credit list.
I’ve not properly watched this yet, but I did watch the first round before going out this evening.
Pros about Newton’s Cradle: It sounds like a clock. It’s quite pretty.
Cons: It’s difficult to get excited about something that doesn’t feel definitive, timers tend to have an obvious zero, if the idea is to provide “will it/won’t it” moments then I’m not sure I’m especially bothered to be honest.
More of the HONEST PROFESSIONAL ANALYSIS you’ve come to expect after I’ve watched it properly tomorrow.
The format basically boils down to people earning time for someone else to try and win money, which is basically fine (although I don’t love the Newton’s Cradle, which is a shame as it’s the USP).
The endgame has got nothing to do with the maingame which seems rather a waste, I was expecting the money to go on the ladder somewhere a bit like Win Your Wishlist.
It’s a typically workmanlike 12 Yard quiz, I’m not going to go out of my way to watch it and there’s nothing very exciting about it but it doesn’t really do anything completely hateful.
That was incredibly mediocre. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good, it was just middle of the road and a bog standard quiz.
It does however have the easiest questions I’ve seen in a quiz show in quite some time. I was surprised at some of the questions the players got wrong.
I would have liked to have seen more with the family abroad. They could have been in the room next door for all we knew, there was no sense of distance for us.
Bring back Who Dares Wins.
Hope I may be allowed to use this forum for an announcement: If anyone’s bought a copy of my “How to Devise a Game Show” eBook and hasn’t received an email from me today, please could you fill out this Google Form (which asks for feedback on the current edition) and I’ll send you a new version when it’s ready later this year:
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I watched this, or rather I watched a round then just skipped to the final round to see if they won the reunion or not.
The contestants were winding me up passing all the time in the final, example ‘Which James Bond starred in James Bond Film X’ – Pass. Just pick one of the Bond actors and go with it, surely everyone knows a couple of them!
Which brings me to another problem – The UK family get to win cash whatever happens whilst the oversea family win naff all unless the UK family win the reunion!
I do quite like the dark set but it doesn’t go too well with the new Lotto white and pink branding! In the episode I saw, the lotto balls were chosen by some bloke from Poland not sure if that was intentional or not to go along with the theme of the show!
It’s a bit too similar to Win Your Wish List to stand out and at least on Wish List the questions get fired out at a fairly decent pace and has a bit of suspense to go along with it.
The money is actually shared between the 8 people
Please don’t make this a regular lottery show… For me it is by far the weakest of the shows they have had on in years… Since that awful one with tess daily!
Did anyone else notice that on today’s episode, the guy answered Google while the balls were still moving yet they didn’t win the holiday? What was that all about?
The sound and lighting effect signalled about 1 second before he said “Google”. The editing was clumsy but it did seem that they ran out of time.
Note that the balls have to cross the red laser beam on each swing, not just keep moving.
if they are in Australia why is there no time delay
There is!
A bit of a surprise in that Nick is back with a second 8 part series of this starting next weekend (23rd July).
Hopefully it doesn’t signal the silent axing of Who Dares Wins as I was half expecting a new series of that by now, though the scheduling for In It To Win It has been all over the place with stuff like the Euro coverage.
At least the Loose Women found out Dale had been through a bit of depression recently but was much better now explaining his rather ill look over the past couple of In It To Win It series
Who Dares Wins was looking for contestants recently so I wouldn’t worry about that.
I guess the first run of 5SFR pulled in enough casual viewers. And it certainly didn’t receive as much vitriol from the critics as other shows.
The now 14-year-old IITWI is still going – despite having done just about everything it can possibly do at this stage, and despite Dale being off-colour in recent times – because it, too, continues to attract enough casual viewers. Maybe not enough to break into BBC1’s top 30 – only three episodes in the last two years have done so, by my reckoning – but enough to keep Auntie happy.
This programme is diabolical tv for prime time tv, this is a poor production and infantile compared to In it To Win It. I will never watch this again
They’ve not improved anything for this new series, ridiculously easy questions with ridiculously thick contestants.
The Newton Cradle is still present but Nick sort of ruins it with ‘you had 1 second left!’ and the musical score being timed to precision giving the game away that it is just a massive prop basically.
And what the hell happened with the Thuderball? They had done the main draw ‘earlier in the evening’ so only had to fire up the Thuderball ball machine, it took longer to cut from the show to Lotto HQ and back than it did to do the actual draw!
It used to be that, when they still had Dream Number, there was some kind of limit as to how many draws they could do on one show and so in that case Thunderball would always have been done “before we came on air”.
I know it wasn’t the case this time but it might be as simple as the show being a bit shorter than usual (I see next week it’s in a 55 minute slot) and they hadn’t taken that into account when they left the gaps for the draws.
Sadly, that was the most interesting thing about 5 Star Family Reunion. The name still sounds like something you’d make up for a fake TV schedule when you were a kid.
Ha! I did that too. Tonnes of channels wide, but only ever one day’s worth, and all the shows were hours and hours long.
I think they did that when Lotto Extra was around too when it was on Wednesday nights but it was Extra that was done off camera and not Thunderball.
New episode tonight at 8:00pm.