It was Big Brother launch night last night where a selection of basically identical people who were sexually confident and up for a fight entered the new look slightly migrane inducing house for a shot at £100,000. Joining them in a second adjacent house are The Others, six people secretly aiming to take down the housemates and take their spot in the house, some of whom have previous with said housemates. Most of the housemates would have slotted into a Celebrity Big Brother pretty easily (Nathalie Rowe! That girl from The Valleys! Sacked BBC journalist!) In theory the housemates don’t know about The Others, in reality it sounds like they’ve worked it out pretty quickly.
I hadn’t felt so bored watching a launch night in years. And this comes off the back of last year’s launch which was genuinely excellent. The cast seems terrible, I can’t see where the laughs are going to come from. There will almost certainly be fights, but between people I’m not sure I give a toss about. Right now The Others as a twist looking like a rather expensive damp squib that’ll probably be done in a week.
We’re in a slightly odd position where Celeb Big Brother offers some genuine diversity and unusual “how are they going to react?” situations and combinations whilst Wannabe Big Brother feels so drab by comparison when in theory you have a much wider pool of people to choose from. Even the line they’re trying to drop in every two minutes, “the game has changed,” feels like a complete exaggeration at this point. Who is going to provide “DAVID’S DEAD?” out of this lot?
Disappointing. And I had been looking forward to it as well.
Well considering there was a lot of info out about the set being expanded a while ago, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there probably was a second house or something, even if they don’t know all the specifics….
Especially with the double stairway and the gangplank going off in two directions.
I don’t think the twist is that great – it’s basically just The Bedsit Yet Again, this time with a whole bunch of people instead of the usual one or two, and with the added relationship angle that appears to be forcing the show to turn into Ex on the BOTS – but I do love the houses (oddly, the main living area looks much much better on screen than it did in the photos; I love that The Other Diary Room Chair is the same as The Normal Diary Room Chair except the white and black bits are swapped). It’s just that the cast seems ESPECIALLY bad because of how much thought has gone into everything else and how much everyone clearly wanted this to succeed (even if only to get rid of Helen Wood’s stench).
The closest thing we have to a decent cast member here is Hughie, who (1) is in The Other House and thus not actually a housemate yet, and (2) seems very similar to the much-reviled Conor from a few years back. And then after that it’s a big step back to Jayne (again, not a proper housemate) and Marco Jr (who in any other season would absolutely be the Aden/Maxwell pity hate character). Like even BB4 had a pretty strong cast (Tickle! Federico! Lisa! Anouska! Tania! Scott and Nush!) and could have been great if not for Dermot pushing for Cameron and his friends all season. This cast doesn’t even have that promise.
The double staircase revolving was literally the only thing to make me laugh on launch night because it was so ridiculous.
I thought the house looked great in the press photos but difficult to look at on camera, although I quite like it again now my eyes have adjusted.
That BB is channelling Ex On The Beach is not really a surprise. For the last few years BB has tried to reposition itself a bit to appeal more to people who watch drunken party/fighting/drama reality shows (Geordie Shore is a *huge* show for MTV UK, for example, so it’s not really a surprise when they win the other shows they go on).
To be fair I did find the first highlights episode quite entertaining.
And of course MTV are owned by Viacom, who also own Channel 5..
So, that’s where the ‘Ex on the film lot’ narrative thread for BB might have come from.
Yesterday in Spain the biggest prize of Spanish television in a game show was given. It was in the Spanish version of “Boom!”. the progressive jackpot was at 1,935,000 € and they had already won 391,500€ in previous programs so they took home a total of 2,326,000 €.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTwTDqB1vHM (sorry about the quality, I couldn’t find a video with all the questions).
In the Spanish version of Boom! there are two teams who compete for staying in the show and to play the final jackpot bomb. The jackpot bomb consists of a list of 15 questions that can fail only once and must answer in 2 minutes.
Here’s a video with the final moments and reactions in better quality:
It’s probably worth noting that Pasapalabra’s top jackpot was €2.19m so now there are plenty of arguments to be had (that I can’t be bothered with) as to whether this is higher or not.
The Rockcampers are the first team to win since they changed the endgame back in November 2014.
The Spanish Government will be celebrating – they get 48% in taxes.
If you want to get technical, I’d say no, since this is split between 4 people and Pasapalabra is a solo jackpot…
Suggestion on Twitter that Decimate is coming back for a third run.
Who has Shane Richie got incriminating pictures of?
Application link: http://www.shortaudition.com/decimate
I just like saying (*) Bwrw’r Bar, as in newly-appointed-MBE rugby referee Nigel Owens “is also known as a TV personality, as one of the presenters of the S4C chats shows Jonathan and Bwrw’r Bar“.
(*) Who am I kidding? You know I don’t know how to say that.