Yes indeed, join us for another exciting edition of Schlag den Henssler where a contestant goes up against TV chef Stefan Henssler for a rollover jackpot of €1m. That starts at 7:15 UK time. We’re hearing the Opera VPN workaround is no longer working so we’ll try and find an alternative for you. No promises.
We’ll be here all evening probably so we understand if you want to join us late to see what happens on Saturday Night Takeaway this week…
In other news, SRO are suggesting they’re filming a pilot of First and Last with Lee Mack, 11th April at Pinewood. This is very interesting, it’s a format that’s been knocking around for ages, so much so that Justin Lee Collins filmed two pilots for it years and years ago. In it, 11 contestants are reduced to one in a series of games, but whoever finishes first and last each time is eliminated. IIRC, the finale had the final three people write a blank cheque for up to £50,000 and whoever had the middle amount got to keep it. No idea who this is for.
I’d have to think there’s no way Ant can do the show Saturday- if he hasn’t re-entered rehab by then I don’t think ITV would let him go on. Now do they junk the show, have Dec work solo, or have a substitute co-host? I think they have to do a substitute; too much of a problem to scrap the show…they have time for the PR hacks and the lawyers to work stuff out, so in that way they were lucky (can you imagine if this had happened on Friday?)
Rather famously Noel pulled an episode of Noel’s House Party a couple of hours before air because he wasn’t happy with the content. That’s probably a bit different though.
Looks like some press sites are reporting a statement that SNT won’t be happening on Saturday.
Confirmed via ITV:
http://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/story/2018-03-19/ant-mcpartlin-heading-back-to-rehab/
(I have to think the other 2 episodes are gonna be canceled as well- wouldn’t be shocked if they announce a new host for BGT as well- I think he’s going to be off TV for quite a while)
BGT raises other points – the auditions were prerecorded some time ago, do they edit the presentation parts out from them? I can see arguments both ways.
That’s the easiest solution, isn’t it – edit out the pres, have Dec do the VO.
The only other problem is that they can’t exactly edit out Ant & Dec giving their Golden Buzzer to someone.
“Interestingly”, the French version of Got Talent had recently to cope with a scandal of that kind. Gilbert Rozon, then owner of Juste Pour Rire/Just For Laughs, member of the jury since first season (as the “evil” member of the panel) got caught in a major affair of sexual misconduct two days before semfinals’ tapings and only few more days before the first episode was scheduled to go on air.
They quite had to improvise – semifinals were still taped, with a fourth guest jury member and their own Golden Buzzer. The major issue was “what to to with the auditions”, especially since Rozon was the main star – basically that would have been as hard as removing Cowell from either the US or UK versions.
Fremantle finally find a subtle solution – scrap out the auditions as episodes but include pieces of it during the semifinals as extra content about the qualified acts (and some of the worst ones too), going through the rushes to find alternate camera angles or cutting the existing ones in order to edit out Rozon. They somehow managed it quite magically – the only exception being that Golden Buzzer push where his hand is shown pushing , and the contestant being happy, no explications. (https://video-streaming.orange.fr/tv/le-golden-buzzer-de-gilbert-rozon-CNT000000TMQx6.html if not geoblocked)
So I guess the same could be done in order to edit Ant (and Dec) from BGT… but that’ll need some seriously hard work. And wizardry.
Yep. Lots of interesting questions here, if the rest of the series gets cancelled will the people who have won a Place On The Plane still get to go to Universal Studios, who presumably were paying a large amount of money for promotion?
Takeaway is probably the best its ever been at the moment, no mean feat 16 years on, so this gives me no pleasure at all really.
It is quite sad for all involved, hopefully this is the last we hear of Ant until at least 2019 (in a good way), I always felt he came back a bit too soon, his marriage breaking down on top won’t have helped either.
Just noticed that ITV are currently repeating everyone’s favourite gameshows Take on the Twisters and Babushka at 5am on weekend mornings.
These people are up at 5AM! Haven’t they suffered enough?
OK, maybe I’m a nutter, but I LOVED Take on the Twisters! It’s far better than Tipping Point in my opinion – great to see the repeats!
They will already have spent way too much money to pull the series finale, if not the remaining episodes. My money will be on Stephen Mulhern picking up at least some of the slack.
I wonder if they will pull any of the pre-recorded stuff with Ant? It would seem a little over the top to do so, I wouldn’t have thought that would offend anyone.
If the final 2 episodes were aired I got a feeling they may split responsibility. The 31st edition may get hosted with Philip Schofield & on the 7th April edition Steven due to the reasoning that I don’t think Philip will be able to get a visa in time but Steven will already have one due to Ant Vs Dec was already planned for the finale.
If the series truly is cancelled for this year, then how will people find out who took the Honoured? (and who Steven Mulhern will kill next)
The previous Takeaway mini adventures aired edited together in two 30 minute slots over Christmas just gone, so I imagine they may do something similar down the line once the dust has settled.
I know, I watched Who Shot Simon Cowell when it aired near the New Year.
My personal solution is to plonk them all on YouTube since they also did that for the past serials.
ITV have missed a trick if they don’t get Cat to stand in for Ant.
She’s pregant at the moment, so she might not be able to.
Right, VPN talk: I’ve investigated Opera, and as best as I can tell:
* The new Opera VPN is entirely unsuited to our purposes now; You can at best select ‘Europe’ as a region, and after several refreshes I’ve seen no sign of a server that works.
* I’ve looked into getting a version of Opera prior to the change (So the v48-era versions). This does still have the old VPN, but it looks like the servers running it have been shut down over time; I still have the option to choose for “US” and “Netherlands”, but no Germany.
* On mobile, I still had an old version of the Opera VPN solution there (which works slightly differently). . Germany does still exist there; I don’t know if it has changed in newer versions (and because rolling things back on Android is a bit of a pain, I didn’t want to upgrade tio find out!). This may be an option, but be warned that I hadn’t found a way to pass that signal through to a PC, you’d be limited to viewing on the phone if it does work.
So, with Opera proving too troublesome, I looked a bit further afield; while I’m starting to lean towards buying into a service long-term, I wanted a short-term solution for at least now – and I think I found one. Windscribe seems to be sufficient for our purposes:
* Seems reasonably well-regarded from browsing reviews and testimonials
* Has a German server, available in the free package.
* The free package gives 2GB of data (10GB once you’ve confirmed your account) per month, which ought to be sufficient for a Schlag broadcast.
* It doesn’t seem *too* complex to get it set up (but it’s definitely a step further as regards jumping-through-hoops is concerned, so be warned).
Most importantly, I’ve just tried it and watched a minute or so of German Simpsons.
A few caveats:
I’d suggest setting it up on a browser you only use for that purpose, just in case. I doubt it’s quietly farming information, but no harm in being cautious.
You don’t need the separate Windows app to just watch Schlag; the browser plugin is sufficient.
If there’s interest I can try to throw together a more detailed breakdown of what to do, but it’s pretty self-explanatory… and I’m not great at explaining things!
Thanks for this. I found it really easy to install, and I hate VPN/networky stuff, so do give it a go!
And the 10Gb is free if you simple confirm the email address is genuine, so just use whatever secondary email account you have for random spammy stuff and bob’s your uncle.
For info, one Schlag (up to game 13) took 3.5Gb, so registering for 10Gb seems worthwhile.
I’m trying to figure out quite what happened, because it barely charged me anything for tonight. I’m sitting on… 20MB used. I think something might be flawed!
(That’s just about conceivable, I guess, if Windscribe only did the check at the point it tries to confirm your location, and doesn’t channel your data otherwise – except it shut me off when I turned off the VPN after using it, so that can’t be the case!
Last two eps of Takeaway going ahead with Dec by the sounds of things.
Neat.