Sundays, 2am and 8pm,
Sky One
New vehicular based combat show which has gone heavy on Mad Max style theming which might be good fun. Freddie Flintoff, Vick Hope and Lethal Bizzle watch as customised cars bash into each other in order to be the last one standing.
I don’t have access to Sky One at the moment so I will try and find other ways and means, in the meantime if you watch it let us know what you think of it.
What is it with Sky One and half decent game shows at the moment? Equally, judging by the comments section here, half decent game shows nobody really watches!
6 teams of 3 people arrive in the desert each with a heavily customised vehicle with which they will do battle. One is the driver, the others are mechanics and engineers who watch the vents from their garage and offer help to their driver over a radio.
Round 1 is The Grid, a triangular grid of roadways surrounded by a ditch, not too deep but too much of a drop to get back out of. Three teams drive around the arena attempting to immobilise their opponents, along with one of the ‘Mutant Vehicles’ (i.e. House Robots) which is trying to do the same. First contestant to be immobilised is eliminated. Repeated for the remaining set of 3 teams.
Next is the Dessert Race, all 4 teams race to retrieve a black forest gateaux in the shortest time possible. No, sorry, it’s the Desert Race. The 4 teams race head-to-head around a dusty course, the winner gets to choose which of the other 3 teams they face in the next round. No contact is allowed, supposedly. There was deliberate contact in the first episode although it didn’t affect first place so it remains to be seen whether that would have disqualified the offending team.
Next is The Scrapyard, two teams drive around the arena trying to immobilise their opponent (you’ll notice a theme developing here). Around the arena are ‘pressure pads’ guarded by some kind of hazard. When one becomes activated the first team to drive onto the pad are protected for a short time whilst the other team is attacked by another Mutant Vehicle. Once the short time has passed, the ‘immune’ vehicle drives back into the main arena and the Mutant Vehicle returns to it’s spot ready to be deployed again, it doesn’t remain in play. Repeated for the other pair of teams.
Final round is The Dome, two teams drive around the arena trying to immobilise their opponent. More arena hazards here, much like the previous games, including a pit of oblivion lifted straight from Robot Wars. Surviving team goes through to the series final.
Art direction is inspired clearly by the Mad Max films and it really works quite well, although I would say that the amount of dust sometimes obscures things a little too much.
Pacing is good, we get a profile of the first three teams before the first event but they’re about the right length and give a good balance between introducing the team and and overview of their vehicle.
The presenters weren’t as irritating as I was expecting, they all played it reasonably straight and interacted well with the teams. Colin Murray provides event commentary and is, unsurprisingly, an excellent choice for the role.
I think it’s a shame that the three main ‘arenas’ are essentially the same game wearing different hats, just a straightforward deathmatch. The race was a welcome variation on the competition although this event in particular suffered from not being particularly well shot. Low angles on a dusty racetrack makes for difficult viewing.
It’s difficult not to compare this to Full Metal Challenge from 2003, which I’m still particularly fond of. Especially when you consider that both shows have essentially the same endgame. FMC had car sumo as it’s final round, two custom vehicles trying to push their opponent out of a giant sumo ring. The key difference however is that where FMC geared all of it’s games slightly towards driving skill, Carnage is purely a test of vehicle design and construction. Most of the rounds in this episode of Carnage were over after a team landed one good blow on an opponent, there wasn’t really a struggle for survival or a battle to survive, you just chase each other until you get that one killer hit. There isn’t really the time for any drama to develop after the initial chase.
All that said, it was by no means bad and I’ll still be watching for the next few weeks.
74,000 for this on Sunday, 0.4% share.
consolidating at over 650K for week one