When I heard a few days ago that Netflix in the US has a collection of handpicked Jeopardy episodes up now, I wasn’t expecting them to be on UK Netflix.
But they are! 45 episodes. So there you are.
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When I heard a few days ago that Netflix in the US has a collection of handpicked Jeopardy episodes up now, I wasn’t expecting them to be on UK Netflix.
But they are! 45 episodes. So there you are.
As I said on Twitter today
now Netflix UK have a London office for commissioning
Maybe they should commission Stellify Media to produce a British Jeopardy exclusively for them
perhaps for an initial 150 or so episode run
But WHO could be our Alex or Alexandra-as the case may be Trebek
We don’t really have any hosts with a similar style in the UK, that would be the problem.
Osman.
Richard Madeley, the choice is clear.
I think he’s one of the few possible people with the intellectual rigour required, certainly.
Left-field choice here but I’ve got a little-known up-and-comer who would surely surprise the world by how well he does it: Stephen Mulhern.
If I were Dolph Lundgren, you’d be out of the window by now.
Talking hypothetically though, I don’t really think Stephen Mulhern would be on Netflix’s radar. Now if it were ITV who took the interest, then you just KNOW he’d be on the shortlist already.
On a serious note, Kirsty Young has just popped into my head.
On a semi-related note (h/t Buzzerblog):
https://www.thewrap.com/alex-trebek-will-stay-with-jeopardy-through-2022/
Bloody hell, they have a lot of ad breaks in the USA don’t they?
Yep, three in half an hour.
Australian shows have been known to have four.
It’s not so much that, but the fact that some 30-minute slot episodes come in at a running time under 20 minutes.
Their breaks are much shorter than ours, so it’s not quite as bad as it sounds, but it is very annoying.
I started watching NFL this season and the ad breaks are really confusing at first, you’re just not used to that (in Germany). And it makes skipping them on your vcr annoyingly tough. But overall I start to prefer lots of short ad breaks instead of those incredibly long ones Prosieben normally has.
I think any new UK version, or international versions, would need a major visual refresh. The show is an institution in the US but the set design and graphics are really tired by modern gameshow standards. It’s still a good format, though, although it feels less vital in a country where there are plenty of gameshow choices that aren’t horribly over-produced and there are a decent amount of tricky rapid-fire quizzes.
Whether it’s Jeopardy or otherwise, I could see it making sense for Netflix to develop a standard quiz format which they can make localised versions across each of their territories – game shows are relatively inexpensive to make and are pretty universal in terms of appeal. In particular, Jeopardy would seem to be pretty good format for doing that – it’s pretty simple conceptually, it’s incredibly cheap to make, it’s already proven successful in some major territories, the brand has some cachet, and there’s not a huge amount of international versions currently on air. If you wanted to create a game show where you intended to create a dozen localised versions in as many languages, Jeopardy seems like the ideal format for doing that.
I notice that the episodes on Netflix are Tournament of Champions from 2013(!), so Sony are being somewhat cagey about what episodes they’re making available. I’m not sure what to read into that.
Apparently they’re the same ones currently offered on Hulu.
I suspect Jeopardy is successful in the US because of momentum, it’s an institution. But if it was a new show starting today I think it would struggle. As you suggest, lots of international versions, but not many that have lasted.
One of the reasons why Jeopardy wouldn’t work in the UK is because it’s only half an hour long with no real way to pad it out to an hour, and half-hour shows haven’t really existed here for about 10 years.
There is an hour-long format for Jeopardy actually (they did it a few years ago in the Middle East)- they added a Triple Jeopardy round (triple values, 2 Daily Doubles, but only 4 categories).
Talking of on demand quiz shows did Virgin ever add anything else to their gameshow on demand service they launched when they fell out with UKTV?