The lovely Buzzerblog are reporting that ABC have ACTUALLY picked up Russian jumped-up parlour game format What? Where? When? and redoing it as The Six, where a team of six people earn money by answering logic based questions (such as “When is a door NOT a door? When it’s being used as a table.”) (I made that one up) sent in by home viewers. The Russian version seems to be set in some sort of shifty underground restaurant which is quite exciting but probably won’t translate to US screens, especially as Vernon Kay is set to host it. Yes I know he’s a smart guy, but really?
Is this going to work on US primetime? The obvious answer is “no of course not.” And yet. And yet and yet and yet… if the questions are interesting enough and they can find a new Ken Jennings it might tap into… something.
Shares in David J Bodycombe have risen at this news that if it’s sold to the US, it could come over here at some point.
In other “oh that’s interesting” news, Norway are bringing back Fort Boyard.
Also Sweden are bringing back Fort Boyard too, with the original hosts.
Gunde Svan? AWESOME.
Vernon Kay? I can only presume someone said “Stephen Fry” – not unknown in the US – over a very crackly phone line. Alternatively, if Ms. Coren (notably raising her profile recently through theHIGNFY? / Question Time / The Bubble route) wanted to make a US debut then I can think of far worse ways to begin. In practice, though, I can’t help feeling that this has Ben Stein written all over it.
Apparently the Russian original has questions sent in by viewers; it does sound there would be a vacancy for an experienced Question Editor – but, considering this is not a million miles away from the All-New Stud-Starred Little-Money TV Puzzle Panel, there are other obvious contenders.
Our favourite Only Connect contestant is only standing for parliament.
Good Cap’n, if you had won your bet, what would you have made your opponent do?
“Third place in th’ 2002 Barry Island Dance Dance Revolution championship”
VOTE SEALED.
Keep watching…
He’s still got it!
THIGHS OF STEEL
Shame it was on a DDR X.
Speaking of former Only Connect contestants and politics:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/election2010/2946039/Liberal-Democrats-use-a-fake-nurse-in-election-leaflets.html
Hmm. If you can think of two more former game show contestants who’ve (technically at least) gone into politics, there’s a Question Too Obscure For Only Connect in there…
Oh, and the bet – we both had stupid ideas that the smart parts of our brains wouldn’t let us do. Whoever lost the bet got their higher brain overruled! (Missed these comments, what with being a bit busy…)
Seeing as how Tom’s rather given away the connection, here are some other game show people standing in the Westminster election. I’m including only people who have gone from game shows to politics and not the other way.
* Paula Keaveney (Mastermind / Garston and Halewood)
* Kwasi Kwarteng (University Challenge / Spelthorne)
* Esther McVey (A Date with Fate / Wirral West)
* Robin Page (One Man and His Dog / Cambridge)
* Esther Rantzen (I’m a Celeb / Luton South)
* Stephen Rhodes (Family Fortunes / Luton South)
Source: candidate lists at Politics Resources. Inclusion on this list should not be taken as an endorsement by the author or by Bother’s Bar. Other candidates are available. Please vote responsibly.
So! Who here likes Accumulate!? Thought so.
Here’s an oddity: a UK student TV game show from – if the copyright date is to be believed, and I would be inclined to do so, last century. York Student TV present Games Disaster (series 2), whose heritage is farily obvious.
The colour is a bit out in parts, but that’s the worst thing I can say about it – there’s evidently a lot of love and effort involved. I watched episode 6 and the games featured therein were admirably… retro – but, thinking about it, admirably retro even for 2000. Teams play Speedball 2 on the Megadrive, though the commentary somewhat fails to understand how the game works, a racing game whose name I forget but really ought to be Super Mario Kart Wannabe on the Playstation, and they only play Chuckie Egg on a BBC. That puts the kool into old skool, and probably the old as well.
YSTV seem to have other potentially ukgameshows.com-worthy content:
FourPlay is Quiz Connect Four,
Have I Got News For York does what it says in the title,
LipSync is an improv-ish-ish compilation of rounds from other shows (Just A Minute, Buzzcocks, something a bit Ask The Family, something a bit Perception if you dig far enough through the archives, more Buzzcocks and something a bit HIGNFY? to finish) and
Your Answer’s Rubbish – somewhere between LipSync above and QI, but with a trash-based, improvisational-sculpture scoring system. You know, I think this one is definitely onto something.
The first six minutes of Four Play’s episode “Autumn Week 3, 2006” contains several salutary lessons of why game shows shouldn’t be left to amateurs. And learn editing, people.
With the considerable caveat that I haven’t seen said episode, I strongly disagree with the principle that there is no place for amateurism within the world of the game show. While the bar for quality is increasingly high in a world where iPlayer, 4oD and similar catch-up services around the world will serve you legitimately with game shows with high production standards, plus less official sources serving you with all manner of interesting curosities informally, it would seem tragic for the diminishing barriers between pro producers and consumers in all other media to be strong in the game show fandom.
All the YSTV shows I’ve seen have considerable problems; for instance, the FourPlay format would hardly fly commercially when rounds can last four questions or be 49-question (42-question?) draws. (That said, rounds of Blockbusters could last four questions or 20+ and that’s not sufficient to kill the format.) It would seem churlish to be too detailed and negative in criticism in a first post when it’s clear that the shows are produced for love, rather than for money.
As a former amateur myself, I’m sure Mr D was aware that my tongue was firmly in cheek. That said, to say you haven’t seen the clip is like saying “I don’t know what cheese is, but I like it”. Having a stand up row with a producer and contestant – and NOT IN A GOOD WAY – is not a way to make a game show.
I get the feeling that we’re arguing with each other without actually disagreeing with each other here. Those first seven minutes are something of a train wreck, reinforcing that game shows only really work if the contestants are prepared to accept the authority of the host, with the might of the production team behind them, with the threat being that a sufficiently misbehaved contestant can be excluded from participation. If this isn’t a threat – if the balance of power switches from host to contestants, as here – then indeed not-the-right-sort-of mayhem ensues.
Hmm. Wonder if there’s any way of interestingly subverting the power dynamic between host and contestant? The only experiment that comes to mind is that Marc and Lard pop quiz (which I never saw but only read about – gruyere!) in which the contestants supplied their own questions, of variable and unpredictable difficulty.
Ooh, now there’s a thought: a game show where the prize is to get to host the next episode, which is presumably a paid, or at least desirable, position. That’s definitely workable if all the contestants are (e.g.) comedians or media types who can be selected as potential competitors only if they overtly have the skills and inclination to host, but a game show which ends up being hosted by different random emms oh tee pee would surely end up risking being hosted badly from time to time. With the right (presumably really simple, virtually automatic) format, and with the right gonzo attitude, this is not necessarily an absolute stopper – though it would be something of a gimmick for the sake of a gimmick.
YSTV’s my old university station, and the oldest student TV station in the country (FACT), so there’s a bit of alma mater pride coming in here.
Until recently, almost all of YSTV’s shows were produced and mixed live – particularly in pre-YouTube days. There was (and a lot of the time, there still is) a big team of volunteers on hand running the cameras, desk, graphics and so on. There were no retakes or editing, even for complex game shows!
Games Disaster is rather good, and I so want to do something like this at Nottingham.
BREAKING NEWS: DAVID BODYCOMBE IS A NAZI…
…according to one idiot on Buzzerblog…
http://buzzerblog.flashgameshows.com/abc-orders-presentation-for-the-six-the-russian-import-what-where-when/
What a plonker. I’ve replied to it, even though it hardly deserves a reply.
…and thanks for that sentence, which’ll be fun to get rid of from Googlism.
Googlism’s coming up clean for you (when I search, at least), aside from you appearing to be irritated by pre-commercial spoiler videos. Not the worst of crimes in the world, really.
Great, I’ve just annoyed somebody I look up to, how can I make this right…
…ooh, I know!
DISCLAIMER: DAVID BODYCOMBE IS NOT REALLY A NAZI, IT WAS A JOKE.
(I know that ‘it’s a joke’ part may feel unnecessary, but given what’s in the content of the link, I felt it had to be put there anyway!)
Just noticed on that blog that ABC considered a US version of The People Versus.
Doesn’t say whether they considered the original 5k-a-question version or the daytime Bong Game version, but is it possible that either would have worked Stateside?
And if so, would Celador have then been able to say that TPV definitely was a hit?
First off, horribly sorry to Mr. Bodycombe. I can’t weed out all the freaks. I’ll delete the comments.
And B: I didn’t think ABC had the pilot for People VS. I know GSN did, and they put it up for ad sales. It didn’t move past the ad sales phase, though.