Stool Pigeon: End of Jan edition

A new series of Tenable started today and that is good news and everything but I’m not sure they’ll be anything different in it to warrant its own post.

So I opened up the Stool Pigeon. Eyes down, look in:

• Can anyone recommend a good psychiatrist for Challenge’s obsession with The Chase? (They only put it on because it gets the numbers.)
• I have no problem with Dara hosting Blockbusters but I fear Comedy Central will take it too far downmarket. In other news, maybe I should start touting the format I have created around.. (I genuinely can’t wait for it, because it won’t do very well and we can all go “well what were you expecting?”)
• A joke I thought of right after the box closed last time: “‘The Fix‘ on Netflix is a panel show hosted by Jimmy Carr. That sentence serves as both a summary and a review that tells you exactly how much you’ll enjoy it.” (The Fix is quite interesting seeing as it’s basically Americans having a go at doing a UK panel show in the UK style (with lots of UK people in it) and actually not doing an atrocious job. Perhaps they should buy up the rights to US Taskmaster and see if they can make it work without a whooping audience and space to breathe.)
• Look out for a reinterpretation (and improvement) of an old format coming to YouTube at some point, hopefully soon, as part of a slightly larger thing. It should be very good. (Comedy Central’s Blockbusters as part of a Youtube Bruce’s Big Night reversioning and revival. You heard it here first.)
• I’ve been looking at various versions of Wheel of Fortune from all over and throughout the years- and it just bugs me that in the UK version someone could go to the bonus round without solving any puzzles because they bank all the points they spun after each round regardless of if they solved or not. As an aside, I’m kind of shocked they haven’t tried a revival over there- you could easily have a weekly hour-long version at least (they do daily hourlongs in Spain and Greece for example and they pace pretty well- probably better than the US actually-if you set the prizing up right even a daily one could work) (I quite liked the French one from about ten years ago. I think an hour of Wheel would be a tough watch. The other unusual thing about UK Wheel, of course, is that we rarely bought vowels, yet they buy them all the time in the US and US words barely have any vowels! Crazy.)
• About “Questions pour un Champion” (French “Going for Gold“) – A special episode will be shot in few days to celebrate Grandmothers Day. This episode features 6 grandmothers with one of their grandchildren each. Thus, the game will be played in duo : that’s the first time that the game format will totally change (especially for the first round). On air : Friday March, 1st. – The future of the show is (as often) threatened. In fact, some production companies are thinking about a new show to replace QPUC (maybe Sony with a second French adaptation of “Jeopardy!” but really not sure). QPUC would not be cancelled but advanced in the schedule of France 3. (Imagine if they got Julien Lepers to host Jeopardy.)

Not a golden Stool Pigeon I think, but thanks to everyone who contributed.