Thanks to Kniwt for bringing up the recently launched Chris and Julia’s Sunday Night Takeaway and their rather ingeniously reversioned theme tune which surely ought to be used for a Just Eat sponsorship down the line.
However it got me thinking. And rather dangerously another theme got stuck in my head, and it is of course the classic My Kind of Town on ABC, Johnny Vaughan’s attempt to crack America with a Toothbrush-eque show. Didn’t pan out.
Are ant & Dec executive producers like they were in the American tried but failed version or is it solely done by the Australian team. I tried looking ion the credits but they have done a cutdown version.
I think Ant & Dec will be credited – the certainly tweeted about it, which for ITV stars usually means they have some interested in it beyond simple goodwill – but often in these cases Exec Producer is simply a vanity credit. I’m not sure how much meaningful involvement they had in the US one despite that credit, an especially with the year they both had last year, I doubt they will have had much to do here either.
Regarding the first five seconds of that video, YouTube recently recommended this to me and it seems strangely relevant.
A little tidbit from Germany.
DWDL.de are reporting that RTL has stopped production of All Together Now following a dispute with the producers EndemolShine. RTL has said that “for editorial reasons, the new management has decided against making the ‘All Together Now’ format”. But it’s not quite that straight forward – and there is an interesting reason why.
It’s all to do with the rights to The Masked Singer – which EndemolShine has optioned in Germany. Apparently, RTL were very confident of getting the show, but the CEO of ES in Germany awarded the contract to Prosieben instead. Prosieben offered more money, but apparently RTL weren’t aware they were in a bidding auction! There’s talk of an ‘ice age’ between the two, and RTL may pull ES produced shows like The Wall. Neither RTL or EndemolShine are commenting.
Full article here (will need to stick through Google Translate) – https://www.dwdl.de/nachrichten/71169/streit_mit_endemol_shine_rtl_stoppt_musikshow_sing_mit_mir/
As a side note, TF1 announced last week that they were making a French version of The Masked Singer. RTL4 will do a version in Holland.
Interesting new format coming from Japan- “Beat the Rooms”:
https://worldscreen.com/tvformats/red-arrow-teams-up-with-nippon-tv-for-beat-the-rooms/
Basically, two teams of four go through two different rooms which contain many items to clear- the object is to clear the room using as little time as possible while not breaking certain rules each room has; each player has their own countdown clock, which counts down faster if they break a rule- the person who has the least time on each team after finishing the room is eliminated. After two rooms, the two survivors on each team use the time they have saved on their clocks to try to climb a slippery slope. The comedy comes from the players trying not to break the rules- for example, one rule may be “Don’t breathe”, but they have to work on a puzzle underwater….
Yep, mentioned this in a Tweet this morning, sounds a bit like Cube: The Gameshow. Which I can definitely get behind.
Don’t know if this has slipped under the radar, but the new BBC Scotland channel has launched a weeknightly half-hour quiz called Test Drive, which looks on first glance like a low-rent Cash Cab:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002wt3
Thanks, shall iPlayer later. Saw a contestant call a while ago.
Bother’s Bar visitors, I have a challenge for you (said in a Glenn Hugill voice, naturally)… On Phillip Schofield’s Wikipedia page it says “In 2006, he presented two episodes of the ITV game show It’s Now or Never, before the network axed the show, due to poor ratings.” That show doesn’t have a UKGameShows page, but has its own Wikipedia pagewhich has almost no information on it. Does anyone here know anything about it, the format etc? It’s unusual for me to have not heard of a gameshow flop as relatively recent as this.
I think it was more a light entertainment format rather than gameshow? Think it was sort of Surprise Surprise, meets Saturday Night Takeaway type thing. The only thing I can really recall is that a bloke proposed to his girlfriend with a flash mob, so think it was big shows of affection etc. The only reason I remember it really is I think it was taken to pieces by Charlie Brooker, or someone similar. I think there is an article on it in one of his collections of Guardian columns
I have a book somewhere of most of Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn columns and I think they’re also online, I’ll see if I can find it. It does sound like his idea of hell, if his review of Blind Date is anything to go by.
“It’s Now or Never”: Schofe sets up a marriage proposal in a public place, complete with a song-and-dance number. Lots of behind-the-scenes footage for a short payoff.
Not a game show: there’s no prize or challenge however hard we look at it.
Also worth pointing out that there were only two episodes made, seemingly as a short-run pilot series, which were meant to be shown in successive weeks, but the second one was dropped and finally got an outing six months later.
I don’t know if it was especially bad but it was during the summer of 2006 which really was ITV’s lowest ebb of recent years, under Simon Shaps the channel was in a terrible state – he axed a load of shows like Foyle’s War and had nothing to replace them, it poached the Saturday Kitchen team from the Beeb and then saw it flop massively, there was some ridiculous scheduling (at one point they were showing repeats of Poirot from 1989 on primetime Sunday nights) and they even lost money on the World Cup. Not much could have thrived at that point.
The very best thing on ITV in 2006, possibly the only good thing, was PokerFace. A simple-to-follow format, genuine tension in a primetime quiz, and the last face-off of the series is easily in my top 10 gameshow moments of all time. The “can I not change me mind?” lady (Barbara I think she was called) would probably also go quite high on that list.
The fact that Love Island probably wasn’t the worst thing on says a lot of about the state of ITV1 that summer, the ITV In Crisis series of Weaver’s Week (wonder what happened to him /s) articles sums it up better than I ever could.
Hey Tracey!
https://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/hey-tracey-brand-new-quiz-show-itv2-hosted-joel-dommett