Alright then, let’s see what you wrote. I can’t vouch for the truthfulness or otherwise of what has come in, although doubtless there are grains of truth dotted about:
- The SRO show about quizzers turned out to be a quiz where 15 different contestants from five shows (Millionaire, Chase, 15 to 1, UC and Mastermind) battle it out to see who’s the best. Host was Jeremy Vine, who was pretty decent. We didn’t leave until midnight but at least they gave us a snack and a drink.
- ITV special to air later in the year named ‘Quizmaster‘ and is hosted by Jeremy Vine. The show sees 5 teams of 3 quiz show champs (Mastermind, 15-To-1, The Chase, Uni Challenge and Millionaire) playing an elimination tournament over 5 knockout rounds until 1 player remains. (I don’t think this sounds very ITV to be honest but we’ll see. Also crikey at the recording length, how long does it take to film a quiz?)
- Insiders relating to the Banijay Group are stating that Nickelodeon are playing safe and has shortlisted John Cena as the maze master for the US produced series of the Crystal Maze.
- Crystal Maze USA might be eyeing Richard Ayoade. (Well Ayoade is the kids’ favourite. Personally I hope it’s John Cena but mainly because I predicted it would probably be him weeks ago).
- I’d heard rumblings that The Amazing Race UK was being considered, but that Race Across The World pretty much stopped it dead in it’s tracks. (I still think the demanded editing style of TAR would go down like a lead balloon over here, so probably a good thing.)
- Channel Ten in Australia is bringing back The Amazing Race. In keeping with their continued existence on doing as little work on their television productions as possible and hoping viewers stick with it anyway, they’ve got a rugby player hosting. (Grant Bowler or GTFO.)
- ITV is planning to put WWTBAM on the week commencing 5th August for 6 nights at 9 pm.
- All the gunge used on UK telly comes from one online shop who also make and sell weird and adult messy fetish videos. Different legal company so all deniable but obviously the same people and style . It’s really creepy and will be a tabloid scandal one day. Everyone in kids tv knows it but pretends not to cos there’s nowhere else good to buy gunge from. (This is hilarious if it’s true. I’m not sure though, is it really that hard to make? They used to show how the Beeb made theirs on Going Live every other week.)
- Stool pigeon used to be fun and I enjoyed sorting the wheat from the chaff! I liked the spoof stuff! (I’ve completely made up one of the comments and reactions. Try and work out which!)
- The BBC and 12 Yard still aren’t confirming whether or not Eggheads is ending – the latest story relating to the show being that someone in Nottingham left a signed photo of Chris Hughes on a bus and will get a replacement courtesy of Jeremy Vine and Greg James. Apparently, the latest series of new episodes (since it’s almost as notorious as Pointless for having long blocks of repeats seemingly at random) is the 21st. If this series *is* to be the last, will the Beeb wait till it’s over before making the announcement (“We’d like to thank Jeremy Vine, Dermot Murnaghan and all the Eggheads over the years, blah blah blah”)? Or will they actually give the show a proper send-off, like they did with the Weakest Link in 2012? It would be nice if they did, IMO – it *has* been running for 16 years, longer than Link, with nearly 2,000 episodes in that time including a not-insignificant number of celeb episodes, as well of course as the two spin-off shows to find new ‘heads. *And* it has made the old Simpsons slot its own, too (whereas the likes of Ready Steady Cook and Flog It! never really nailed themselves to a single time slot, despite their own long runs and popularity). (Fair to suggest it probably deserves something even if it’s never really made the public conscious in the same way any of the other shows mentioned have.)
- Ever wondered what presenters get paid? Standard appearance fees for household names start at £20k a pop, for a one-off. Real top division stars like McIntyre and Norton are £50-60k.
Well there we are. Thanks to all of this month’s contributors.
If ITV are really going to put Millionaire on in August, is that an admission that it won’t work? Or is it just because it’s easier to clear out that time slot for a whole week there than it is in September?
Probably more a ‘ratings banker’ at a funny time of year – imagine that’s the first week without Love Island so makes sense in a way (even though different channels technically). See also when the second reboot series was on first week in January in the “Some of us are actually still not back at work/school yet, but it’s all over now” week before they debut the new year schedules proper.
The ITV insider has been right a few times in the past. They got the Ninja warrior reveal date correctly but the time was slightly off. I believe this could be right as they have recorded and shown the following week for the anniversary season. Also September will be quite packed. What with Celebrity X Factor & the best of the rest BGT being planned.
If ITV are doing the WWTBAM week from the 5th we will know by next week as the ITV press website will have those listings up there for the 5th onwards. With Lethal weapon due to start on Fridays at 9pm i remain doubtful the insider has got it right this time which will be a first as they have got it right so far.
The gunge one’s actually in reverse. It’s made from natrosol, a regular food thickening agent, and would have been done long before any fetish sites would have even existed.
I have it on decent authority that the gunge story is…. TRUE.
I would love to know what you…oops, I mean the person who submitted that was smoking when they thought of that one!
A question, which I’ll justify as “tangential to the gunge thing”: I stumbled on an episode of “Das Spiel Beginnt” (sp), and there was a game where the players could randomly drop through the floor a la Russian Roulette. What was weird though was that they showed a top-down shot in which you could see the players (some of whom are kids) landed in a pit of foam blocks and they were obviously fine, which you never really saw in other shows. This got me wondering, has this always been used for drop-through-the-floor games? I feel like I remember hearing about Russian Roulette using air-filled crash mats or something like that. For shows where the drop is visibly longer (like Ellen’s Game of Games’s “Know or Go” round), do they use more substantial padding or something entirely different?
The Spanish game show ‘Ahora Caigo’ [Now I’m Falling] always had a pit of foam blocks to catch losing contestants in, although it was hidden quite well and rarely visible on screen.
When there was talk of Russian Roulette making it to series in the UK, vats of gunge were being considered.
A bit too late for Stool Pigeon, but today at work conversation turned to Golden Balls, and we decided, with all the backstabbing that went on during Split or Steal, that Golden Balls was the Love Island of its day, somehow. And now we all think Jasper Carrott would make a great Love Island narrator.
Split or Steal was used as the end game for Love Island a couple of years ago as well. I had an idea recently, that Love Island should have different comedians narrating every episode, does anyone have any suggestions for who should do that?
Jack Dee obviously.
Speaking of Golden Balls, I found a remarkable early instance of a golden ball in a game show the other day, a game show that currently does not appear on UKGS until someone (possibly me) writes it up:
https://youtu.be/uzRgxru8JCI?t=1258
That was discussed in January 2018 on Staffers; the view was that we couldn’t find any evidence it was broadcast, and that it wasn’t sufficiently noteworthy to warrant a non-broadcast pilot.
John Cena has been spotted in London only recently so the maze master insider could be telling the truth. He could be doing an unannounced movie project but the timing is suspicious.
Crossing all the streams of this thread, do the Bar denizens suppose that Nickelodeon will play the US The Crystal Maze as cleanly as they did Legends of the Hidden Temple, or will The Generation Game’s Jim Davidson incarnation have a contender for most ill-suitedly shoehorned-in slime?
It’ll likely be played straight, I guess? They brought back Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader pretty solidly.
This would be my guess as well.
Canale 5 of Italy announced a revival of 90s show Bellezze Al Bagno, Mediaset’s own version of Jeux Sans Frontieres.
A few details:
-To be aired next autumn from the Cinecittà World amusement park in Rome
-Six episodes
-Hosted by Alberto “Alvin” Bonato and Ilary Blasi (wife of former footballer Francesco Totti)
-Teams are from Italy, Spain, Germany and Switzerland. Additional nations are “in the talks” (Austria and Poland were named)
here’s a 1991 episode hosted by Claudio Lippi (fresh from 3 years of hosting the actual JSF)
Following John McCririck’s death yesterday, here’s his, um, unique dart-throwing action on the 1991 Bullseye Christmas Special:
The latest episode of Fingers on Buzzers goes heavy on Going For Gold, as well it might, and is as usual both very good and imperfect. It does provide a data point for a topic brought up hereabouts recently, possibly in the chat during the latest Schlag den Star: Going For Gold recorded eight episodes per taping day during later series, by the time they had got the hang of it and when the Grundymatic had been calibrated to Maximum Grundy. This isn’t necessarily a UK record for most episodes recorded in a day, but it sets the bar pretty high.
One thing I *thought* was as regular as clockwork, but now turns out it isn’t, was how long a Dictionary Corner guest would reign for on Countdown. I thought it was about 7 episodes, which I thought was the maximum they would do in one day (in the 30-minute era). However, a visit to Apterous shows that it was often stints of 5, 6 or 7 shows. Weirdly, in the earlier series, two celebrities would tag team on alternate episodes or even do one together.
BBC has recommissioned Race Across The World for two further series – which will be extended from six to eight episodes.
Series two – as expected – in the Americas, I’m reliably informed.
Oh that’s interesting, the press release is suggesting London to Singapore again.