Thanks to Youtube Celebrity Tom Scott for alerting me to this, a series from Collegehumor (in fact a subscription series, but there are a few “free” episodes up on Youtube) called Game Changers.
It has quite an interesting premise, in that the contestants aren’t aware of the rules (the game is different each week) and have to figure them out themselves (not too difficult, as you’ll note). Amusement comes in when the game gets increasingly more complex, or the game reveals its secrets to the viewer (such as a machine purporting to be a lie detector but actually secretly their real-life partners are pushing buttons from another room).
What I would say, going into it cold, is that you’ll likely find it funnier if you’re previously aware (and like) the people involved, and that for me it takes too long before kicking up a notch, but there are some fun ideas flying about.
In other news, on Wednesday night FOTB Ash The Bash premiered Winning Lines on his Twitch Channel. What I’ll suggest is that if this is the first version, I can’t wait to see what the finished version looks like.
Ash runs a Wednesday night Quiz Night on his Twitch channel every week from 8pm, featuring things like Duel, Only Connect and 1 vs 100. You play along in the Twitch chat. Do check it out.
I do find it fairly amusing that they’re called Collegehumor, but everybody in the videos is in their thirties.
They’re all mature students
i suggest checking out college humor’s other orginals, all are quite good. Especially paranoia, Witch is essentially Werewolf/Mafia with the traitors being on drugs and Push the button equse tasks: https://youtu.be/XmMOFWMJabA
Also, Um Actually is also good. Its a geek culture game show, where you have statements, with a few bonus games
While we’re doing red hot recs, might I commend the podcast Retroquizzical to the Bar? My timing is poor; the recently released 18th episode is announced as being the last in the series. They tend to be a bit less than an hour, so it’s quite realistic to enjoy them all.
Regular hosts Les and Paul, both born in 1977, discuss one UK TV game show from the ’80s or ’90s oer episode. Sometimes the research throws up some absolute nuggets that were new facts about familiar properties; occasionally there were a few infelicities, or sometimes the reporting of facts that were true in some series but not others without this being made clear. The standard of production and editing is very high.
The gimmick is that in discussing the shows, they play a simple game themselves. Each show is discussed and rated in five different contexts: Theme tune and titles, Host, Retroquizzicality (in practice, gameplay and impact), Originality and Budget. Each show is scored by Les on a scale of one to ten in each of these regards; however, Paul has a single joker to play to adjust a score that has just been awarded. So there is some jeopardy in the decision as to when to use the joker, as an early play could see several later scores go through unchallenged when the two hosts’ opinions differ more widely. There’s normally a reasonable balance between good taste and just enough dissent to keep things interesting.
The emphasis of the show is not quite what I would prefer, but this reflects more badly on my preferences than it does on the show. One of the hosts is very clearly a passionate game show fan; the other… less so. My taste would prefer two intense game show fans discussing the shows – but Les and Paul are the ones who made the shows, so they get to choose the emphases themselves. They’re the artists who produced and shipped their art, so even though I find some of their jokes miss the mark for me, nobody else gets a vote. (It helps considerably that they have pretty good taste in game shows, too.) Recommended; easily worth over four and a half stars, and likely to get positive attention as one of the fan highlights of the year.
I entirely agree with Chris. Retroquizzical has been a very good effort, sailing onto my ballot for the Not On Your Telly category when we reach the poll of the year.
Les and Paul gone through the canon of game shows and found something novel to say about each of them. The episode on Big Break is my series highlight: a lot of very good points I wasn’t expecting, and I think the gents’ conclusion is absolutely right.
Italy’s Conto Alla Rovescia begins tonight! By the description Gerry Scotti has given of the game, it should be similar to Channel 4’s Face The Clock with a €100,000 top prize.
I do like how the endgame plays:
-The winner has to answer 20 questions. There’s 3 minutes to start, and 2 bars on the screen.
-One bar is the time bar, and one is the correct answer bar.
-The time bar fills up as the 3 minutes go by. The answer bar is divided into 20 spaces, and fills up one space per correct answer.
-If the time bar passes the correct answer bar (it passes one space per 9 seconds), money is taken away from the prize pool the player took with them into the final. (the clock starts after the first question is asked, so the player can get ahead of the time bar immediately)
-If the player can answer 3 questions in a row correctly at any point, the clock stops, and the player is in “time out”. They are then asked 3-answer multiple choice questions- so long as they answer them correctly, the answer bar continues to fill up, but the clock doesn’t run (and gives more of a buffer to prevent money from being taken away). Once they miss, the clock will restart at the beginning of the next question. So theoretically they can keep their entire prize pool so long as they stay ahead of the time bar (and they can be in time out multiple times)- but to win the money they need the 20 answers.
At least for now this has the first ep-
https://www.superguidatv.it/conto-alla-rovescia-la-prima-puntata-del-nuovo-quiz-di-canale-5-video-mediaset/
Viewership for the first episode:
Conto Alla Rovescia 3,254,000/4,244,000 (19.63%/20.84%)
L’Eredità 3,415,000/5,148,000 (19.88%/24.45%)
I like the new show: while it borrows a page or two from L’Eredità, the end game is original and very interesting to watch.
Plus, it does not have the overused “miss & start over” mechanic!
I shall endeavour to have a look in the next few days, thanks.
Dang it….saw your tweet on the Puff Ball game, so Iooked at the company website- and One of their new games has a title such that now I can’t get the theme out of my head…though this is more like the short-lived program Incognito than the original named show…
Oo, it’s like a “built-it-yourself” version of Incognito.
Big news- Jeopardy is going
network primetime for a face off between James Holtzeler, Ken Jennings, and Brad Rutter:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2019/11/18/jeopardy-james-holzhauer-ken-jennings-brad-rutter-duel-abc/4201669002/
Interesting format-
Each hour-long episode will be a full 2 game match
Person with the highest score wins a match
First person to win 3 matches wins the tournament (so it could go from 3-7 matches)
Winner gets $1 million, other 2 get $250k each.
(Interesting they’re doing this so soon- but Alex’s health concerns combined with the major network airing was too big to resist possibly)
The World Series-style playoff is interesting. How are they going to schedule something that lasts 3-7 matches? Schedule it as 10 shows and then have between 7 and 3 celebrity specials up your sleeve? But they’d need to be an hour long (or 2 eps back to back)…
That aside, I quite like the choice of format. I think it’d allow enough room to stretch their legs and find the true champion.
They’re taping it next month (probably in front of a VIP-only audience to prevent leaks or results)- but I’m guessing they’ll have a preliminary schedule of something like (Match 4 or these reruns depending on what happens; January is usually reruns anyway)-
As to the schedule- ABC is committed to their Monday reality programming (The Bachelor, which still gets good numbers), so that’s why it starts on a Tuesday. Friday isn’t the most watched night- but Match 4 could be a dead rubber (if all three are tied at 1, so no one could clinch), but also could be a decider (if no one sweeps, someone would be one win away). A potential Match 5 would have at least one person possibly winning (and possibly 2 if it’s split 2-2-0), and Match 6 would have 1 person fighting for a deciding Match 7 while the other 2 play to win.
I do like the format- the fact they have to win 3 times means someone can have 1 bad game and still be in it (and maybe even 2); plus the luck of the category draw is mitigated (since you’re potentially going to see 91 different categories if it goes the limit).
I am concerned about Alex Trebek’s health and hope he’s OK to host this. It has something of the feel of a classy way for him to go out on a high, after which to introduce a new host for the rest of the season and beyond.