Tonight’s excitement is the premiere of Don’t, part of ABC’s Summer Fun and Games in the US. It’s hosted by Adam Scott and produced by Ryan Reynolds, off of films. The US is going through a bit of a green patch of physical shows (comedy or otherwise) right now – we’re still enjoying Holey Moley and Ultimate Tag (we’ve not kept up with The Titan Games).
Extra interest here as it was suggested in a previous Stool Pigeon chat that this might be a show the BBC were thinking about piloting with David Tennant, although we’ve got little concrete evidence of that.
What a rubbish trailer.
But otherwise the show looks like it should be fun.
The UK is getting properly outclassed by the US in terms of new game show output this year
They’re having to throw more money at it to compete with the streamers. But I personally find the money gets in the way of the fun a lot of the time – I’m sweating about how much this cost, rather than sitting back to enjoy it. I also find US shows lacking atmosphere.
And I’ve just been told that Netflix have a new show, The Floor Is Lava, starting next week.
Through the power of the dark arts I managed to watch the first episode.
It was a very entertaining show, if the rumours are true about David tennant doing a UK version, I could see that.
Ryan Reynolds narrates and is basically narrating as deadpool as far as he can without breaking any copyright laws. This actually works quite well with quite a couple of gags that made me laugh.
5 games in each episode, which is enough to let each game have its spotlight but not feel crowded.
4 players in a team
The games were
Don’t get tired, the team were asked trivia questions with mutiple choice answers, a member of the team will stand on what they believe to be the right answer. If they’re wrong a giant tyre smacks them in the face. If they right $5000 earned. Each member of the team takes turns to be the one potentially getting smacked in the face by a tyre
Don’t blink, does what’s it says on the tin. Don’t blink for 60 seconds
The team gets $20000 to start however each time they blink they lose $500 dollars.
Don’t drink, a member of the team is selected to go solo for the challenge. They have to walk on a treadmill and eat spicy peppers, starting from a jalapeño culminating in a ghost pepper. If they drink they lose money
Don’t use fowl language. This was the weakest game of the lot. The team were shown a picture of a celebrity and they would have to say who it is. If the celebrity had a bird related name (Taylor SWIFT and JAY Leno) they would have to touch a egg otherwise they wouldn’t get the money.
The end game is don’t get clocked, 2 members of the team are asked trivia questions with a numeric answer, the other two are in boxes next to a giant clock, they have to get the number of the answer while avoiding giant hammers, if both people get hit by the hammers then the game ends.
A entertaining show, and the trailer shows its not going to be the same games each week so they won’t get stale.
This was such a tonally unusual show for US primetime, sort of taking the Wipeout/Holey Moley style and then going even further – the comedy is as much playing with the form as much as what’s actually going on. To put it bluntly: I watched the first ep on ABC using the Dark Arts and for whatever reason it played the first segment with Audio Description and I couldn’t actually tell you with confidence if that was meant to be part of the show or not (it turns out it isn’t). I enjoyed its appreciable weirdness. The best challenge was the hot pepper one which was suitably epic (I get the feeling there’s going to be a very obvious game you press the Don’t Press The Button Button on each week) which was hardly original but was well dressed, the rest were OK.
It’s interesting that you’re practically guaranteed to walk away with a nice sum of cash – the only real point of jeopardy is in deciding to press the button or not – doubling the value of a game if you play perfectly, but halving it otherwise. There’s not really a big denouement.
Ooh boy, I’m about to do an internet pedantry. In the round on Fowl Language, the family was called wrong for identifying Tom Hanks as a bird. A “tom” is a name for a male turkey. And apparently other male animals, so maybe it’s too broad of a term to be considered Specifically A Bird for the purposes of this round, but… I dunno. It only cost them, what, a grand or two, but still.