Tons of cool stuff in the previous comment box that I don’t want to get lost so here they are in a post.
First of all, rather brilliantly, it’s Valvet, the Swedish version of Swap Team. Based on the original Norwegian version (we think) it’s played with adults and features EXPLOSIONS, and it’s fair to suggest there’s a slightly more grown-up theme to some of the games, it’s unlikely kids were ever going to get to use a blowtorch I expect. Almost four minutes of anagrams is a bit much (although there’s 1,000,000 Kr up for grabs, which is about £85,000). Their endgame was a bit more eliminatory and interesting than ours, and their ending labyrinth actually had a memory element not obviously present in ours. Most fun – the theme tune, which is the same as ours except with different lyrics. And still in English! Also: a viewer competition.
Also turning up yesterday Jakten på ökenguldet, (The Hunt For Desert Gold) the Swedish version of The Desert Forges. It follows the original French format pretty closely (with some differences – fewer games in the Desert, the route to the Forges).
In other news Netflix have put up two series of The Challenge, series 31 (Vendettas) and 33 (War of the Worlds) although confusingly they’ve labelled them S5 and S6.
And finally, Prime have re-added S5 of Aussie Survivor (Champions vs Contenders) to go alongside S3, no idea why they haven’t re-added S4 yet. Check your watchlists though, it appears to be a different listing to the first time they put it up.
According to the credits, the Valvet theme song is sung by Grace Jones! Did we know that?
No I don’t think so! Now we need to find out if she did the Swap Team one as well.
Dear Briggy Brain Trust,
Not many gsame show theme tunes have lyrics. Of the ones that do, most are either sung by uncredited artists/choirs, by session musicians or sung by the host. The only other examples I can think of are when shows have used existing recordings (e.g. Big Break used The Snooker Song, Million Second Quiz used Icona Pop. and so on).
I fear I may be missing some sitters here. Are there other game shows that have got unconnected stars in to record their lyrics? (Sure, one man’s session musician is another man’s star, but as much as the composers of the themes to, say, Going for Gold or Gladiators are well-known, the singers aren’t nearly so famous…)
Only one in my head is Lynsey de Paul doing the Love Me, Love Me Not theme.
One *very* big sitter:
Good suggestions, both, thank you; keep them coming.
Matt, you scored 250 Rice Krispies; Alex, you scored a point for giving me an obscure earworm.
Another one… possibly. I know *Astrid supplied the theme tune to Mark And Lard’s Pop Upstairs Downstairs, but I don’t know if it was an original track or not.
So I’ve just been checking through my old e-mail, and actually David B. might be well-placed to find out.
I used to collect game shows on video tape, because that’s what you (for some values of “you”) did in the tail end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first, but my collection – and far more important things besides – were in our storage unit that went up in flames years ago. However, it looks like I sent you (Nick) about 75 tapes in 2008 and David B. had already got many of the others. David, do you still have them at all – and, perhaps a harder question, do you still have a VCR on which to play them? There’s an episode of Swap Team on tape number 41, if you do.
Given what we know about the Norwegian original version and that lines two and three of the theme tune end in the word “time”, I’m going to hazard a guess that the fourth line of the original Norwegian theme tune might have been “((you have to get out in time))… to commit The Perfect Crime”.
And thanks to the link you posted on Discord, I called it.
‘Composed by Floppy M’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgWS7X5ks94
Celebrating 10 years of Avanti Un Altro!
“It burns!” “Of course, it’s fire!”