Saturdays, 8pm,
ITV
Can you even begin to imagine 520 tonnes of water? That’s, like, so much water. Well your dream has come true with new action-packed physical gameshow The Void.
Contestants must must use their mental and physical skills (although to be honest I’m not sure how much mental agility is going to be involved) to cross a void to avoid falling into The Void. £25,000 is on offer to the person who best evades The Void.
It looks like cheap-ass Ninja Warrior, basically, but Ashley Banjo (of Can’t Touch This fame) and Fleur East are fun choices of hosts and it’s made by Gameface, the people who came up with The Cube, so hopefully it won’t be devoid of entertainment. The shape of the swimming pool looks ovoid.
Let us know what you think in the comments.
This is already horribly boring and poor
It looks repetitive with the falling in the water and the pit doesn’t even look 500 tonnes.
Although the underwater shots do remind of the Splash show that used to be on.
Very similar to ninja warrior uk
It’s okay but it’s nowhere as good as ninja warrior uk not sure if I would go out of my way to watch it again though
Ah, that explains why it feels like The Cube crossed with Wipeout. Quite pacey so far – actually probably a round too many if anything but that is refreshing.
I thought this show started off a bit rubbish but got better as it went on.
I personally would have dropped the individual rounds and just made it 4 1 on 1 rounds plus final (Which BTW was a bit exiting I will admit, even if it did feel a bit rushed!).
It just felt repetitive at the start and boring throughout.
2.5/10 RUBBISH!
Wrote this for elsewhere but might as well post the format rundown here
Round 1 – Bridge the Gap
15 contestants, aka The Void Runners, tackle a suspended bridge made of around 15 swings. Top ten who go furthest fastest move on. Standard contestant intros and replays, but moves quite quickly.
Excessive safety gear but obstacles more on the scale of Wipeout than Ninja Warrior UK. Not easy to follow progress during the round but a really neat graphic at the end of the round shows us where everyone fell and who has been “voided”.
Round 2 – Leap of Faith
Cross 5 platforms on top of pillars which tilt when you stand on them and get narrower as you progress. Oh, and the contestants are blindfolded. Top 8 progress.
Round 3 – Head to Head – Memory Lanes
The remaining 8 compete in 4 Head to head rounds. In Memory Lanes each player has 2 rows of suspended poles. Before they start the poles which are unstable are briefly flagged to the contestants and they have to remember to avoid them as stepping on those poles will plummet you in to the Void. Contestant who gets furthest wins.
Round 4 – Head to Head – Target Dash
Another Head to head round for the final 4. Walk across the beam throwing balls into 5 targets of decreasing size. First to complete the final target causes the beam of the opponent to rotate and send them into the Void.
Round 5 – Final Head to Head – The Wrecking Ball
A wrecking ball hangs between two beams. Contestants have to grab it and try to push their opponent off the beam.
Round 6 – Net Pursuit
The winner must cross three cargo nets before they drop under the pouring rain. Cross one and win £1000, cross two and it’s £10,000 and cross all three to win £25k.
Overall an enjoyable show and well made. Quite pacey with 6 rounds in an hour – could probably lose one to be honest. Hopefully they have a good mix of rounds for the rest of the series rather than the same obstacles each week and it may be a low key summer hit.
Where was it filmed?
M&S Bank Arena, according to the credits.
I almost turned off after 5 minutes. Watching 1 game being played 15 times is boring after seeing 1 or 2 people try it. However it did improve slightly as it went on. Some of the later games were better. I liked the presentation and set. I might watch it if I’m stuck but won’t be making it a regular viewing appointment.
Well that was about as boring a physical game show of scale could be. Dull dull dull. Some of the VTs were longer than the players’ first round performance. Absolutely hate pre-recorded commentary on physical gameshows, Total Wipeout’s the only one that’s nailed it IMO. Didn’t really feel like Ashley and Fleur were actually hosting all, the narration was doing most of the work.
Not a good year for new formats at all.
Well at least Lightning has been recommissioned and some people thought it was rubbish and felt that the £3,000 top prize was impossible to win.
I’d very much count Lightning as an example of how poor this year’s formats have been!
I suspect there may be an element of quota filling re: Lightning, filming in Northern Ireland will tick boxes.
I’d ditch the second round and go from 15 to 8 in the first. I’d then have the final 4 as individual runs as three rounds of head to head rounds is a bit repetitive
Mmmm-m-m-m-m-m. Not horrible by any means, but would this ever have been actually good?
At first this felt very much like deconstructed one-obstacle-at-a-time Ninja Warrior, and when you already have Ninja Warrior – which, itself is not nearly as spectacular as it should be, but is a heck of a lot more spectacular than this – then this feels pretty redundant. It did make itself distinctive enough over time to give it some sense of uniqueness and character, but I can’t help feeling that it can’t avoid coming across as a cheaper-looking Ninja Warrior, except I fear it’s not actually going to be that much cheaper to make. It doesn’t make seem to make the most out of what it does. For instance, why have such a big pool – remember, a ton of water is only a cubic metre, so I imagine the pool is 2 metres deep and about 18- across – and yet put the bridge over both ends of it? I recognise there are safety considerations here with any degree of drop, but it’s fairly standard to fall down a wall into a pool.
Thought experiment. Had ITV broadcast this the year before Ninja Warrior, would it have stood on its own merits? It wouldn’t so obviously fare so weakly in the comparison, but, honestly, I fear that ever since Gladiators and/or Scavengers, this is always going to look unspectacular, and a bit unambitious, and a bit of a step back. In the early ’90s, this would probably have been quite exciting, though, and would have stood up favourably to memories of It’s A Knockout or Anything Goes.
Far from Hall of Shame for me, but if this makes the Hall of Fame then this will have been a very very bad year.
Quite an odd mixture of pretty good production values and quite underwhelming games, in the main.
I think the set’s fine. I really like some of the graphics – the obstacle building (presumably they’ve nicked that guy from The Cube seeing as they don’t do it there any more) and the overlaid graphic results – really neatly done.
For me the first two rounds where they actually had to cross the Void were the most successful, even if in an attempt to get us to bond with the contestants there’s more chat than actual action.
When they get head to head it goes downhill a bit – Memory Lane’s best solution is to basically not to play, let the other player take the lead then make a mistake which I’m not sure should ever be the most successful tactic on a physical gameshow. On top of this, it was quite hard to follow – perhaps if there was a way to colour the dud poles yellow for the people at home during live play? It doesn’t seem beyond their graphical capabilities. Throwing the balls is a different skill, but quite low octane and the payoff was barely worth getting excited about. The demolition ball might have been quite a good game on something like Gladiators but played as defensively as it was here, with everyone basically standing stationary, who cares?
The dropping nets isn’t quite original but it was fine although the timing of the drops felt pretty arbitrary which for a show that was all about precision timing earlier is a bit odd, probably could have done with a 2dp countdown graphic before each drop.
The jury is out on Nick Heath’s commentary, neither annoying or funny enough to be memorable. Ashley Banjo feels a bit surplus to requirements, Fleur East seemed to be doing most of the heavy lifting (and even then…), they felt more like Gogglebox style observers. The music was pretty unmemorable, except the success music sounds a bit like the riff from Rolling In It stopped halfway through, which was annoying.
Can’t see it doing brilliantly, might might do OK as an acceptable “this’ll do” show if nothing else is on, and it’s quite difficult to judge what it might get now we’re all out and about again. I predict the first one will do 2.5-3.0m, trending down towards 2m as the series progresses.
Come to think of it The Void didn’t look much like a void given that the gap between the two was always filled with the game! Kind of minor point but I hadn’t properly clocked the show’s title till now!
I don’t think you’d ever guess that it was a record breaking pool of water unless you were told. Just looked like a very, er, ordinary size on screen I think.
Yeah, it might be impressive from a TV technical standpoint, but, well, we all know what a swimming pool looks like don’t we?
2.4m for episode one overnight.
Oh God, Its gonna be the same rounds every week isn’t it!
Wait, never mind, they are debuting at least one new round this week.
Two new rounds – Revolutionary Road (5 different types of turntables) was easiler their best obstacle so far, whilst the Splash Down finale was the same concept as the week 1 nets really. I suspect they may just have an alternate for each round, so in theory switching two out each week probably gives them enough combinations so no episode is ever the same. That said though Total Wipeout didn’t vary much compared to it’s US original* whilst Ninja Warrior only has minimal variations in the heats too.
Overall though I get the feeling this show is a result of ITV wanting a full blown assault course show but only having the budget for one pool.
* The TBS revival of Wipeout USA begins on E4 tonight at 7pm for anyone interested. Minimal variation here too I’m afraid – just two different sets of starting obstacles which alternate over the series.
AXED: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/tv/ashley-banjo-fleur-east-dealt-25230925
(h/t Josh R on Discord)
We saw that one coming.