Saturdays, 8:50pm,
Five
Anneka’s back with her logistics-em-up show The Challenge Programme Feat. Anneka Rice!
Last seen in a set of specials on ITV in 2006, two things remain to be seen, namely if doing it on Five has the same sort of appeal from companies offering their labour and parts as it did getting a plug on the BBC and whether, well, is there a need for Challenge Anneka in a TV landscape that’s ripped it off loads in the last thirty years. We hope it’s more building stuff than human interest at any rate.
It’s not a good sign that this completely slipped my mind it was on until an hour into the first 90 minute show and I’ve backtimed this post. Nonetheless we hope it’s good and will catch up in due course. If you watched it, what did you think?
90′ was probably about 75% more of it than I needed and it felt a bit flabby, but I think that’s more a reflection on modern TV budgets than anything else. Nicely produced, hit the important beats and didn’t damage the legacy of the show at all, but I can’t say I really got into it and I’m not sure if I’m enthusiastic about coming back for more. The series is only four episodes long which feels very short for a series; part of me wonders if this might do better as occasional infrequent specials, but would they get lost nowadays?
The titles are fun: https://youtu.be/vz6K1JuHrhw
Aww I really enjoyed that, always going to be slightly lower rent than the original, but clearly they kept as much of the DNA as possible – in this sense it felt more successful than the ITV ones where the balance shifted too much in favour of the human interest stories and the Doing Stuff felt secondary, I thought they hit the balance much better here. I didn’t think the 90 minutes dragged, but I was watching on My5 where there was about one advert between the latter parts.
Love that Annie’s still phoning up people and saying she’s from “The Challenge Programme”, laughed quite hard when she asked if they’d heard of it and then asked if they could put someone “a bit older on”.
The new truck is magnificent.
My main issue was quite an annoying editing thing where they’d play the theme tune going into the break and then repeat the last few seconds of the theme tune with the break bumper. But if that’s the biggest issue then I think that suggests a lot to be positive about.
For a show nearly 30 years on they really nailed the vibe. There isn’t much “warm and fuzzy” television on now-a-days and it’s tough to not feel compassionate about something like this.
I think the run time (90 minutes / 67 minutes + breaks) was slightly long but not excessively, a few too many laptop shots perhaps – 75 minutes would perhaps work better but unlikely to be commissioned.
The issues I saw were minor – the duplicate “sting” for the ad breaks (as Brig mentioned), and the logo looked a bit basic when contrasted with the excellent introduction animation – including the hedgehogs!
I do like that they kept the “blooper” phone calls in – the person that hung up immediately after mentioning Challenge Anneka, and Anneka asking to put someone “a bit older on” because they didn’t know what the show was – very much keeps the authenticity of the program.
I’ll make sure to watch the other three episodes, hopefully it consolidates well on the 900k overnights. It feels like the kind of show that could gain viewers during the run – people just need to know that it’s on!
To add: the opening animation was done by Andy Goff, who was one of the animators for the original series (originally credited as Phil Austin and Animation City for series 1, later Phil Austin and Andy Goff in series 3).
First ep added 300k-odd to end on 1.25m in +7.
Ep 2 overnighted at 440k.
Pulled after two eps! Poor Channeka 🙁
Episode 3 of Channeka going out sometime during Week beginning May 15th, during Dementia Awareness Week, which is quite smart as they’re building a dementia village that episode.