Well the revival is anyway, the original US format’s almost forty years old now and I’ll just let that sink in for you.
And what an incredibly solid performer it has been over the past ten years, anchoring ITV’s weekend evenings and filling in on ITV2 all the time extremely successfully. And why not? It’s irresistible. What sort of person comes across an episode of Catchphrase and decides to turn over? An absolute monster, that’s who.
There was certainly no guarantees that the change to 3D graphics would work – there was a real chance of alienating the audience. But other than sometimes seeming a bit busy, and occasionally the amount of detail is a bit distracting, they’ve worked well – the extra dimension allowing for a greater variety of ideas than the colour-ed up Dingbats of the original tended to rely upon. Whatsmore, and importantly, under Stephen Mulhern they kept things both light and fun, lots of money for everyone (unless you’re a civilian who didn’t get past the qualifying round obviously). They iterated on the iconic buzzer look and sound of the original. They’ve kept the “end of game” sound effect, although it’s been clipped quite badly. They’ve pointlessly added some sort of M Square feature to the Super Catchphrase even though it makes little sense. It’s all been great stuff.
We remain thankful that between recording the pilot and the series they softened Mr Chips look up from PSYCHO ROBOT OUT TO KILL YOU to the lovable rogue we know and love.
Of course the best episodes are the ones where one of the celebs is clearly very good at the game and they’ve been put together with some right thickos and you can feel the grimacing as they try and let them win some money for their charities but are totally useless at it. Emotionally blackmailing celebs into picking Box 11 in the Super Catchphrase so they can double the losers totals and then making it quite difficult remains quite the production choice when they do it.
Roy Walkered so Stephen Mulhern could run. He’s only three years off Walker’s tenure, and he’s only 45. How long can he run? There doesn’t seem any reason the show couldn’t run for years and years, it quietly outrates most things on a Saturday night even still.
Here’s what we thought of the pilot. Here’s what we thought going to see an episode of the first series proper being recorded. And here’s our original Show Discussion post from April 7th 2013.
https://www.c21media.net/screenings/all3mediainternational/catch-phrase/18618/ And here’s some clips from that pilot, complete with haunted Mr Chips who doesn’t look all that different to in the finished product, it’s the mouth being open all the time that does it I think
Have they stopped doing the civilian shows? Seems like it’s been all celebrities for ages.
I love quiz shows, but there are some times when I just like to watch something where I don’t have to think, if you know what I mean. That’s why I like Catchphrase. I do wonder why they don’t still do the civilian version, but I enjoy the celebrity version. I like that while the Celeb Chase has various unknown celebrities to me like Darts and rugby players, newsreaders……. Catchphrase mainly picks recognisable celebrities for the most part, comedians, soap stars, presenters or athletes. I am always interested to see who Stephen will get each episode.
Since Covid, Episodes usually tape in Apri (for airing in the Autumn) and sometime in the Autumn (to air in the Winter). I read last year on TVZone that there was going to be a 16 part series to air in 22-23.. They taped 10 in April including a Soccer Aid Episode and 10 in November including a Christmas Episode. However due to Celebrity Lingo perhaps, 8 episodes, all April ones, aired earlier this year . There are still 1 April episode and 9 November ones left to air. I would gather that they would air in Autumn 2023 and new ones would film then. However, I just saw on their official Twitter that they are getting ready to film a new batch 😉 Stephen Mulhern seems to be a busy guy these day. When is he going to be filming Deal or No Deal.
Anyways, just wanted to say that I know it’s not high brow, but sometimes I just like something to watch a programme where I don’t need to think all the time after a long day.