Saturday. 6pm,
ITV1
Joel Dommett presides as two teams of three shout answers at televisions in a bid to win up to £20,000.
Thanks to this Radio Times article we’ve an idea of the principle of the show – basically select a category and you get 80 seconds worth of three-second clips (I wonder if this is a mistake, 90 seconds would make more sense, no?). You just have to identify the things in the clips – right answers move you up the money ladder, wrong answers drop you down. In front of you is a big red button, hitting it freezes the clip and you can take however long you need on it (perhaps this doesn’t stop the clock, in which case 60 seconds of clips with 20 seconds thinking time makes more sense), usable ten times throughout by each team. Winners get a chance to quadruple their prize pot in the final, if the original press release was anything to go by.
The entertaining thing is that there’s another show coming to Saturday nights with a very similar name-the-thing-in-the-picture premise: Picture Slam with Alan Carr on the BBC. We don’t know how long that has been in development for. We do know this was piloted late last year and recorded recently and with ITV usually so happy to sit on a light entertainment show for ages, I ponder if this has been hurried out to act as a sort of spoiler. There is probably room for a 7/10 banger Saturday night picture quiz, whether there’s enough for two remains to be seen.
Let us know what you think in the comments.
I thought this was a TX pilot, didn’t realise it was a series. Thought it was HORRIBLY incomplete both as an idea and as a show, especially the cheap music.
This was OK, we were shouting along, so box successfully ticked, the thing about a 7/10 Saturday Banger is that you probably wouldn’t tune in deliberately for it but if you came across it it’s good enough that you’d stick with it and watch to the end and I’m not sure In With A Shout is *quiiiiite* good enough in that sense.
To watch it feels like a stimulus overload – more so in the beginning than throughout to be fair – it’s certainly the most energetic thing I think I remember watching in some time, with the thumping music, shouty contestants, multiple things to keep track of and quick clippage you might as well have called it “Fuck Off Everyone Older Than 29 With Joel Dommett”, it takes a little while to adjust to it as a viewer.
The material is fine (although there’s always going to be an issue in an animal round of how descriptive do you need to be) and the format is fun enough although that final ladder looks extremely severe, like the show was being made for Italian TV. I know in effect it’s single, double, redouble (£700 max, £1,400 max, £3,100 max) but I’m not sure jumping from £0 to £1,600 makes the rest of the ladder all that exciting when the jumps are only about £100 – it certainly doesn’t allow for big exciting swings because it’s so compressed. The Multiplier feels fair and reasonable.
Having gone so big energy for the rest of the show, the final is a bit slow and feels a bit easy. Do they have unlimited passes?
It’s a *decent* show, but it doesn’t feel like a *lovable* one.
I’m fascinated by what the people behind Picture Slam made of this. If that’s you, DM me!!!
Yeah I liked that, it’s like The Hit List but for looking.
Not sure how “balloon keep up” got through adjudication, there’s not even a Wikipedia page for it.
And yes, I can’t see many teams reaching the final then falling to win that easy jackpot round.
The tone shift from the main game to end game is whiplash inducing.
Also seems to be the easiest final game in recent memory since there isn’t any real punishment for skipping.
Now that the first episode has aired, what’s the complete format rundown which would be how they get to the £20,000?
Hey, sorry for the absence.
2 teams of 3 attempt to bank as much money as they can to win potentially over £20,000 by literally shouting at the screen. There’s 10 TV screens each with a category name on them. Taking it in turns, the team captains nominate which member of their team will take on a screen in each round. The selected player then picks which screen they want and Joel reveals what the category entails. For example, if the category was ‘Red All About It’, the clips would show things that are red and can also have names associated with the colour red, e.g. SCARLETT Moffatt, Ron BURGUNDY and so on. After a 3-second countdown, a filmreel of 20 individual video clips plays, and the player must call out what they think the answers are, with correct answers only being accepted on the clip in question. Once a clip has finished playing, it cannot then be answered after the fact. A correct answer moves them one space up an 8-step money ladder, while a wrong answer moves them down a space. After the filmreel has finished, the team banks whatever amount on the money ladder they are, along with bonus money for each correct answer and Joel reveals what the answers were that they got wrong. In the middle of the stage is a podium with a large red button on it. If a player gets stuck, they can hit this button and freeze the video clip for 10 seconds to give them some thinking time. This button can be used 10 times for each team over the course of the game.
In the first round, the money ladder is: £0, £50, £100, £150, £200, £300, £400, £500 and each correct answer is worth a bonus £10.
In the second round, the money ladder is: £0, £100, £200, £300, £400, £500, £700, £1,000 and each correct answer is worth a bonus £20.
In the third round, the money ladder is: £0, £1,500, £1,600, £1,700, £1,800, £2,000, £2,200, £2,500 and each correct answer is worth a bonus £30.
After each team member has played a screen, the team with the most money goes through to The Multiplier. This round is played by 1 member of the team captain’s choosing from the remaining 4 screens. This plays exactly the same as the previous rounds, but the money ladder is: Half, Bank, Bank, Double, Double, Triple, Triple, Quadruple. Whatever step they are on at the end of the clip is what happens to their bank.
After determining how much the team is playing for, the remaining 2 members of the team must face all 10 screens and turn them off in 60 seconds to win it. On each screen, a clip will play with a caption at the bottom to give the players a hint as to what they’re looking for. If they wish, they can hit the button to change the clip if they get stuck, but the screen will only turn off once a correct answer is given. This continues until the team either turns off all 10 screens to win or the time runs out.
The daytime just called, they want their Shows back. Crikey that was just horrible.
That made me laugh.. wish daytime would take it back!
EEK!
The core concept is good – say what you see – but the overall format around it just isn’t there to make it compelling as a show. It’s also deceptively difficult in parts.
The finale being all-or-nothing seems a little incongruous with the rest of the show and cheap for a weekly series which leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Some quite big reformatting for series two, R1 now £1,000 ladder + £20 an answer, R2 £2,500 +£30, R3 £5,000 +£50 for a total of (£1,300 + £2,950 + £5,750=) £10,000.
But now there’s a new head-to-head round where one team will add up to £10k, the other will add £0. At the bottom of screen is a new horizontal money ladder (£10k, £5k, £2.5k, £1k, £1k, £2.5k, £5k, £10k) and it works on a tug-of-war system – get it right and one step is taken towards your side, get it wrong and the flashing screen takes one step away from you. One nominated member from each team goes up on a new category, contestants answer alternately, whatever is lit on the money ladder goes to the team whose side it’s on.
And I think as an idea it just about works, it’s dangerously close to ‘only the last round matters’ but there’s enough variance in the preceeding rounds to justify it, I think, although I’m not sure how easy it is to follow if you’re not attuned to the idea – there’s a lot of changing visual cues, quickly changing box sizes and the like.
The ladders use the full range, none of the 0 -> over 60% in one step nonsense from first time around.
The show feels a little bit less full on overall, the final still feels basically unloseable. It’s alright.
EDIT: It’s 15 clips a round now, I’ve updated the numbers.
I think there is also a new rule in the final where you can ‘only’ pass 5 times…per TV screen so they might as well not have bothered with that one!
Anyway the biggest format change of all time is they now have a vocal In With A!…In With A!…In With A In With A SHOUT! vocal towards the end of the credits which is nice
Yeah I spotted this when I watched on ITVX and wondered if that was new!
Lots of changes but it’s… still basically fine. Not always a fan of tug-of-war but think it works well here.
Still think all-or-nothing endgame is both a bit cheap and doesn’t fit with such a light format by making the finale a bit too tense. Sure, it’s winnable, but it’s a Saturday prime time show – it wouldn’t kill them to give all the contestants something!
Have many teams actually lost it then? I can’t say I’ve seen one.
Not sure I’ve seen them all but I do remember one team losing in the first series. I don’t think it’s a slamdunk impossible-to-lose final.
Watch this Saturday’s episode on catch-up 😉
And last night…47 seconds left after five tellies and…oh