Some THINGS:
- It’s Cory, Christian and Bob’s 24-Hour Gameshow Marathon this weekend raising money for Child’s Play. It starts at 5pm UK time on Saturday (the times on the page don’t seem to take into account BST, so you need to add an hour to the GMT signposts), Moneybags through to The Wheel which would be 11pm through to 2am looks like the most interesting bit to me, your mileage may vary.
- Gladiators starts filming tomorrow! Let us know what you think if you go. There are still tickets for next week.
- Has anyone watched Siren: Survive the Island on Netflix yet? It ticks a lot of “I want to watch this” boxes – Korean, eliminatory, tasks, but I haven’t got much time going spare at the moment.
Mark Clatternburg’s the new John Anderson, I’m not a football person so I don’t know if that’s a good fit or not but it seems to be getting the thumbs up.
So the story seems to be there are 3,000 seats for the Glads filming today but they’ve given out 10,000 tickets.
I get a level of overage for no-shows, but this strikes me as really fucking rude, especially as it’s likely families on half-term will have travelled to get there.
This feels like par for the course for Applause Store, my least favourite audience company by a distance. But even if we’re being charitable – perhaps Hungry Bear demanded more floorspace in lieu of seating close to filming, it’s really not a great look.
I did have a ticket for today (the 2nd) to go with my mum and my nieces, but the rail strike today has put paid to that.
24hGSM: 1000 Heartbeats is very exciting and Press Your Luck is close to riotous. There’s a distinctive style and Press Your Luck fits it very well… but there has to be light and shade, especially over a production as long and as impressive as this, and 24 hours of chaos quite that high-octane would be too much.
I was at yesterday’s filming for Gladiators and, after panicking over the reports last week, I’m happy to report that it all went pretty smoothly – both administratively and on the production floor.
I’m not convinced the Walshes (or “Oh, Bradley and Barney!” as we were told to chant) are the best hosts for the format, but their jokey links were acceptable for the cheesy pantomime tone, which felt closer in spirit to the ITV original than the Sky 1 remake. And their post-game interviews were pleasant enough, too. Clattenburg was a decent ref and not afraid to intervene with warnings and, again, a slightly pantomime tete-a-tete with a particular Gladiator. The Glads are a good bunch, though the one positioned as the new Wolf didn’t get half as many boos as the one who Clattenburg had to overrule – he’d been riled up by a cheeky contender too. Quite a few Glads shouted out some #positivementalattitude platitudes – “I’m doing this for all the tall girls out there!” sort of stuff. Nice enough.
For the games, it was a great selection of faithfully reproduced classics and one new elevated effort that probably plays best on TV but was entertaining and led to some wildly different scores. Mostly they ran smoothly – it was the first quarter final, so participants and the crew knew what to expect in most cases – and made decent use of the available arena space. It’ll all look bigger on TV anyway, and they had a drone whizzing around at points to get some fly-through footage of the set-up games – I imagine Gauntlet in particular could look cool shown off that way.
All in all, waving a foam finger in the air to Another One Bites The Dust was the realisation of a childhood dream and I’m looking forward to seeing more of the show on broadcast. I hope I’ve not said too much!
I have to say I’ve gone from being quite pessimistic about the prospect of a remade Glads to genuinely quite excited to see how it all plays out on screen – what I’ve seen from the set looks brilliant – like how you’d imagine 1990s Glads to look like in 2023, only really a shot of the Eliminator kind of giving away that the Arena’s a bit smaller than the original NIA. I also know about the new game you’re talking about, The Edge, which very much looks like it’s going for Pendulum’s pomp. Have also heard that the Glads have decent banter, but this is the first thing I’ve heard about the performance of the Walsh’s (that chant sounds absolutely terrible) and Clattenburg.
We’re still trying to work out the format of the competition, 1 final, 2 semis, presumably 4 quarters leaving 4 episodes for heats. But how’s that going to work? Also what’s the prize for the champions?
Thanks to @s279 on Twitter, the tournament format:
5 heats, winners plus fastest loser go through to three quarters, winners and fastest loser go through to semis where it becomes a straight knockout to the final.
I’m living in the hope that the chant (which I neglected to say is the Seven Nation Army rhythm, à la the short-lived “Oh Jeremy Corbyn”) was purely to whip up some excitement in the crowd and won’t be broadcast, but we shall see. The Walshes’ banter was distinctly average… Bradley reading out a comedy limerick that sounds like it’s going to have a rude climax so Barney cuts him off. That sort of thing.
There was no prize mentioned so I’ve no idea what they’re playing for!
If you want some more sneaky set photos I may be able to DM a couple your way on Twitter.
Yeah I suspected it was Seven Nation Army pretty quickly! I’ve had quite a few set photos, but you’re more than welcome to send more.
I potentially have a spare audience seat going for MediaCity DOND on 4th July at 12:30, UNBELIEVABLY the friend I was meant to be going with is planning to go on holiday instead so I’ll be on my own with a ticket valid for 2