What is curiouser and curiouser?

Metro going with first pictures and a schedule date of October 23rd for Jeopardy. Interestingly none of the other TV news sites seem to have picked up on this and there’s nothing in the ITV Media Centre, so I don’t know if they’ve got a scoop or broken an embargo or what.

It is really weird to publicly have an airdate so far out and it gives us more questions than answers. We have it on reasonable authority that Deal or No Deal is a twenty episode run destined for the The Chase slot, so is this set to be a 1-2 replacing Tipping Point for a bit? Will this be going in the 5pm slot also with Deal following its run? You’re willing to gamble a 3.5m viewer show come November for that? We reckon, and this is baseless speculation based only on how crazy the strategy is given it still absolutely dominates the timeslot, that this is ITV making a powerplay on Potato to make The Chase a bit cheaper because they’ve got other things they could put in the slot, and it’s not like Potato have had much other success recently (we’re hoping The Finish Line is as good as the idea sounds) – I can’t help but think this might backfire a bit if this is the case though. Especially if it *does* go out at 4:00 and the BBC have a new series of The Travelling Auctioneers ready to go out.

I just don’t think Jeopardy as a ‘new’ concept offers much for modern audiences, especially at the stakes on offer (oh no, you’ve lost £25!). Also don’t forget you’re getting 1.5x the material of the US show, but 2-and-bit times the runtime, I think it’ll be a slog. On its side: Fry is a spectacular choice of host, and it’s right in the middle of Autumn season. On the other hand, if they’ve kept A and Q (and my understanding is they have), the audience is going to say ‘nah, fuck off.’

We’re thrilled we’re going to be able to test a hypothesis though as this is something we’ve long thought. Don’t be surprised if it gets a series two, because everything these days gets a series two, but I’m not holding my breath for anything further.

Meanwhile SRO have a placeholder advert for Wheel of Fortune which I understand will be filming in October – eight normal eps and two celeb specials, set to go out on weekends in Q1 2024 (I love SRO but I wish they’d update their website so I can link to things directly – it’s about a quarter of the way down the list of shows), it’s interesting that that and the original press release for the show make a big play of Graham Norton being there and no mention of a co-host/letter toucher. Would this be the first territory in the world not to have one? It’s another show I have my doubts about, despite the great and unusual choice of host, we’ll see.