In theory, in theory, going by a press release, Romesh and Tom Take on Takeshi’s Castle ought to launch tomorrow in the UK (August 30th), we’ve seen no promo for it at all. And now it looks like we’ll be getting the original Japanese dubs with subtitles on September 26th 27th now.
The quietness is a bit worrying isn’t it? One of our German correspondents suggests their dubbed version was nonsensical and pretty terrible (and sent us a link to this), about ten minutes of people failing the same thing before moving on, and a rather complex episode arc. Nobody watches Takeshi’s Castle for the complex narrative, but you also need light and shade – you need to be impressed by someone who can actually make the challenge occasionally, otherwise what’s the point? Hopefully our edit will be a bit smarter.
Edit: Rom and Tom’s Takeshi’s Castle is now up! Episodes about 40 minutes, so some sharp cuts to the Japanese ones.
Rom and Tom’s Takeshi’s Castle is now up – episodes are about 40 minutes, so it looks like they’ve been quite sharply edited as the Japanese originals are about an hour:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B0CC7YHRFZ/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r
What a mess this is. Choice of commentary team does not fit the show at all. It’s just monotone chatter and adds nothing. You can absolutely tell they have never seen an episode of Takeshis Castle. It’s so formulaic like they are reading from a script or autocue.
Editing could be better. They have included the sketch type scenes between games but then have irrelevant chatter over them from the UK voice over. I almost get the feeling they are not watching at times. Also why not just make the episode longer and include the whole thing rather than splitting them over 2 shows.
No doubt expensive to make but it’s clear they want to get the most out of it, often letting boring games drag on.
It is almost like whoever edited this for the British audience didn’t know what made the show funny and entertaining.
Not keen on that final at all. While it looks good I’m not getting storm the castle vibes also think it’s a big mistake going with a single player game rather than a team game at the end. The team should be trying to storm the castle from the carpark.
I feel let down, like the Crystal Maze reboot so much promise marred by bad choices.
Funnily enough I like Rom and Tom’s arsing about in the commentary booth who at least have some chemistry together, because actually 6-7 minutes of people failing the same thing over and over is actually pretty wearing – by accident or design the pacing of the Challenge edits 20-odd years ago feels bang on and this does not. I was hoping after seeing the German reviews the edit might be a bit more thoughtful but evidently not.
I’m going to be fascinated to see how this all comes across with the 60-80 minute Japanese subbed ones when they get released next month.
I miss Craig Charles. I wish they’d bring him back. I recon Takeshi’s Castle would’ve been forgotten in the UK had it not been for his hilarious commentary.
Maybe they should do a legit UK version with British contestants, no having to travel to Japan to take part, using the original Showdown with the dogems and paper rings, and having Craig Charles and Roman Kemp on commentary.
It would be or either Prime Video or Comedy Central since hardly anyone watches Challenge anymore.
I finished watching this last night.
I was mainly watching for the commentary by the end to be honest.