Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 9pm,
U&Dave, series on UKTV Play
Dav… sorry, U&Dave’s hunt to find the next Taskmaster continues. This one’s not an original, it’s based on a Korean format. Here Jimmy Carr challenges two teams of two celebs to live in an empty box for 24 hours, each pair the other side of a wall. The catch is that the wall can move giving one team more space and the other less space. Teams compete in challenges to earn more space and additional luxuries.
Each match-up is two episodes going out on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
Might be quite fun. Let us know what you thought in the comments.
New Jimmy Carr’s I Literally Just Told You, New Jimmy Carr’s 8 Out of Ten Cats Does Countdown, New U&Dave’s Jimmy Carr’s Battle in the Box.
What does that say to you about regional detective series?
That was a great watch. Like taskmaster I think it will depend on the contestants and the tasks in each show. Good pacing of each task. I also think it needs the two episodes for each battle, for each of the elements to have enough room in the show.
The House Rules task was a really fun one.
Going to watch episode 2 now on the app.
I quite liked this, I certainly thought it has a very striking look and feel that’s rather unexpected for the sort of light ent it is. It’s also much more game-y than I think I anticipated, with tasks that are proper challenges and some genuine jeopardy with the moving wall. There’s some appreciably clever design, it’s quite fun when a couple have a load of prizes only to then have to find a way to make room for them when their side of the box becomes tiny, for example.
But. But. I don’t think it integrates comedy as well as Taskmaster did and does and in some ways it felt like the game and the comedy worked against each other. The situation is mildly amusing, but the games weren’t funny especially, or at least there wasn’t much set up to elicit laughs, really nothing says light ent more than mildly dystopian synthwave. Jimmy Carr works best in this sort of thing when he has people to bounce off, his soundbite commentary doesn’t quite land and it’s clear everything he’s part of is pre-record or done in post.
I like it but don’t love it, it’s “interesting” more than I think it is “good”, I’m fascinated to see how it does, I can’t see it exploding but I can imagine some people really liking it.
If you want to know how this works: Two pairs move into a 16m by 3m box, each either side of a central wall. At either end is a kitchenette and a toilet, but otherwise the rooms are empty. Every couple of hours Jimmy will set a task. Winning the task means you get to spin a virtual wheel that (usually) determines a number between 2-5, that’s how many “spaces” you get to push the Wall, making your side of the box bigger and theirs smaller. You also get to pick one of three virtual boxes containing up to 5,000 Boxcoin, which they can spend on items that will be delivered to them from a large menu of items on a tablet.
After 24 hours, they play the final game, “Booby Boxes”. Each pair has a table with six boxes on it, each one with a statement, three true and three false. The team with the larger room gets to go first by picking a box. If it’s one with a true statement there will be a keycard, if wrong it will explode in confetti and whatever. Pairs take it in turns to open boxes, whoever gets the three keycards first wins, gets let out of the box and can take anything from the box they can carry as their “prize”. The losers are punished by having the wall almost pushed to the max and then “left there.”
Just to add one more rule from the endgame: if a team finds all three wrong answers before they find all three keycards, they automatically lose. This essentially forces a sudden-death if it goes to 2-2 for both teams.
Hearing first ep did 163k, which is pretty much in line with what QI XL got in the slot a fortnight ago, with all sorts of caveats about the series being up on U and the THinkbox numbers only capturing TV etc etc
I didn’t really like it at all. I guess I was expecting it to be a comedy show which it definitely wasn’t, or at least it wasn’t funny. The actual boxes getting smaller seemed a bit pointless really, they’re only there for 24 hours and it doesn’t seem like an inconvenience at all? Dunno, feels like you need to live in a tiny space for a week for it to feel annoying. The “find out what happens after the break” moments were for some of the lowest stakes resolves I’ve ever seen on a TV show!
It all felt a bit Big Brother 2002 task stretched out to an hour (well, 2) and without the interesting bits happening in the main house.
Apparently the Korean original was two-and-a-half days. I hope some footage will turn up somewhere.
Watching Game Two with fam over dinner, they’re enjoying it! Probably helps that the people involved are funnier.
My take – it’s one of the better formats to emerge in what’s been a really quiet year for new stuff, in a busier year this would be a solid mid-tier performer – it’s not the best thing on UK Gold Classics (Outsiders remains more entertaining) but it’s a good-ish shot. It doesn’t feel the same as Taskmaster because with no studio audience to play to it feels more sterile and empty of laughter, it’s more like Big Brother with (most of) the nastiness removed, if you enjoyed some of the more creative/unusual BB tasks you’ll enjoy the Box. The other issue is sometimes Carr pipes up when it’s not really needed, they could let the footage tell the story a little more, but I suppose that’s UKTV trying to get their money’s worth, having put him both into the Big Brother and Marcus Bentley roles, even if often quite obviously recorded in the former. Despite this I’ll be back for more (at Dave pace, as there’s not much else to grab me of an evening lately). Push the wall.