- Wipeout (Thursday, ABC) – back to one a week now, although apparently repeats on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
- Shooting Stars (9:30pm, Tuesday, BBC2) – the celebrity TV quiz of variable quality IS BACK! With Angelos Epithemiou now keeping the scores now Matt Lucas has other commitments. Jack Dee and Ulrika-ka-ka Jonsson are still team captains, and this week they are joined by rapper Example, Hairy Biker Si King, dancer Camilla Dallerup and Eastenders’ Linda Henry.
- Big Brother US (Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday) – enjoyed the series opener, quite clever opening challenge, the saboteur twist looks fun, contestants that seem intelligent and good looking… will continue to watch for a while yet. I’m still sort of follwing the UK one, but not watching it every night.
- Big Brother’s Tenth Birthday Proper (Wednesday, Channel 4) – although expect them to ignore it as they celebrated it last year, and they don’t want to be spoiling the narrative now.
- Fort Boyard (8:35 CET+1, France 2, France) – although it looks like they aren’t going online until Monday upsettingly. I’ve heard that they’ve really gone all out on the competition aspect, to the point where they’ve dropped any form of whimsy that used to make the show extra entertaining. This is a big shame, although I haven’t yet seen episode one to make an informed comment.
- Odd One In (7:15pm, Saturday, ITV1) – Bradley Walsh hosts a new show where celebs try and guess who out of a line-up of people has an unusal talent or thing. Sounds rather old-skool.
- Magic Numbers (8pm, Saturday, ITV1) – Old-skool as well, but for very different reasons. Premium phone-number at the ready! Holly Willoughby and JLS guest.
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I’ve seen three minutes (i.e. one game) of FB 2010, and on first glance it appears to be a bit like the Swedish 2 team one, in that there ARE contestant interviews, but they don’t ruin anything by putting them in the middle of the games. This was only one game though.
They’ve moved new Wipeout to Thursday now; I’m not sure why. I preferred it being on earlier in the week – there’s too much other stuff to do at the end of the week/weekend.
They’ve still got an episode on Tuesday though, but a repeat. And then there’s a repeat on Saturdays too. Overkill much? 🙁
Thanks! Changed.
The new Wipeout ep is to try and damage Big Brother’s first live show, the same reason as why they put an ep up against the premiere (they beat it on Thursday in total viewers by about 500,000- 7.7 million to 7.2 million- but they tied in the 18-49 demographic). The 7.2 million for BB is up about 700K from last seasons premiere, and up 4% in the 18-49’s (it was the best opening since Season 8 in 2007)
I thought Matt Lucas never left the show. He couldn’t attend the recordings earlier in the year as it clashed with something he was working on with David Walliams.
You may well be right there.
I’ve seen a Shooting Stars trailer and the new series looks like it’s worth a try – though, to calibrate your opinion-o-meters, I rather enjoyed the first three or four episodes of the previous series before the feeling of “they’re using the same gags every week” overtook me.
I hope Bob does his “loooovin’ you is easy ’cause your boobs are new!” gag again! Every week.
A peak of 5 million people watched 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow at the end. SO people LOVED IT!!! 😀
I guess people were reading the comments online and had to tune in for themselves to see if it really was that bad.
Will be shameful – though somewhat unsurprising – if ratings hold up next week.
First show ratings.
101 Ways to Leave a Game Show – 4.02m (25.7%)
Totally Saturday – 4.37m (22%)
I wouldn’t jump up and down just yet, Joe the Endemol Loving Robot. We all know how Totally Saturday ended up seven weeks later…
Apples and oranges? “Totally Saturday” was 6 June-flavoured apples, a particularly dismal and wet day across much of the country.
“101 Ways…” went out in scorching hot weather, at least here in ATV-land. People had better things to do than watch television in a stuffy indoors room.
That said, I shall watch next week’s show purely to get some decent screen captures, and then find something less dull to watch. When are the England football side next on?
One big difference between T S and 100 ways apart from the weather is the fact that 100 ways added viewers across the hour, while TS lost viewers across the hour.
???? 2m read about it online? Are you serious??
Thanks for that, Endemol droid #298A-7C.
This week’s Uni Chal, if anyone’s interested, sees Cardiff flying the flag for Wales, and Oxford Brookes doing the same for the 1992 universities.
Cardiff appeared last year and are making their fifth appearance in all in the Paxman Era. They have actually not won a first-round match up to now, though they scored enough to play again in 1997/8 and went on to reach the quarter-finals.
Oxford Brookes are making their second appearance, their first also being in 1997/8. On that occasion, they succeeded in winning their first-round match, beating Warwick, but then managed only 40 agsint the LSE and had one of their contestants fall ill towards the end of that game.
Meant “against the LSE”.
This is what happens when you type up something just minutes before the World Cup Final kicks off.
When you describe “Odd One In” as “old-skool”, you’re not kidding! It sounds like a mash-up of “To Tell The Truth” and a very obscure two-months wonder called “One In A Million”.
“One In A Million”? UKGS doesn’t have that one. What was that?
Wiki says it’s a 1967 US game show. And that’s it, because nobody’s written a proper article yet.
One in a Million (ABC (US), 10 April – 16 June 1967) appears to be a Merv Griffin production, hosted by Danny O’Neil, and no copies are known to have survived.
Anyone got a time machine I can borrow? Flowers for my hair would also be useful.
That’s only if you’re going to San Francisco.
What do you guys think to BB US and The Mole twist is already looking interesting.
University Challenge: what an unfortunately home-town question! Not specifying where my allegiance lay, but I booed the coincidence of question and team that decided it. Not the first, won’t be the last, but it always leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
Iain: 8———– 8———– 8———–
Iain: 8———– 8———– 8———–
888? That can only mean one thing. A transcript of the Ceefax subtitles is available online. He said, giving away trade secrets hidden in plain sight.
I’m not actually sure what CMD’s point is here. The Inklings as a particularly Oxford Brookes subject? As a topic known by mathematicians from Hartlepool? I’m not seeing it. According to biographies of Tolkein and Lewis, the Inklings were associated with another university in Oxford, one that certainly doesn’t have a 100% record in its first-round matches here.
The same mathematician getting the combinations question earlier in the show? That’s hometown stuff.
The Inklings as a particularly Oxford Brookes subject?
As a particularly Oxford city subject: very much so, I fancy. Admittedly there are a good couple of miles (and rather a large hill) from the Bird and Baby to the Brookes Campus, but it’s still close enough to leave a slightly sour taste in my mouth.
My wife, who is not all that regular a viewer of the programme, was slightly confused by the end of yesterday’s show because the Thump was not quite specific enough on protocol in his haste.
But what does the question editor do? Stop recording and go through the next five starters to ensure that they’re not related to any person’s particular university, home town or degree subject?
It’s usually better just to let nature take its course.
I didn’t like that question. As an Oxford graduate I can say that the pub itself and the society feature in numerous helpful student orientation materials. You’ll not find an Oxford student who doesn’t know the Inklings.
Whilst it was unfortunate that it hit such a crux, I believe that question should not have been in this episode from the start.
Very close to what Frank said: if protocol is to associate certain question sets with certain shows, I think questions about the towns in which universities are situated are probably unwise, though question editors probably can’t reliably know contestants’ home towns and degree subjects in advance – and, in any case, my tolerance would put such issues on the right side of acceptability for the luck of the draw.
If protocol is not to associate certain question sets with certain shows (or, occasionally, to permit question sets to be swapped) then this thing will happen again from time to time, but it’s still anonying when it does – and I’d want there to be pretty good reason for there not to be an association between certain question sets and certain shows, at least in round one when you know in advance which towns the teams for each show are going to come from. (Round two and onwards, I’ll grant you, are considerably harder to predict.)
There was a bonus question asking how many ways you can select two items from five if the order is not important. Or to put it another way, how many possible outcomes are there for the final round of “Deal Or No Deal”?
…asumming the Banker always offers a swap, which he doesn’t.
The Restaurant’s been axed. Or “is off the menu” as some wag is bound to say.
Quelle surprise… ne pas.
I didn’t really notice it was on, after the brilliance of the first series, in which a couple ended up winning by saying the word ‘passionate’ a few million times.
The BBC Two autumn press pack is out. There’s “A Dream Life In The Country” (“The Restaurant” for farms), “Michel Roux’s Service” (“The Restaurant” without the cooking) and “MasterChef The Professionals” (cooking without the restaurant). No sign of Mel and Sue’s “Great British Bake Off” though.