Sorry it’s been a bit slow lately, but I’m not doing a Board of Excitement when there’s so little to get excited about (although there will be a show discussion post for NEW! Who Wants to be a Millionaire tomorrow). Also (if you don’t follow me on Twitter), I was up in Nottingham playing poker badly at the wonderous Dusk Till Dawn for the first time pretty much all day yesterday.
Anyway, I’ve been alerted to the fact that Letters and Numbers has premiered on SBS in Australia and you should be able to watch it online certainly if you live in Australia and I’ve just watched it from the UK. It is, of course, the new Australian version of the ever popular Des Chiffres et Des Lettres although production wise having more in common with Countdown than its french father.
Certainly the set is very similar, although they’ve got the University Challenge-esque academic lava lamp thing going on in the background behind the contestants which is quite subtle and cool. There’s no celeb in Dictionary Corner, although their very own Susie Dent David Astle gets to do an origins of words segment, and there’s a viewer teaser to go into each of the breaks. The format is letters, letters, numbers, letters, letters, numbers, letters, numbers, computer generated Conundrum which I quite like and fits inside half an hour. The clock music is rather poor compared to our legendary one.
Basically it’s alright if you like that kind of thing.
I promised I’d throw up the Tokyo Friend Park II feature a few days ago didn’t I? I’ll do that this evening.
I really like their clock. I don’t know why.
Speaking of clocks – I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this but this is a preview of the new millionaire clock
http://www.twitvid.com/VM1WN
I think the US one is more stylish
Speaking of University Challenge, if anyone’s interested, it’s a 1960s university against a specialist college tonight, as York take on the Royal College of Music.
The RCM, located next to Imperial College, is making its first appearance in the Paxman Era, though two other similarly-named conservatoires – the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music, respectively located near Regent’s Park and in Manchester – have previously appeared.
By contrast, York are making their tenth appearance in eleven series. They have had something of a tendency to underachieve, though, as in the previous nine appearances they’ve reached the quarter-finals only once.
The Letters and Numbers stream does work in the US, at least for know
Were the UK contestants this thick when Countdown started?