Come Dine With Me app review just coming (Edit: Whoomph there it is, as US rap combo Tag Team once sang) , in the meantime:
- Drop Zone – The seven remaining teams are dropped off in Austria, where the weather is awful and they need to milk a cow. This starting fifteen minutes later this week, by the sixth and final week it’ll be primetime at this rate. (3:50pm, Sunday, BBC1)
- All Star Family Fortunes – Not exciting per se, but now it’s in The Cube‘s slot it will be interesting to see what sort of ratings it gets. If you like that kind of thing. (7:15pm, Sunday, ITV1)
- The X Factor – With the double elimination this evening I guess this week we’ll find out if Wagner is towards the top three or in fact just avoiding elimination Jedward style, if the two rival voting leaks are anything to go by. (8pm, Sunday, ITV1)
- Only Connect – final quarter final: In-laws vs the Alesmen. Needless to say, disappointed by the lack of beards from the Alesmen, they probably aren’t proper CAMRA members. (8:30pm, Monday, BBC4)
- A Question of Sport – Normally we wouldn’t bill this, but we’re intrigued by its new late night timeslot and the fact that celebrities will be regular panelists (Frank Skinner and Peter Jones are on this first ep). It’s sort of been going in a light-entertainment direction for a while, is it now going to go a bit crude? It’s also the first episode of series forty, so congratuations to them for that. New set as well. (10:35pm, Monday, BBC1 – 23:05 in NI and Wales, 23:45 in Scotland)
- Premier League Poker – Match two, second half. Good old Phil Helmuth. (00:45, Monday night, C4)
- The Apprentice – appears to be a bit of a scavenger hunt this week, except with buying things. I gather this is a regular task, but this is my first time watching the show properly, which I am enjoying very much. (9pm, Wednesday, BBC1)
- The Challenge: Cutthroat – Sorry, I billed this last week but it wasn’t actually on because of being Thanksgiving Eve, presumably. (Wednesday, MTV US)
The shopping list task is a regular item on The Apprentice. Usually the ten items are obscure like a persian rug and 10lb of shrimps.
The rules for the ‘buying’ task are simple: ten items, ten hours, £1000 of seed money and the team who have the most cash left wins. There are penalties for not buying an item (each item has a ‘nominal’ cost which is removed from the cash pile if it is not bought) and penalties for missing what I call a ‘time control’ at the boardroom reception.
Classic moment 1: mistaking kosher and halal chicken in Marrakesh back in 2008, also Classic moment 2: nigella seeds in 2009: ‘Err, is that what is used to make astroturf?’ and player: ‘I can only find one supplier in Stansted and there’s not enough time to get there and back.’ Sir Alan: ‘There was a supplier only ten minutes away from the boardroom!’
Meanwhile we found out what happened to Wagner on X Factor: Sixth of seven in the voting, lose the sing-off to Mary, then spend a night in the police cells – that’s what you get for ‘murdering’ so many songs.
And I kept my Fantasy X Factor team going after the BB tournament was curtailed. I now have 137 points, last of nine teams in my office mini-league and 48 points behind the best team. (Of the nine, six said Mary would leave, with one vote each for Wagner, Katie and Cher)
University Challenge: trying, and probably failing, to follow last week’s epic all-Cambridge affair are UCL and Sheffield.
Probably failing, because the first-round performances of these two teams differed considerably. Sheffield tonked Newcastle 315-70 on 30 August, with Tristram Cole picking up nine starters; UCL struggled past Hertford Oxford 155-125 the following week.
One would think this would point to a win for the team from Steel City – but then again, as last week’s match showed, anything can happen…
UC will have to go a long way to beat today’s edition of Brain of Britain, a classic nip-and-tuck match between two outstanding contestants, and decided by a game of spin the bottle.
Looking forward to listening to Brain of Britain later, but UC certainly didn’t disappoint!
It most certainly didn’t – I was wrong to say “probably failing”.
The Question Of Sport timeslot is an odd one. They’ve run in this slot before – but that was only bits of the programme that swerved dangerously into They Think Its All Over territory – or contained words of swearage.
However, I was thinking that Sunday night at 10.35pm was a heck of a demotion from series 1 for Culshaw and Stephenson on The Impressionists Show – and a repeat is now being used as a warm-up for Strictly on a Saturday evening, so(and I’ve not checked) but I wonder Questions of Sporty is going to be repeated earlier, later in the week?
Oh, and by the way – there’s a new set. Audience no longer in the gloom behind Sue and the teams. Photos on Alex Craig’s website.
I did wonder about a repeat, but nothing shows up online about one, and normally the repeat times would be listed, wouldn’t they? On the other hand, it’s not particularly topical, so they could parachute it in anywhere i suppose.
The head of BBC entertainment was interviewed in Broadcast a few weeks ago and she said that ‘Celebrity sport fans’ were going to be a regular thing now. But there was no mention of scheduling.
I think it will probably go back to its old slot on Fridays once QI has finished in January. I think the beeb are just stuck for Comedy formats for the Monday night comedy slot at the moment, Now that Graham Norton and Would I lie to you have been moved to Fridays to Replace Jonathan Ross.
All Star Family Fortunes – Not exciting per se, but now it’s in The Cube’s slot it will be interesting to see what sort of ratings it gets. If you like that kind of thing. (7:15pm, Sunday, ITV1)
Not surprised by this move.
Hope it’s not successful enough to convince the monkeys to commission a sixth series. 😡
Yes, just as Joe is an Endemol-loving robot, I’m a Vernon-Kay’s-Family-Fortunes-hating one.
I personally remember “Whoomp! (There It Is)” from its cover by Clock in the mid-90s. This is because it turned up on a compilation album or two at the time, and my mum bought a few of those. Got into a lot of dance music from there…
Can’t disagree with Des on Family Fortunes.
Yep, Clock covered it, also Tag Team were the first thing that came up on Google.
Anybody know anything about the new Endemol show thats being developed for BBC ONE?
Here is the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/shows/beonashow/saturday_night
Is it a brand new format or is an imported Endemol format.
Christ, that sounds like the genuinely terrible Don’t Scare the HARE.
Thanks for the Info, the beeb are getting desperate for early evening formats. They’re currently being forced to use walk on the wild side repeats!
According to the Radio Times website – Saturday 11th December at between Strictly and Casualty they are putting out one of the Celeb editions of Total Wipeout.
Then I saw it will be up against the first part of the X Factor final.
Suppose it was either that or run Test Card F for a hour.
That Celeb Total Wipeout is a repeat. The Beeb are giving up on both X factor final nights. On the Sunday it faces repeat episodes of Antiques Roadshow and George Gently.
Last night A Question of Spoet got 3.5m(21%) viewers in its new slot. Pretty decent performance imo.
Meanwhile, Peter Davey off of The Mole is working with Penn and Teller on a Jonathan Ross fronted magic-based format:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/a290331/jonathan-ross-to-host-itv-magic-show.html
I don’t think there’s any need to review this, it’s already brilliant.
Is it not just a 9O miunute Christmas one off rather than a series? It was announced as an one off at least.
Very possibly.
Incidentally, if you’re planning on on watching A Question of Sport on iPlayer… don’t count on it, it’s one of the few shows that you can’t watch on it for (presumably) rights reasons. Or at least that was the case up through last series.
There’s no real reason for this to be late night really.
I’m off to buy some sandpaper after watching 5 minutes of the new Question of Sport. How distracting is that background?
The sandpaper’s to deglaze my eyeballs, I should have said.
ITV confirms the Millionaire live special but it also mentions the home viewer can win 50% of the money the celebrities win.
http://www.itv.com/presscentre/wwtbam/week51/default.html
This idea isn’t new, Aussie Millionaire did this all the time when they had their 3 hour (yes, 3) live shows but the home viewer didn’t have to answer any questions.
In very minor news, ITV have taken down the old Biggest Loser site so does this indicate a January launch for the new series? Come to think of it, is anyone bothering with season 9 and 10 of TBL US? Perhaps the 1h20m + ads timeslots are too much of a commitment for the newly content-rich Sky/Living channels.