Like many people, today was the first day back at work after the holiday. Boo. So let’s play a fun game to liven it up a bit. It is:
Guess What Country This Title Sequence Comes From, Having Turned Down the Sound and Ignoring All The Writing!
I’ll give you a clue for this one. it’s Italian. But it’d have been a brill game if it didn’t have RAI in big letters in the corner:
Did you get it right?
ooh Luna Park! Incidentally, I tried watching the end game (the one where one of them’s in a rocket moving along a track for some reason), but I have no idea what’s going on.
I liked watching Luna Park back when my cable had Rai Uno on it (as I recall Fridays were Luna Park followed by Fort Boyard on TV5 = WIN). It was actually on 5/6 days a week with a different host each night, and the rocket to the moon was played on the last day by the best couple to win the jackpot that had accumulated. Simple game – host reads out a list of 25 surnames of famous people, you give the first names. A wrong answer or a pass stops the game, and the contestant must start from the top of the list again. If they can get through all 25 in the time alloted, they win.
Not a brilliant game really, if you stuff up when there’s less than 40 seconds or so left you have no chance of winning, but visually quite pretty.
It’s a concept they used a couple more times, I remember seeing it on a quiz with a werewolf theme, and likewise the gypsy game on Luna Park became so popular it actually got its own spin off show.
This clip comes from the “Summer at Luna Park” spin off.
Pippo Baudo (the host of the final episode of the week) liked a lot the “mess up and start over” gimmick, and tried to sneak it in every gameshow he hosted.
an earlier variation was “celebrity/job” like “David Beckham/footballer, Bruce Forsyth/host…” and so on.
the other show you named (“In Bocca al Lupo”) was a bit more creative and used many variations like “animal/class”, “country/currency”, “city/region”, or the dreadful “present/simple past”
Yeah, didn’t they change the category every five items as I recall?
correct, a category was made of 5 items, and one category was added every round.
Did anyone see the Bob Monkhouse doc that was on last night? Intersting stuff- especially the Golden Shot material…
It was brilliant – but let me tell you what the programme actually needed is a companion programme showing all the tv related stuff that Bob had the various television companies knock off onto a E180 for him after recording. He got most of them to give him the rushes where possible of the recording.
(I should know – I was at the BAFTA tribute to him featured at the end of the doc)
There’s brilliant piece of footage from an afternoon rehersal of Bob’s Full House, where the prize carousel revolves around, to reveal Bob and a female production assistant, both looking shocked and slightly desheveled, and Bob then walks up to the MC podium to carry on with the rehearsal whilst pretending to do up his fly. The hoots from the crew were priceless.
Incidentally, I spent most of the show wondering what Joe Pascquale was doing on that show – as he appeared to be that random person how had no real relevance to the person being celebrated…
..until he told the alien story. Never heard that before, and happy to give Joe his place on the show.
Cheers, I do intend on watching this.
The Bob’s Full House clip I mentioned is not in the doc, Brig. I’ll try and find the link out. Hopefully it’s still knocking around the internet somewhere.
If I find it, I’ll post the link in this thread.
http://www.kaleidoscope.org.uk/
Click on Kaleidoscope Archives, then find the Bob’s Full House event from October 2009. There are 2 montages of clips – the Bob’s Full House rehearsal is the last clip in the first embedded set of clips.
I was hoping this show would get picked up in the US, and it has…
14 contestants who are in financial crisis will have a chance at winning big on VH1’s new reality show “Ton of Cash.” Unlike any other competition reality series, the contestants receive their cash prize up front – literally, one ton of cash. The only catch is, if they want to keep it, the contestants will need to haul it from Los Angeles to Las Vegas over some of the most rugged and tortuous terrain on earth. Tensions run high at every checkpoint where there is always a possibility of losing cash if the team does not work together. With time and dynamic personalities working against the team, each contestant will need to go through a battle of wits and determination to prove he or she deserves to win the one million dollar prize. “Ton of Cash” shows you must be careful what you wish for and, if granted, you must be willing to carry its burden.
TheFutonCritic.com http://thefutoncritic.com/news/2011/01/04/its-spring-fever-on-vh1-with-six-new-series-set-to-premiere-in-march-and-april-2011-519415/20110104vh102/#ixzz1A6Oq8fEd
How well is it going to do Endemol Joe? I wasn’t massively impressed by the pitch film, although I have the feeling it’s the sort of thing I should like.
Bank Holiday ratings!
Deal or No Deal: 2.5m (13.0%)
The Chase: 2.4m (12.3%)
Eggheads: 2.4m (10.0%)
Also Millionaire Live registered a final rating of…
14th Place – 6.67 million
Although it was 14th place it was actually the fourth most watched ITV show in week ending 26th Dec. Only Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Benidorm bettered that.
Best rating for the show since 4th March 2006. Best rating for a Christmas special since 24th December 2004.
Wouldn’t surprise me if that convinces the monkeys to commission another live ep at some point in the future… although whether or not this will be less shambolic is another question.
Go for it I say, it had quite a warm end-of-term feeling about it which I enjoyed.
What I would suggest though is that in couples editions, double the clock or ditch it all together. It seemed quite clear that one player was carrying the other when decisions had to be reached very quickly.
Well if they do go for it, then assuming they use celeb couples again, I would recommend keeping each one a secret until they actually get to play.
In turn, that means that any couple that is booked but doesn’t get to play will remain a mystery.
If this is done right, then the public won’t know how many couples in all have been booked – so there’s less chance of them complaining.
Also, do the celebs really need to drink something alcoholic while waiting to play?
Interesting piece of music there. It is in Italian, but it reminds me of Brazilian sambas I have in my own record collection–discs that date back to the 1940’s. Curious. . .
Why are all gameshows making horribly ugly design decisions lately? First DoND’s terrible new opening and The Chase’s horrible new font for money values. Both just look out of place. The Chase is still absolutely brilliant though.
As for 65m DoND, it drags quite frankly. Monday’s twists were good, but I have severe doubts as to whether they can maintain that kind of thing every single day, and if they try it’ll quickly get old.
I was wondering about the Chase too. Part of me wonders whether that might be because one of the show computers didn’t have the right font, and no-one particularly cared or noticed. That said, I did find the old one slightly hard to read – particularly on the contestant desk – but it wouldn’t have been beyond the wit of man to widen it slightly.
I rather like the new DoND titles. The execution is a lot stronger than the old effort, although it does look a bit weird when the telephone cord looks like its strangling the gambling pensioners. The 65m run time seems a bit desperate – as it always does during recession time when companies are looking to sweat their assets – but I suppose people will get used to it as they have done with 45m Countdown and the previous DoND runtime extension.
Also the font for the stepcount on the large background screen during the final chase is slightly different too. Although it’s less noticeable.