Well there’s not much on this week, so I’m first going to remind you that it’s the first event of The Bother Series of Poker 2011 this evening with another picture of some of the ‘great’ prizes on offer to the overall winners:
The fun starts at eight, although I think you’re allowed ten minutes of late registration should you forget then have a sudden realisation you should be somewhere at that time.
In other news:
- Perfection – Nick Knowles pops-up with the first episodes of troubled BBC2 true or false quiz. A Show Discussion box for this will be avaliable tomorrow. (4:30pm, Monday-Friday, BBC2)
- Only Connect – It’s the Crossworders vs Alex Guttenplan off of University Challenge +2. I saw Guttenplan walking through a college once. FACT. (8:30pm, Monday, BBC4)
- Total Winter Wipeout – I’m just going to merge the two shows here for now. Winter Wipeout is on Thursday on ABC in the US, Total Wipeout is on Saturday at 6pm on BBC1.
- Poll of 2010 – look out for the results for this sometime this week. Look out especially for the special statistic on how well “2010 was a really bad year” would have done if all the protest votes counted as one.
Also in the States, American Idol begins a Cowell-less run on Wednesday and Thursday and Fox are also holding back on ratings missile Million Dollar Money Drop as no new episode airs this week as it’s the President’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. Apparently. Edit: No I’m wrong about that, there’s an episode Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Endemol Joe has news of a new pilot being filmed:
Hello Bothers Bar readers. Please start applying for Endemol’s new ITV gameshow which is set to be a smash hit: http://www.itv.com/beontv/newgameshowpilot/default.html
It is similar to The Chase but better.
Anyone over the age of 18 and any gender will be eligible to enter.
So there we are. It also sounds like it’s only going to have six questions an episode which I can’t help but feel misses some of the attraction (or, HEH, the thrill) of The Chase. It’d be interesting to know which bit of Endemol is making this, I’d be much happier trusting the old Endemol West guys to make an entertaining show compared to the old Brighter Pictures lot.
Hello Bothers Bar readers. Please start applying for Endemol’s new ITV gameshow which is set to be a smash hit: http://www.itv.com/beontv/newgameshowpilot/default.html
It is similar to The Chase but better.
Anyone over the age of 18 and any gender will be eligible to enter.
No more spamming with this, please. I will give it an addenum to a main entry in a bit.
Okay, sorry.
Apply for what? To be on the full commissioned series, or as ITV.Com say just to be the crash test dummies of the pilot?
Interesting concept – but asking only a small number of questions per show, and the ‘tempt and tease’ element dragged out for the full hour of the 5-6pm slot could end up on air feeling like a lifetime every evening.
That’s why The Chase is very watchable. It’s fast paced, plenty of questions asked quickly (judging by the number of overdub pick-ups Brad has to do, that litter the soundtrack of the final edit) and the pantomime villain banter between The Chaser and the hapless contestent is kept to a mimimum.
I don’t like saying this, but I’m impressed; this is conceptually rather clever. There probably aren’t that many different interesting ways to cheat (I dunno, but I’ve thought of a good half-dozen cute ones easily – so, at a guess, a team of writers might come up with fifty or a hundred before you have to start repeating gags) but I reckon you could get two or three short but memorable series out of this – and it has the feel of the sort of one-hit wonder that could be replicated once in each of a hundred counties around the world that buy TV formats.
I hope it ends up being played for laughs and relatively low stakes, with some truly outrageous malpractice on the part of the cheating host, though it’s all at a level where nobody really gets hurt – but I fear it’ll end up being played for life-changing money purely to get big reactions from people who are cheated out of winning, which is somehow not the right sort of fun.
The best part is that now the premise is out in the open, there’s nothing to stop an enterprising but talented and resourceful amateur or semi-pro (Dan, Tom…) from making their own show based on the same premise and rush this show out non-televisually before the real thing actually gets broadcast – and the amateur version could well even prove to be better than the real thing. I might call the resulting show, and the cheating host, The Spoiler.
Oh.
Do you know more about this than the rest of us, CMD? That ITV page is giving very little away the way I’m reading it…
No; I was using my imagination and extrapolating somewhat based on the stated simple principle of “the host doesn’t want to give the money away”. (Sorry if this wasn’t clear from my comment.) You can extend this principle to the bare bones of a format already; for instance, I imagine that there is only a prize for answering all six questions, and every failed team adds to the rolling jackpot. The reason why the host doesn’t want the team to win is that the host wins (or, at least, “wins”) whatever’s in the jackpot at the end of the series – so, ideally, he wants nobody to win at all, and he wants lots of teams to fail quickly so that the jackpot goes up more quickly.
I don’t agree with Brig that there necessarily will only be six questions per show, but this is more out of hope and a sense of “well, at least that’s the way I‘d do it” than anything else. I’d say try to get through at a quicker pace, to try to get more jokes and tricks in, and let games straddle if need be. (It would very much appeal to me if the host’s last dirty trick was to pad the last game out very, very slowly, so that no matter how good the team was they didn’t have enough time to answer question six and win, simply because time ran out.)
Sadly, I fear I’m building up the show, and its potential, so much in my own mind that the reality – should ever it get past the pilot stage – can only ever disappoint in comparison, but you never know.
Yes, I get the feeling you’ve built this up in your head and you’re going to be a bit disappointed by the end result!
If there’s anyone else out there who sees the potential in the concept and would be serious about trying to bring one particular possible interpretation of it to fruition, as a money-losing venture for the usual YouTube video game show s’n’g (*) then I’m prepared to commit to quite a bit of writing, brainstorming and contributing to organisation towards making it happen.
(*) Not “sit’n’go” in this context but something rather fruitier. Translate, perhaps, as “funsies”.
Second Preliminary QF on Uni Chal: York v Peterhouse Cambridge.
* York – the only 1960s university taking part this year, remember – cruised past debutants the Royal College of Music on 2 August.
* However, they didn’t make it easy for themselves against a rather out-of-sorts Exeter on 15 November. Their winning score was 195-140, but they had led 175-65 before Tim Abbott got four starters in a row to make it a tense finish. They didn’t have the greatest time with the bonuses either, only 15/33.
* Captain Andrew Clemo has been the best buzzer thus far, with 13 starters.
+ Peterhouse, meanwhile, themselves beat Exeter on 26 July.
+ But against the other team to emerge from the repechage, St John’s, in a Cambridge derby on 22 November, you have to say they very nearly blew it. They looked to be running away with it when they led 180-40 after the music round – but then back, back, back came St John’s. Only the final starter, correctly answered by Ben Slingo, secured the win, 215-205.
+ Slingo has answered 17 starters thus far, eight against Exeter and nine against St John’s; only the aforementioned Tim Abbott has more (20).
It’s not beyond possibility that the outcome of this match could depend on what that incredible Cambridge derby has done to Peterhouse. If it’s made them stronger, they could well run riot, but if it’s rattled them then York could sense a surprise win.
Whoever does win will take on Oxford Brookes on 7 February for a place in the semis, while the losers will battle it out with Christ’s Cambridge the following week to stay in the competition.
And a glance at Sean Blanchflower’s page shows that, as might have been expected, the draw for the Preliminary QFs this year is in second-round broadcast order – which, along with the repechage winners not meeting each other, hasn’t happened since 2001/2. This means that next week will see Sheffield v Magdalen Oxford – and it’s a shame that these two sides should meet so soon.
From the RT:
University Challenge Special
Finally it’s here: the super-heavyweight OC/UC crossover smackdown. The urbane and frighteningly resourceful Only Connect champions of champions, the Crossworders, return. Why do they look so nervous? Opposite them are legendary 2010 University Challenge winners Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Their leader: Alex Guttenplan! Guttenplan is a monster but he’s a long way from home here, saying “Next!” when he should buzz, and staring in panic at the connecting wall. Meanwhile the Crossworders carefully jab and move, chalking up points and hoping Guttenplan doesn’t adapt quickly enough… Host Victoria Coren is openly unable to contain her excitement, while the question-setters rise to the occasion superbly, with some cute pop-culture curveballs and several questions so fiendish, they’re almost sarcastic. When both teams struggled to complete the sequence “0.142857… 0.285714..? … ?” I giggled out loud, lost in quiz heaven.
Radio Times reviewer – Jack Seale
(I’m struggling to see the “pop-culture curveballs” meself but I think this is a strong episode, UC or no.)
If I was in charge of RT, I’d be seriously tempted to cut Mr Seale’s pay for giving more away there than I think he should…
I can honestly say that the final category in the Missing Vowels round this week was one of my favourites ever! Very clever idea and truly in the spirit of the show – well done, David!
Thanks, I was rather pleased with that one. There was some nervousness beforehand about whether it was too complicated but it seemed to fly ok.
If I might ask, what was the category/questions?
Complete the Analogy: White is to Black as…
Without doin a Radio Tines and giving too much away (hopefully!) what made it so good was that there were 4 different ways that they used the link – it wasn’t just four opposites.
I am looking forward to the UC rematch if it happens, my money is on the crossworders dominating
Am I the only one waiting for The Crossworders vs The Eggheads?
David, what’s the reason the Crossworders didn’t play the Epicureans?
Merely because there weren’t enough shows in our allocation of 4 specials. We used 2 for charity, and one for the UC match, so we could only do Champs-of-Champs with the remaining show.
Will we be silly enough to do Champs-of-Champs-of-Champs? You have a long wait till next Autumn to find out.
Do you know when the… ah, Wikipedia suggests (and I don’t know enough about the user who submitted the edit to say whether this is accurate or not, but if they’re reading then do please identify yourself) that the other charity special is for Comic Relief and thus might be expected in mid-March or thereabouts. VC at least partly hosting in a red nose is possible, though I don’t know if the design for the 2011 nose has yet been finalised; incorporating ver Relief’s gunge tradition seems less plausible. (It might even be the case that this other charity episode has not yet been filmed, though I can’t imagine them going to the expense of setting recording up for a single episode.)
Will this be BBC 4’s first contribution to / crossover with Comic Relief, I idly wonder?
Never should Total Wipeout and Winter Wipeout be mentioned in the same breath! Even at it’s worst, Wipeout USA will never be as poor as the BBC’s butchering of the format.