There’s really not that much to get excited about this coming week:
- BotherSOP Game 4 – only eight games to go after this, so about 24 mentions. It’s the first double stack double money double points game, so lots of chips and emphasis on skill. Ahem. If you’ve never joined us before with so much money floating around, now would be a good time. The game discussion page is here. (Tonight 8pm Full Tilt)
- The Amazing Race – don’t know why I’m billing this really, I’m not watching it.
- Holding Out for a Hero pilot – I should be at this on Tuesday. I largely predict the format will be pretty standard, but that’s not the point because it’s all about the philanthropy porn money shots, baby. With Gethin Jones. (Tuesday).
- Survivor – There’s a lot going for this season and yet I’m not really feeling it. I hope the Redemption Arena will be worth the wait. (Thursday, CBS)
- Accumulate – Look out cash-in coffee drink “the Accumulatte” coming out this Christmas. I’m actually a few weeks behind on this. Christ, I’m rubbish at the moment. (Friday, RU:ON)
Meanwhile here is Challenge TV’s new website. Underwhelming.
I have also done a thing (and therefore won some points), so that discussion posts for new shows are less easily lost, I’ve added a little category board on the left, look.
So is TAR Sunday (as in today)? I didn’t finish the last season but I’m going to give this season a shot.
You might want to reconsider TAR- the first episode was better than most- a task at the start line with a twist, an unexpected plane problem, a very good Roadblock (best one in a while IMO), and a To Be Continued episode- it’s an uberleg to start the series..
and cool that Odd One In got picked up for a 2nd series- I thought it was a pretty nice little show..
OK, I will wait a couple of weeks then watch it in a marathon I think.
I had no real problems with Odd One In.
I thought Odd One In suited the 10:30 weeknight slot much better than that Saturday primetime slot.
Certainly think you picked the wrong show out of TAR and Survivor to ditch. Survivor has been a damp squid, where as TAR has been extremely entertaining. The chosen teams all bring something to the show and it is a good mix of race types and styles. 2 great episodes and 1 shock elimination only 2 episodes in it looks like it could be a cracker of a series.
The preview for next weeks show has been edited to look like Cara knocks somebody down when driving in Japan.
Will be interesting to see if that is the case and what comes of it.
Just reading on Twitter than two years of work has gone into Holding Out For a Hero.
Don’t get me wrong I want it to be good but that is the sort of thing to get my alarm bells ringing. I will be quite disappointed if it doesn’t bring anything new to the table.
Quite a large portion of the two years was waiting for ITV to decide whether they wanted to do it.
So in other words don’t get your hopes up too much. In fact limit your expectations to zero and then you’ll be delightfully surprised.
You can rest assured I don’t go into these things hoping to slag them off – what’s the point of that? It only costs me time and money. I want to back the next big thing before it becomes the next big thing.
The problem is there tends to be form in shows that take a long time to come to screen. You have, however, answered a burning question regarding this and Dick de Rijk’s latest show so it is good news all round.
“The problem is there tends to be form in shows that take a long time to come to screen.”
Mmmm, I’d not really agree with you there. Millionaire famously took three years to develop and two circuits around all the channels before someone picked it up. Even OC was bandied around between BBC2 and BBC4 for years (and it was originally a sports quiz).
It’s not unusual for a format to take 18-24 months from initial idea to screen. What I would say is that formats that are in development for a long time have a tendency to be either very good or very bad, depending on what the producers have been doing with the extra time.
Yes I take your point, although I struggle to think of primetime ITV shows since Millionaire where you hear it’s taken 18 months to develop and you don’t end up thinking “…and *that’s* the end result?” somewhat incredulously.
Even after half a decade, The Big Call (2005) is the over-developed ITV show springing most directly to mind. It went through about twenty million different incarnations, presumably so that they could excise anything that might possibly make the programme worth watching.
On the other hand, Dancing on Ice felt like it had been in development hell since the last ice age, and that’s not done too badly for itself. Horses for courses, really.
The devisor wrote to UKGameshows once and when I pointed out that it would take about 190 shows before you’d get a jackpot winner, he said something like “Well, hopefully it’ll happen at some point during the run”. There’s the definition of optimism.
If you want to back the next big thing before it becomes a big thing, I suggest looking at ‘The Voice of Britain’ which has reportedly been picked up by a major British broadcaster.
Nah, I’ve already decided I don’t think The Voice will play well here. I will be happy to look stupid if I’m wrong.
I don’t know how willing I’d be to back it, seeing how you yourself didn’t care to back it with 250 quid. 😉
Hasn’t this site been accumulating discussion of the great unsung hit since about 2009?
If Push the Button gets shifted into a different timeslot, the “Flop” tag is hovering over it. “Revamp + low and decreasing ratings + rescheduling” would seal the deal.
But if it rallies after Let’s Dance finishes, it becomes just “not a hit”, presumably. It has got two series, to its credit.
So did Codex.
Which was, I think it fair to say, ‘not a hit’, but not really a flop.
At least, they will have not lost everything, since the show has been comissioned for a French version soon, vith Vincent Lagaf’ hosting it.
Also, may be of your interest : this year’s latest Sasuke (aka Ninja Warrior) http://d-addicts.com/forum/torrents.php?type=info_hash&search=cf5b85929e88ddbeadb8bb9663ce230777414c90
If you’re still taking nominations for “Most Annoying Catchphrase”, can I suggest “the envelope goes from your hands, to my hands and into the bin, via the announcement that X will not be your secret fortune. tonight.”?
I know Knowles is quite popular with a lot of people around here, but I really can’t find anything interesting or fun about him whatsoever! Apart from the occasional amusing one-liner, all he ever seems to do is read out scripted rule books!
Knowles frustrates me. The idea that he is hosting a show fills me with a great sense of ennui, and yet whenever I watch one of his shows I tend to think he’s fairly decent really.
He never gets much beyond ‘fairly decent’ though, does he? I completely agree with you about him not making a bad job of anything, but imagine if, say, Alexander Armstrong were hosting Perfection. Or if, dare I say it, Dale Winton were hosting Secret Fortune? I’m no great fan of Dale, but I think he’s capable of making weak formats very watchable.
I’ve always been a fan of Nick Knowles. He is one of the few ‘blank canvas’ tv presenters around. Give him a format, and a script and he will do a good job for you. DIY, Travel shows, Nature photography series, One Show presenting, Quiz Shows, Game Show cheque binning ect.
Another thing he is good at (and you need to be in the audience for one of his shows) is during a break in recording, he’s not one for being sprinted off the set (Thinking of Jasper Carrott and Chris Tarrant here) by one of the AFM’s and into the dressing room leaving the warm-up to do all the legwork.
He will talk to contestants letting them know why recording has ground to a halt and if the break lasts a bit longer than usual he’ll ask for questions from the audience, and come off stage and answer them (during Perfection last September he answered one of mine and probably gave more away about the mysterys of contract talks for presenting a show than he should have).
He does also seem the sort of chap, who if you’ve just been on one of his shows and saw you at the bus stop, would offer you a lift to the nearest train station.
Dependable without being dynamic…
Can’t say i am a fan of Nick Knowles but i do not dislike him. For me entertainingly bland can work a lot of the time, shame he is just bland.
He grates on me far less than he used to – maybe because he used to come across as a pillock on shows like DIY SOS.
But now…he’s the very definition of ‘a safe pair of hands’.
Joe, can you find whoever approved the new Deal theme and kick them in the nuts for me please?
I’ve just heard this, how long has it been used for? It’s like a remix tharpt doesn’t really add much.
Is this the one?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVcQt3LX9cE
It sounds like someone’s sat on a trumpet and Bontempi organ.
It sounds a bit like it’s been done in the A Prendre ou a Laisser stylee. I don’t find it overly convincing on first listen.
It’s like they tried to layer too many audio tracks on top of each other. It sounded fine before. The old APoaL theme (from what I remember of it) seemed to be about par with the old theme (although it also had a voiceover, didn’t it?).
As for the visuals… nauseating. And that’s not an insult, I genuinely feel a bit queasy after watching that.
I have no problem with the reworked titles, I only see them once per show after all. The farting trumpet though I hear coming in and out of every break and its just a horrific noise.
I’m not a fan of DoND in general and I’m particularly not a fan of partisans coming here with an agenda (though partisans coming here to discuss on level terms are always welcome), but I can definitely see what they’re doing with that opening sequence, and think it works well in context – probably better than the old one.
Compare it to the last Richard-and-Carol Countdown titles, which gave you very gentle, very unsubtle visual clues to laugh and smile along with our hosts while the games were in process; here, you are similarly invited to empathise with some of the more animated contestants as they play along, and the images are upbeat even when the game conclusions often are not. The red-and-blue background is a clear visual motif used in the show, even if the way it has been used here borders on the psychedelic.
The most interesting thing about the opening sequence is what – or, perhaps, who – isn’t featured in it.
Should’ve just used the Tim Halbert remix.
The title sequence graphics are broadly considered a success. It’s the relatively new music – which I think is even newer than these ‘new’ titles – that’s the talking point.
Yes – new titles at new year, new music just last week apparently.
Why are they tinkering with the theme when there’s still five and a half years of making up to do with the rest of the music package?
Meanwhile, Paddy McGuiness and Sky Sport’s Charlotte Jackson are hosting the second series of 71 Degrees North, according to The Sun.
Bit of a shock, thought it did not rate that well? Would much rather see Drop Zone return but that is even more unlikely.
I know I have to wait until tomorrow, but I am in agony waiting for your write up of tonight’s pilot Brig. You’ll notice while you were there I purposely didn’t stalk you to stay on your good side…
Ha ha, I was trying to work out who you were. I think I spotted your husband…
I guess that at least the first half of the webcast of Comic Relief’s 24 Hour Panel People comes into the week in question, with the second half of the webcast being on next week’s excite-o-board.
That said, is it actually going to be worth watching as a webcast? The schedule looks a bit light for a 24-hour broadcast, but I suppose there’ll be a good chunk of behind-the-scenes-ery in between the “shows”. Not sure whether the webcast will be worth watching as opposed to the edited versions; anything unscripted and funny and family-friendly will surely make it to THREE, whereas the after-the-watershed part of Comic Relief itself has a good chance of broadcasting any sweary 4am bloopers.
From that link “Just A Minute – Radio 4’s classic show makes its on screen debut” – challenge for deviation from the truth.
No, I’m afraid that while it is a deviation from the truth, the subject IS “Deviation from the Truth.” So an incorrect challenge, and another point to you BBC!