It’s the big day tomorrow, and what better way to celebrate than a burst of Love At First Sight with Bruno Brookes? Three girls, three guys, they answer questions then secretly decide which one of the opposite sex they fancy. If they both pick each other they get to go out on a lovely date then come back on a later show to try and win some fabulous prizes and even a holiday by answering Mr and Mrs style questions then shooting at the big prize board. Try and avoid that broken heart! Responsible for two marraiges if the UKGS.C entry is anything to go by, which isn’t a bad batting average for this sort of thing really, even if neither contestant was actually on the same show. Anyway, fun show, here’s a clip:
Good theme. You’ll note Zoe Ball is listed as a researcher. It was the Soviet Union’s most popular show at one point, if you believe Stephen Leahy, and I know it also at least sold to Spain.
Edit: Incidentally Channel 4 piloting a show called Reflex which appears to be The Cube But Not In The Cube By The People Who Made The Cube. Our discussion of it starts here.
A small reminder that anybody who can access German TV can see The Cube – Defeat the Dice! airing their two hour pilot episode tomorrow night (Friday) at 8.15pm on RTL.
or if you prefer, you can watch the best of The Perfect Minute over on Sat 1 at the same time (actually it’s a 7.15pm start but still overlap by one hour). Only in Germany you can have The Cube and Minute to Win It airing head to head.
Oh yeah, Die Perfekte Minute goes to 2 hours in Germany, doesn’t it?
Oh wow, Endemol Press tweeting a report from The Sun suggesting Dermot O Leary’s in line to host The Marriage Ref.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/x_factor/3551363/X-Factor-host-in-250k-deal-to-front-marriage-disputes-programme.html
“Cult” basically means “not very popular really”, doesn’t it?
I’m a bit surprised Dermot says he’d never do a gameshow, 1 vs 100 says hi.
I’m more worried about this quote:
“It’s a great show and the kind of thing I want to present because it’s not your usual show”
Dermot’s built his career around hosting “usual shows” and he’s very good at it. If he now thinks he’s the UK’s answer to Jerry Seinfeld, he’s going to be sorely disappointed.
It is possibly interesting and important to remember that after a brilliant start the show basically bombed in the US. I’m intrigued to see what they do to adapt it for a UK ITV audience – having a rather straight-laced host seems to be one of them.
The Marriage Ref is a fantastic format which has been acquired in over 100 territories. There is a lot of buzz around the show and has performed well in the US and many other countries. Over 12 million viewers watched the premiere on NBC! The talent involved with the UK version is very strong: Jo Brand who was initially pinpointed to be the host will be a regular guest (not every week but most weeks) and Dermot O’Leary is the nation’s favourite non-duo presenter. The show works well.
Right, any more spinning (the show bombed, end of) and you’re banned, I have decided. It would be fine if it was funny, but it’s just growing tiresome.
Surely we can withstand a bit of spinning on here as long as we don’t have to pull our punches either.
Christ but how much? I could accept it if people just hold their hand up and admit they were wrong, like I am doing with The Voice, but it is not in Endemol’s style. I don’t want the ratings to make up 80% of the comment content and I’m getting bored of holding certain people to account.
You can have fantastic talent or fantastic formats, but they only work if you have both (hello Push the Button and Wanted!)
I wouldn’t say huggable Dermot O’Leary is the nations favourite non-duo presenter. For starters, my parents hate the sight of him.
They should’ve taken someone with a sarcastic/comedy approach or paid Jerry Springer.
I’m also tired with the constant spin from the Endemol Spin Doctor. Same applies with the constant attacking on non-Endemol shows. At least some TV company folk on here have declared that certain shows have been bad and took it face value. Still at least we’re not like many posters on Digital Spy who would rip apart certain people for posting pointless things.
Sorry. Sorry. I keep saying to myself I’ll take a break from here. Now I’m on my final warning, I will definitely take a breather. (I do genuinely think it’s a great show but I respect Brig’s views on the way I comment). Adios.
…Glad I’m not the only one who thinks he’s huggable.
Wouldn’t say he’s a favourite presenter of mine (Though in the right context – He does live magazine shows very well – He seems ideal), but… Huggable, yeah.
Meanwhile, Objective Productions working on a pilot for Channel 4 called Reflex, where people take part in physical and mental challenges where winning and losing could come down to 1/1,000th of a second. Cameras will track things at 2,000 frames a second – having seen things like that before, it could look very very cool if the games have been designed well.
Needless to say, if anyone sees an audience call for this then be sure to let me know.
Interesting – I had the same idea on the backburner for a long time, although without the use of slo-mo. It should ensure plenty of good moments because if the game timings are ultra short, there’s always going to be a close finish.
I wonder if C4 regrets passing on The Cube?
It cost way too much for the Sunday teatime spot it was planned for, according to the Broadcast article, here incidently:
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/commissioning/objective-to-pilot-new-gameshow-for-c4/5026702.article
(If you can’t read it, try looking for Channel 4 and Objective on Google News. amazing really.)
I’ve no idea why the Cube costs so much. Even allowing for inflation, I think an episode is costing the same amount as The Crystal Maze! And they only have some red balls and bits of perspex to build!
I still think that, for any show that gets 4+ series, you don’t want to handing it over to your commercial rival, expensive or no.
How much does an ‘average episode’ of a quiz show cost these days? What’s an expensive show and what’s a cheap show? I have no idea of the numbers.
I think I read a while back that the average hour of telly costs £100k.
Depends if you’re talking about a peak time show or day time. It varies a lot: Million Pound Drop costs just £100-150k an hour but other game shows like The Whole 19 Yards cost over £500k.
A standard quiz show like In It To Win It, Secret Fortune, Who Dares Wins costs no more than £200k.
The Cube’s costs have gone down as they’ve made more and more episodes. The first season cost £400k an episode, by season 2 it was down to £300k and the third season is a little lower. The more episodes you make with the same set, the less a show costs over the long term.
I imagine Accumulate!’s budget is way under the mean, if that’s why you’re asking…
I think our £5.46 per hour is a little below budget, yes!
BBC commissioning have tariff ranges for the sorts of money they would pay independents for shows.
Daytime and low-cost drama is £50k/hr to £500k/hr, high-end drama is £500k/hr-£900k/hr and upwards. Network-wide scripted comedy is £110k/hr-£600k/hr, with rather less available if it’s intended for only a region or a nation.
More relevantly, daytime quizzes are budgeted at £20k/hr-£30k/hr, most network-wide games at £30k/hr-£110k/hr (or half for non-network-wide ones), Saturday night entertainment is in the £200k/hr-£300k/hr range. CBBC entertainment has a £60k/hr-£160k/hr range.
Joe’s estimates definitely look entirely plausible. And yet the likes of Only Connect show what is capable on even a BBC FOUR budget with the right writing and the right people!
Ooh, the Commissioning website has had a makeover – shiny, shiny!
The killer there being “per hour” which is why you see so many shows going to 45 minutes these days.
The other sad figure, I think, is “Saturday night entertainment is in the £200k/hr-£300k/hr” – i.e. about half what ITV are shelling out at the moment. This is why shows like Guesstimation were hamstrung from the start because they didn’t have enough budget to do the kind of You Bet!-scale stunts that kind of spectacle show needs.
All told, it’s a bit sad a BBC drama can have four times the budget of a BBC entertainment show. I think BBC LE has felt like the poor cousin for some years now. Hopefully Danny Cohen’s recent axing of Zen and its ilk is a step in the direction of readdressing the balance.
Good to know those figures. I couldn’t even put some of those figures in a ballpark! Interesting to see the different focusses between BBC and ITV.
Talking of The Cube itself. Whilst watching it on Sunday evening and my mind started to wander, these two questions came into my head..
1) Is it the same perspex box that was used for 19 Keys?
2) Is everything shot through the glass/perspex for the challenges, or are there post-challenge pick-ups with the contestant and a psc handheld camera in with them, for post production editing in?
1) I think it’s bigger, isn’t it? Interesting question, tho.
2) Not sure – I think they get enough clean shots to go without but there might be a few they do just to have “one for Lloyds”. On a similar topic, it’s interesting how little attention in the edit is paid to the continuity errors (especially when there’s thousands of balls involved), and also how little people seem to notice!
The cameras were all outside in the pilot, if that’s any indication.
I’m sure The box used on The Cube is not the same one used on 19 Keys. The Cube is much bigger and has two pairs of large doors. One for the contestant to enter/exit, the other for the crew to enter with the equipment. The box used on 19 Keys had a single door.
I must admit I’ve never spotted ‘the tradesmen entrance’ doors for The Cube.
I actually thought that the back wall of The Cube, may have been on quick release hoist wires, and that entire face of the box went up on a flywire into the grid so they had a open face to slide the game instruments in and out.
Gives me something to look for on Sunday..
I think I have a couple of problems with the idea:
1) If the timings are ultra-short, how do you build up the tension in a way that doesn’t feel too abstract? If every game on The Cube was a reaction test, with times revealed after the event I think it would have got quite boring quite quickly.
2) I love what super super slow mo cameras can do but to get the true wow factor from them it needs *things*. Short of setting the whole thing in a swimming pool, I struggle to think of reaction based challenges that will look excellent. Admittedly, I am not a creative, but if all we’re going to see is a man hitting a button very very slowly then it’s a waste.
It’s just the WarioWare principle, isn’t it? Keeping the games to lots of short time periods keeps the tension up.
Yes but there the relentlessness (and also the element of surprise) is part of the excitement. Can you see this working the same way? It’d be great if it did.
Things shattering in slow-motion are always great fun, balls deforming and so on.
Just randomly, I now have six bars of the theme tune to Love Me, Love Me Not running through my head. Request-me-do!
Ah, self-service.
Turns out there only were about six bars of it in the first place… 🙂
I had no idea there was a British version of LMLMN… are there full episodes anywhere? Was enthralled at the daisy chase in my youth on the Canadian version.
R.
Yeah, I discovered it whilst browsing through UKGS one night whilst bored and not bothering to work on coursework.
Also turns out Britain did the Nickelodeon game show Figure It Out about 15 years before they did (Super Secret Sliming Action et al)
Not to my knowledge, I’m afraid my only other recollection of it at the time was that the clock was represented by three rows of daisy symbols.