Well the world didn’t end. Might as well watch some telly:
- The Bother Series of Poker Game 10 – or come along and play some poker. (8pm, Sunday, Full Tilt) – Results here.
- Scream if You Know the Answer! – Rest assured I don’t believe this to be the greatest show in the universe but it’s fun and Summery and I think better than you’d expect from a digital channel, and therefore worth supporting. And I would totally want to be a contestant. Tonight’s match ups see Denise Van Outen vs Jason Gardner then an unlikely battle between Neil Morrisey and Edwina Currie. (7pm, Sunday, Watch)
- The Amazing Race Australia – This surprised me last week by basically being the show you wish they’d make in the US these days. Worth a punt. (Monday, Australia)
- Four Rooms – Well I say “excitement”, it’s a new show where people with things to sell take or refuse offers from four different dealers, knowing they can’t go back if they refuse an offer. (8pm, Tuesday, C4)
I was also going to list Impossible? here but it rated so badly it has been pulled from the schedules. Whilst I don’t think the show was by any means perfect, I thought it was well produced and deserving of more that it got. I think Escoffey might be a problem – he’s not initially as charming as Derren Brown (and charm is so important in this kind of thing), and indeed there is/was something of an irritating nerd being cool about him, a sort of Simon Amstell pre-good Popworld. But somewhere during episode two something clicked and I was quite enjoying his performance, the more of a devious bastard he became the more I enjoyed it. Therefore I hope the other four episodes get broadcast somewhere.
Edit: It’s also the BAFTAs tonight at 8pm on BBC1. Of interest: Come Dine With Me in the Features category and The Cube, have I Got News For You and The X Factor in Best Entertainment Programme.
Channel 5 will be devastated that Impossible flopped. It was their big new hope in the entertainment genre.
Based on what I saw for episode 1, it wasn’t engaging enough and was done on a low budget. It wasn’t bad but it didn’t have that spark that Derren Brown’s shows or Penn & Teller Fools Us had.
It’s been a good prediction run for me. I said it would flop, so now it’s 3/3 in the predictions stakes: The Voice, Sing If You Can, Impossible all going the way I said they would.
My prediction for summer: Lee Mack’s All Star Cast will be the biggest Saturday hit of the summer, Odd One In will be bigger than last year (it’s even wackier this series!), The Marriage Ref will not do as well as it deserves because it’s not your typical British show and won’t match the huge success of the American version. I love The Marriage Ref though but I fear it’ll be lost in translation. Those are my predictions for this summer.
I’m not so sure about The Marriage Ref. It’s one of those that could go either way really. Having Jo Brand fronting it might make it quite good, although at the same time it could go over the edge into Loose Women levels of “All men are [derogatory comment] *applause*”
But Jo Brand isn’t hosting it, Dermot O Leary is.
3/about 10, Joe.
I am also sure The Marriage Ref will match the huge success of the US show by not being picked up for a second series. Odd One In will do better than last year by dint of not rating very well last year. I like Lee Mack and hope it successful for him.
According to my scarcely sufficient research, the show has been picked up for a second season in the US.
Where did you hear that? That’s very interesting, Wikipedia says it was picked up, but I’m convinced I’ve read elsewhere it wasn’t/hasn’t, losing 5/7ths of its audience over the run, from over 14m to just 4m.
Edit: Yes, starting end of June apparently. I’ll have to shut up about that now. I suspect that says more about NBC than it does anything else.
but it is NBC. If it was either ABC, CBS or FOX then they would’ve axed it by now. As NBC have been in the shit for the last three years, they only got two shows that can get decent ratings. The Voice and America’s Got Talent. So they got no choice. Also I bet they recomissioned it under contract after the first show was a success.
We were just having this discussion on Twitter with some US TV people, it sounds like basically because NBC have a stake in the format (it’s distributed internationally through Endemol), they need it to be airing to help with international sales, the fact they’re putting it on over the Summer means they’re expecting not very much but at least it is visible.
It sounds like the same sort of thing like with WWTBAM? over here.
I thought you didn’t like Odd One Out, Joe.
Or was that someone else? I don’t do memory good.
Just because I think it’s going to be bigger than what it was last year (and wackier which I know for a fact), doesn’t mean I like the show! 😉 🙂
WRT 4Rooms, it seems that the dealers are honour bound to put what they consider to be a ‘fair’ offer on the table. This rule wasn’t enforced when a bust of Hitler was the object on offer.
While I like Who Dares Wins, and have no problem at all with every episode having one list on countries and one of the money lists being the films of a particular Hollywood star, I can’t help but ask – WHY are there so, so many man-lady pairings??!?!?!? 😯
The number of all-male and all-female twosomes since the beginning of the last series could be counted on the fingers of one hand…
Hello?!??! 😯
I don’t mean to sound like I’m looking for attention here, but I do think the question I asked there was a pretty good one…
‘Cause to me, this situation with so many man-lady pairings is a bit like the one on The Vault with all those female home callers – it feels somewhat too contrived to be random.
Literally no idea about WDW, but if the demographics of people who called into The Vault were anything like they were on Magic Numbers then I can well believe women were picked at random most of the time. I can’t remember the exact figures, but women outnumbered men by a staggering amount. People complained about that not being random, which it absolutely, categorically was.
The lovely people at Beyond Dispute said it was as well when I asked.
BUT IT’S NOT LIKE ANYONE FROM THE PRODUCTION WAS GOING TO PUBLICLY DECLARE IT A FIX EH? EH?
So the pairings for WDW are supposedly random? I was always under the impression that they were set up by the producers.
But I’m saying that it DOESN’T feel as though the pairings are random.
If they were, and equal numbers of male and female applicants were assumed, then the expected percentage of man-lady pairings would be 50%. (And, of course, the expected percentages of man-man and lady-lady pairings would be 25% each.)
But here, it feels like at least 80% of the pairings are man-lady…
I wouldn’t mind it if it was man-woman for every team, though. Why not? It means both sexes are equally represented, and stops the pairs getting too blokey or giggly.
One of the faults of WWTBAM, in my humble opinion, was failing to implement a mixed sex policy of – say – selecting five women and five men for the FFF Ring of Fire, thereby giving a decent chance of mixing the demographics of the ‘typical’ player up a bit.
Well, I don’t think it would be any fun at all if every pairing was man-lady…
And who’s to say that, in that case, there wouldn’t be the odd nutcase claiming that it was PC? 😉
The Cube has won the BAFTA for Best Entertainment Programme.
Errrmmmmmm, how?! X Factor and Have I Got News For You are much better.
X factor though has slowly been losing support – next year with the lack of judges could be a death knell for the show – that and Mr cowell isn’t really liked by the artists who vote
HIGNFY is quite old as well its not really standout good
You’re disappointed that Million Pound Drop didn’t make the shortlist.
Can anyone who was playing poker this evening remember some of the funny jokes that came up about this?
XXXXX: I can’t believe Million Pound Drop didn’t get nommed.
XXXXX: It was, but the nomination was sloppily written
Names protected for legal reasons
Ha! I laughed at that for hours.
HIGNFY jumped the shark when they started showing funny YouTube videos without any relevance to the question being discussed.
X Factor isn’t doing enough innovation, even though its standards are high.
The Cube is the best of those three IMO. Schofield is second to none when it comes to building tension, and not in an over the top (i.e. Davina) type of way. I thought the recent episode where he all but shed a tear was incredible. Also, as a game designer (albeit the virtual kind) I can understand that getting a show like that to run smoothly must be a massive undertaking. There are surely unforeseen incidents during filming but they are never apparent in the edit.
Whilst I don’t watch it every time it’s on, The Cube always grips me when I do.
How did The Cube win an award, asks Joe.
Well, it’s really very simple. All of the members of the BAFTA vote for up to six of their favourite shows in an online ballot. The entries receiving the most votes, and a last-ditch entry per broadcaster, are then considered further by a sub-committee of nine people, a different one for each award. They pick their top four shows for nominations, and their favourite amongst those wins the award. It’s simple majoritarian voting all the way through, which explains why Bosnia and Herzegovina sometimes wins.
But seriously, I assume HIGNFY was nominated on its election lack-of-results special, the only episode to have been funny at the time. I think we’ll look back on The X Factor 2009 and see a show at its peak. Graham Norton’s time will come, he won the Entertainment Performance award. Which leaves The Cube, a programme that looks stunning, has light and shade, and the rock-solid Phillip Schofield.
I mentioned that Channel 4 was entitled to add a show to the shortlist. Would The Million Pound Drop have been more likely to win than The Alternative Election Night? That edition of Big Brother where Andrew was in 24? A random episode of Come Dine With Me? Iron Chef UK?
Unless Channel 4 pulled the same stunt this year, like they did last year and forgot to nominate any programmes in best entertainment category (ref: Chris Moyles Quiz Night)
Hats off to The Cube. Good to see a gameshow win a Bafta for once.
I think those that voted for it saw the show for what it was, and the tension comes from the viewer willing the contestant to win for the benefit of themselves. Unlike X-Factor where the show is compeletly constructed in the edit suite, and the audience want the contestant to win for the benefit of Mr S.Cowell Esq.
This IS good news!
I am not familiar with either “The X-Factor” (although I’m not that taken with talent competitions), nor with “Have I Got News For You”, so I cannot say whether they “wuz robbed” or not. But I’ve been watching “The Cube” on YouTube, and have been beating the proverbial drum over it.
But the award for Best Entertainment Programme is a nice little addition to their trophy case, which included a Craft Award from BAFTA for “Best Production Team”, and that was a well-deserved award!
Yeah, glad to hear it. As much as I love HIGNFY, there are so many better panel shows out there that it really doesn’t deserve the award.
I’m mystified as to how the X-Factor made it to the list. Why realitalent shows are considered “entertainment” I’ll never know.
“Reality” is a hugely abused and confusing word which is now used to describe fly-on-the-wall documentaries, social experiments, action-adventure game shows…
Just gameshows generally in the States these days.
However, given that The X Factor is the biggest show on UK TV in terms of ratings, I don’t think there can be any doubt it’s an entertainment show.
This week’s Top 100, Eurovision songs only. No sign of Homens da Luta.
A Friend In London – New Tomorrow (78)
Eric Saade – Popular (76)
Ell + Nicki – Running Scared (61)
Jedward – Lipstick (40)
Blue – I Can (22)
Impossible didn’t get the ratings that it deserved because Channel 5 never bothered to promote it. It was completely hidden in the schedules and I have no idea why. Although an hour slot was perhaps a little long (and yes clearly a lot lower budget than its Derren Brown equivalents) it was a neat little format which had a lot of potential. Completely disagree about Escoffey’s lack of ‘charm’. Right from the offset I was totally sold by his banter and charisma. What a shame nobody else got the opportunity to see his magic.
Whilst the lack of advertising may be a factor (although I did see several episodes), the fact that the ratings for episode two were less than that for episode one suggests we were in a minority I’m afraid.
I think they promoted it quite well – there was all sorts of publicity for it in the trade press, the newspapers and online. Trailers I don’t know about, but shows at that time of night rarely command trailers.