According to a story on Broadcast, Impossible? will be returning to run alongside Big Brother. Good.
Meanwhile The Amazing Race Australia continues to do things much more interestingly than the US one has done for a while – I love the fact there’s a task at each location and not just a series of point to point races in taxis, and particularly liked the idea of having a tough logic puzzle as a roadblock just before the Pit Stop in the same location (although I think they’re missing a trick by not putting such things online for the viewers to have a go at in their own time). I also think they may have missed a trick in not making this the resolving leg of a non-elimination leg, with a team Marked for Elimination and having to endure a 30 minute time penalty if they don’t win, how much more exciting could it have been to watch them sweat it out as they watch the other teams complete the task and pass them?
Meanwhile Meanwhile, it looks like John Archer and Ben Earl are finally off to Vegas tomorrow. Who are they? They’re the guys who managed to fool Penn and Teller. Fool Us finished recording its series recently, looking forward to it!
That’s a good idea. Air it right after BB, see how much of the audience it can keep.
That was the rumour going around on Digital Spy some days ago, heard second hand from the producer I believe.
That’s good, then. It’s nice to see C5 realise that it’s downfall was perhaps more the slot as opposed to the show. Hopefully a BB lead-in will give it a bigger audience and more word-of-mouth appeal.
Putting it up against Celebrity Juice was certainly a Bit of an Error. If you’re viewing habits stretches to the dark reaches of ITV2, then you’ve already gone past 5.
It’s worth bearing in mind (for new readers) that I didn’t think Impossible was completely brilliant or anything, but that it deserved better than literally nobody watching it and getting dumped after two episodes.
I saw you mention Run for Money on Twitter, Brig, so here’s an episode I uploaded last week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP7-79AGlSA
A sniper disguised as delivery man wants to assassinate the president as he has a day out with his daughter in the theme park…
I tried suggesting the show to Challenge (now that they’ve starting acquiring new stuff) via the Sky viewer relation email address. I didn’t get a reply.
I’m sure it’d work well on the channel. Each game could be cut down into several shorter episodes, and add a voice-over to commentate and explain the story and missions. Fuji TV do sell RFM to other countries. It’s just impossible to get in touch with Challenge directly these days.
Cheers Daniel! That’s my evening sorted.
Thanks very much – slow to get going that one but worth sticking with.
The acting in the dramatic bits was pure comedy.
Definitely slow to get going this one, but it’s because they’re extending the episodes more and more; which is spoiling it a bit. The most recent episode was 2 hours 20 minutes long! It was dragged out for far too long and ended up spoiling what would have otherwise been another great episode.
What’s the significance of the big futuristic mysterious controller, do you know?
He’s the ‘Game Master’ and lives in the year 2900. He creates the Hunters and magics them off to the past for his own amusement and/or futuristic people watching it in a stadium as a sport, seemingly. It’s just a story they’ve come up with recently to explain why there are Hunters chasing people around in the first place.
The story in the most recent episode was all about him and got confusing at times. He seemed to have a female sidekick, but when she put two evil human-like people into the game (to hinder contestants) he ended up killing her.. I don’t know why.
These evil people started letting Hunters (previously trapped and unable to get to the players) out of a shopping centre and the Game Master wasn’t happy, so he deleted the ‘evil people’ and created Hunter-freezing guns for the plays to use to remove the escaped Hunters from the game again.
That episode’s here if you want to watch, but as I said it goes on forever and gets a bit confusing at times:
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/MmeZO2ogryA/
It does have its exciting moments. Especially the end – Whistling Bike-Riding Hunters and all!
Thanks Dan!
Totally agree that Run For Money is an amazing show, I’ve seen the odd one here and there and even have a bookmark saved for the Tudou site to search for more episodes:
http://so.tudou.com/isearch/%E9%80%83%E8%B5%B0%E4%B8%AD/
Also, been watching TAR Australia and I’m really enjoying it. Loved it when the teams on the ferry to the floating restaurant saw Chris and Anastasia and frantically told the boat driver to go so they were left behind! 😀 Top moment of the series so far for me.
Does the money-clock have any significance in this version? In the American version, it was strangely pointless.
Yes – if you use a phone to bail out, you win whatever is on it. However, seemingly because the game is mainly played by Japanese celebs (as is the culture) and regulars, not many people tend to use them.
Also in many episodes there are missions that affect the prize.
Just checked out the first Gory Games episode. Nothing fancy, nothing terrible, some quite interesting twists on stock games (Do two jigsaws at once with the same picture on but cut differently, for example), and if we could have something for adults on either BBC1 or ITV1 that went at that pace these days it would be very, very lovely.
(The format, as I say, is ‘nothing special but nothing particularly bad’ – Quiz round, consisting of up to four questions, which are all either true or false or A/B/C. Scoring done via Abacus, which is a nice bit of physicality, tie break goes to a final buzzer question, winner gets a date sphere, then a game will either be played by the winner alone or all three, the winner (in multiplayer) or if they win in a Crystal Maze style (…In the first episode, the only single play game was almost literally taken from the crystal maze and recontextualized) game they get a date sphere. Repeat three times, then play a final game for a final date sphere, add the dates up (AD is positive while BC is negative) and the winner is the person with the highest total (There might be an issue with this scoring, but if there is it didn’t show up this week, and there appears to be more AD than BC spheres)
Only real problem (debates about fairness that may crop up later due to it being possible to, by picking the wrong sphere, winning negative points, aside) is that some of the games in between the quiz rounds kind of drag on a bit, the catapult game could probably have used being about thirty seconds shorter, though for the most part the commentary makes up for that.
Overall, and after one episode no glaring issues, Dave Lamb and Rattus make a surprisingly good double act, and there’s a pretty solid pace to the show with just a couple of segments that go on for a little too long. With a larger budget, I wouldn’t mind this format, if not neccessarially implemented in this way, as a teatime quiz on BBC1 or ITV1…
(These are initial thoughts, they might change with discussion and/or additional episodes)
Not sure if it’s mentioned but from this Saturday, Schlag den Raab will be having a charge of guard. The original host, Matthias Opdenhövel has done a Jeff Stelling and jumpped ship to become the full time sports presenter on ARD.
It has been confirmed that former host of The Mole and Fort Boyard, Steven Gätjen will be taking over as presenter.
Aww, that’s sad. I really liked Matthias. I’m sure the new guy will do well though.
Does anyone fancy looking up exactly what this Wipeout lawsuit is over? Specifically, I mean, for if it’s specific for some games, in which case depending on the game it might not set a really nasty precident within US law, or general, in which case… If it wins it would arguably make the concept of genre itself unviable.
The lawsuit’s been going on for 2-3 years now. According to:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/live-feed/japanese-broadcaster-sues-abc-wipeout-50793
“‘Wipeout’ unlawfully appropriates the premise, the format, the sequence of events, the introductory segment, the tone, the scene setups, the narration, the dialogue that arises from constructed situations … of the shows”
…which is a bit far fetched, but they don’t help themselves when they write memos like these:
http://www.deadline.com/2008/07/bombshell-abc-studios-memo-a-blueprint-to-rip-off-foreign-tv-series/
(As in ‘there seems to be some debate in the Hollywood Reporter analysis over if the lawsuit is over specific tasks, or generally over obstacles involving mechanical components’)
An update regarding the TV show I am developing called ‘Ultimate Champion’: I had a meeting 2 weeks ago with a top production company and the show is currently in development with that production company having first refusal to the rights. There have been some changes to the format to make it cost-effective and more viewer-friendly however things are looking positive. I can’t give a timespan on how long the whole process will take, it could take months or even years, but the show is moving forward and development is going well. It’s going to be a big hit 🙂
“It’s going to be a big hit :)”
🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 😉
Seriously, good luck to you. I admit that it would be nice to see your name up with a “Devised by” credit some day, mostly to see a pseudonym explained…
Yes, this.
I don’t think it’s an awful idea for a format, I just think it has the kitchen sink element you’d associate with the Italians.
Not that that kitchen sink element is neccessarially a bad thing in the context of how long European (I think including Italian) formats sometimes are…
America’s Got Talent is back.
We had someone from a rather popular viral video (Double Dream Hands) practically get all but booed off the stage (and a strikeout too)
What’s known about this Epic Win that’s apparently coming to Saturday Night BBC1?
( http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/news/bulletin_110601_02/Could_You_Pull_Off_an_Epic_Win Being everything I’ve heard about it)
Oh, this is the talent-show-with-Bong-Game-element I think. You do your thing, panel of three lock in how much they think you should get, then you try and bag as much as you can without going over.
Yup, that’s the one. Terrible title, isn’t it?
This much and this much. Ben Pridmore is doing a memory stunt after all. Apparently the focus is high on the comedy, particularly in reasonably extended contestant introduction videos, and relatively low on the rest.
Godawful ideas for television game shows: Battle of the Voices. A comedy panel game about voice acting, voice overs, and other out-of-vision work. Alan Dedicoat and Mitch Johnson as the team captains, neither of whom are ever seen (Maybe have Peter Dickson presenting, also out of shot, so the only people visible in the studio are the guests and studio audience)
How’s about having panelists Marcus Bentley, Glenn Hugill, Emma Clarke, and Sue Perkins (a late substitute for Miranda Hart) in the same room as their captains, but not the audience or cameras. Just two blank desks, and an empty chair. Commission x 1 for early April!
More seriously, I vaguely recall a Christmas quiz involving continuity announcers and presenters from Radio 2 and Radio 4 in the late 1980s. Must dig out diaries.