Other than Epic Win which we’ve already given a Show Discussion post, there are a coupke of interesting shows this evening – new series of Secret Fortune and The X Factor begin this evening, Celebrity Big Brother continues with its first proper highlights show (apparently Mohummed Al Fayed is dropping in to visit this weekend) and of course it’s the last in the series of Fort Boyard on France 2. You can write about all these and more.
Edit: And I keep forgetting it’s Live Millionaire Soap Star Special tonight and tomorrow.
Whatever you’re doing tonight, have a good one.
There hasn’t been a generic comments box for a while, so I’m putting these in here:
– Applause Store are flogging tickets for a one-off primetime BBC1 show called ‘Break The Safe’ here – http://www.applausestore.com/applausestore-book-show.php?id=955&bid=1 – was new to me.
– Similarly, Stars in a Spin with Stephen Mulhern? http://www.applausestore.com/applausestore-book-show.php?id=975&bid=1
– And France 2 have cancelled their version of Pasapalabra – En Toutes Lettres – as it was performing badly against Des Chiffres et Des Lettres…replacing it with an in-house quiz called ‘Seriez-vous un bon expert?’ hosted by the same guy.
Break the Safe basically seems like a reversioning of Dick and Dom’s National Lottery The Clock Is Ticking.
So, France 2 and 3 – who are cut from le cloth du same – put quiz shows on against each other? What kind of obscure Galic logic does that hope to achieve?
That would be like BBC One showing The Weakest Link and BBC Two showing Pointless or Eggheads at the same time, the go on an internal head scratching exercise at W12 as to why both shows aren’t dominating the ratings…
Many reviewers have called Epic Win dire. Can’t wait to see if they’re right or wrong 😀
Well I’m never wrong.
Really? I just the Radio Times review.Which was very good.
You should read my post again. I didn’t say ‘all’ reviewers, I say ‘many’. This is true, the majority of advanced reviews are negative 🙂
I think it will be the sort of show that does badly with the critics but does quite well with the numbers. I could live with that.
Anyone bother to watch WWTBAM? They were giving away Coronation Street playing cards at one point in a ‘between-contestant’ Ask The Audience special…was embarrassing, really.
I did say on twitter that the Ask the Audience stunt was literally Everybody’s Equal all over again.
It felt better tonight than the other two specials but tomorrow’s show will be interesting. Since they decided to add Joe Swash and Ricky Groves late to the party, they become the sixth pair for the weekend special. That means they will have to get through no less than FOUR soap star pairs in under 55 mins (5 mins for the viewer reveal) on Sunday night.
So, who is going to miss out altogether? I’m guessing two pairs will not sit in the hotseat at all.
Who Wants to Win the Jack of Spades?
Terrible way to treat a once-proud format.
Even then they botched that up. Should’ve been the cards first then the DVD boxset since the first question was easer than the second.
Mmm… I wonder if there’s scope for a collection of random filler segments in shows with a defined quantity of game content of indeterminate length per show of determinate length? (Which, of course, WWTBAM? used not to be.)
There’s a clip online (from memory, it might be at TV Ark or somesuch) of Brucie, in what I’d guess must be early-’80s PYCR, going into the audience and asking a survey question of an audience member, then getting another audience member to guess higher or lower, for ten pounds.
I’m sure that such filler games must be common enough (have any Bar-istas been to see a WWTBAM? recording, for instance?) though televising them must surely reflect a considerable snafu in the editing process.
I’ve been to a Millionaire recording (recorded October 2008, aired some time in early 2009). No audience filler games in that taping, to my recollection. Indeed I remember the recording whizzing by at a fair old pace – the only gaps were after FFF when the contestants had their makeup done and you had the usual audience jester bits you get at any taping, then the contestant came out and the warm-up man sat in Tarrant’s chair, the tier 3 lighting transitions being used in and out of this bit so that they could check how the contestant looked in the proper studio lights I presume.
(This was also the only time I saw the tier 3 lighting, alas; my episode had £10k, £5k, and £20k wins.)
Certainly no silly audience games to my knowledge. The only notable bit we had with the audience was when a few of us inadvertently gasped at the contestant almost committing to a wrong answer on the first contestant’s £5k question; she changed her mind, she then lucked out with the £10k question, and walked away. I think the producers were annoyed that we might have cost them £9k…
Were they dragged out the studio and interrogated by the police on suspicion of committing fraud?
French Pointless – The subject was mammals whose milk are fit for human consumption. 98 said “cow” while 7 people said “woman”.
2.14m for episode one if Epic Win, decent if unspectacular. I’ll be interested to see if it goes up or down next week.
Not so epic, after all. Quite a good show for the timeslot, in fairness, better than the poor reviews it had.
I’m off work this week, which is a pity because I’m intrigued as to what the man in the street who doesn’t post to Digital Spy thought of it.
Few other ratings
Secret Fortune: 3.53m (16.1%)
The X Factor: 10.80m (45.7%), +1: 504k (2.2%)
Live Celebrity Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?: 4.31m (19.4%), +1: 186k (1.1%)
Secret Fortune failed to dent The X Factor which had nearly the same figure to last year. The 8pm timeslot for BBC One in 2010 was around 3 million.
Although Millionaire had The X Factor as the lead in, they secured the lowest rating so far this year. Perhaps they should’ve gone for X Factor contestants/judges rather than soap stars.
Anyone see the Red or Black? promo before X Factor? Looks suitably spectacular enough to draw an audience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tue697IdNVU
Is there a start date announced for it yet?
I’m not sure what some people felt but the VT the Millionaire team aired towards the end was probably ironic and an insult to any budding contestants.
Since they ended slightly early, they ran a 2 minute feature on previous civillian winners from the show from the last 2-3 years and explaining how they won the money and what they spent it on.
It’s like Sony/ITV saying. “We are now showing you a video featuring previous winners in the last few years and how they spent their winnings. If you want to apply for our show, then tough shit, we’re not doing it any more”.
and NO, Joe. The civillian show isn’t coming back. Unless you got concrete proof, and I mean concrete, the show is not accpting civillian applications.
Don’t know why they bothered airing it – they certainly weren’t desperate to fill airtime at that point, and it meant they went to the news a couple of minutes late.
It hasn’t been axed, don’t forget… 😉
I felt like that as well when I saw that VT package, what was the point of showing it if there’s no public editions of Millionaire being made any more? So once again, a game show format decides to go All-Star like Mr and Mrs and Family Fortunes before it. It isn’t fair.
At the risk of being spectacularly dull, could be that ITV’s Playout Department needed Millionaire to remain on air until 22.02 so that they didn’t go from the news to the film too early, and the second internal break fell in the 23.00 hour? OFCOM is being spectacularly anal about channels not showing too much advertising at the moment, and this is the result. Thanks, useless regulator.