Well this week is very exciting because it’s the Bother’s Bar Festival of Paul Ross (I know what you’re thinking: “Fabulous! *****”). As the less well-regarded gameshow-and-fun based website out there, we TOTALLY know how it feels to be Paul Ross and therefore feel uniquely qualified to host this fantastic celebration – and it will be a celebration. Look out for a Twitter competition on Monday (you need to be following @BothersBar) and a website competition during the week, I will have TWO genuine Paul Ross 300-piece jigsaws to give away. There is no cash alternative.
Don’t forget Fantasy X Factor managers if you want to change (or indeed make if you had forgotten) a prediction for tonight’s double elimination that now is the time to do so. What else we got?
- Million Dollar Mind Game – Fingers crossed someone sticking it up on Youtube becomes a regular thing. (Sunday, ABC)
- Barrier – Philip Schofield presents. (7pm, Sunday, ITV1)
- Brucie’s on QVC flogging his new album. (9am and 4pm, apparently, Monday, QVC)
- Deal or No Deal – This starts on Challenge from Monday at 8pm from episode one, and this month it sounds as though they’re going to be doing two episodes a day and repeating them the following afternoon AND doing an omnibus at the weekends. I suppose that’s one way to get through 1700+ episodes. Interesting to see how it affects the C4’s show’s ratings at all. (8pm, Monday, Challenge)
- Only Connect – First semi-final so don’t expect to get any questions right. It’s the Listeners vs the Antiquarians. Incidentally they’ve been filming things for the upcoming Connecting Wall night, likely to be the third best theme night on television this year. (8:30pm, Monday, BBC4)
- Fort Boyard: Ultimate Challenge – I still have to catch up the this week’s episodes just gone, I believe the grand final is on Monday as part of a double-bill. Of course, if you don’t fancy Youtube and Disney branding, it’s on CITV in January.
- Sorority Girls – This might be quite interesting, UK uni girls attempt to join a US sorority thing by taking part in initiation tests. With sexy results, if some of the videos on the internet I’ve heard about are anything to go by. (9pm, Tuesday, E4)
- Who Wants to be a Celebrity Millionaire Remembrance Special – Not live, so no excuse for not fitting everything in. No viewer competition either, but Hugh Bonneville, Melanie Sykes and John Thomson will be teaming up with members of the armed forces for charity. (8pm, Wednesday, ITV1)
- Big Brother – It’s the live final! And they’ve made it even more exciting by doing something silly and Endemol-esque with the prizemoney. They really should have made it half a mill like was originally suggested, that would have grabbed people’s attention. (9pm, Friday, C5)
I think I might start adding videos of Bother’s Bar favourite El Gran Juego de Oca to the ends of Boards of Excitement to make them even more exciting. Thanks to punter Chris M Dickson for alerting me to this one. It’s got Mr T in it! The crazy damn fool!
Dont forget Stefan Raab’s TV Total High Diving event on Thursday!
The man himself is co-hosting the big radio breakfast show on BBC London these days with no less than Gaby Roslin! Not a bad gig at all. Wonder if you could get a shout-out for the Bar – or, perhaps, get the man himself to sign the back of the completed jigsaw so that both back and front have delightful images to attempt to reassemble?
The last three matches on Uni Chal promised more than they delivered – will Durham v Homerton Cambridge tomorrow night be different? One certainly hopes so…
All four members of the Durham team impressed when they put up 325 points in their first-round match. However, this was against a Plymouth team that, without any disrespect intended whatsoever, looked a bit like rabbits caught in headlights, and scraped only 45.
Homerton, of course, have played one match more – following that narrow and slightly controversial defeat against Balliol Oxford with victory over the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine four weeks ago, 190-115.
The Cambridge team have also been very good on the buzzers and the bonuses, though probably not quite as impressive as Durham. They ought to put up much more of a challenge to the Wearsiders than Plymouth did, though – in fact, this is another match that has all the makings of being close.
My verdict: Durham, by not very much.
In nearly-a-game-show news, it’s the November Nine! You can find a legitimately live Cover-It-Live here. ESPN are streaming the event, including hole cards, on a 15 minute delay, which is inevitably being naughtied (you may have to chase this around a bit if it gets shut down).
Jesse May is liveblogging the 15 minutes behind stream, which I think is not quite a contradiction in terms, as is Short-Stacked Shamus.
And yet I think I’m slightly more interested in trying to find a naughty of MDMG if such a thing exists…
Ah! My last comment has been held up for, presumably, including sufficiently many links to look spammy. Let me have another go.
It’s the November Nine and ESPN are broadcasting it on a 15-minute delay, which is inevitably being naughtied.
Er, being naughtied, and I am glad that there was no collateral damage arising from posting the wrong link.
I’ve approved it.
Hopefully someone will stick up MDMG on Youtube, it sounds like it was the producers who did it last week!
Not sure if anybody is bothering with TAR this season, but that has to be the worst use of a U-Turn ever. I can’t understand the logic presented, U-Turning a team they know were infront of them, as they passed them on the way into the U-Turn.
The reason given, maybe they did not see the U-Turn???? Urm that massive yellow sign with 2 ipads in it, quite hard to miss.
I’ve been watching it and enjoying it adequately. That said, I haven’t seen yesterday’s yet; please be very careful of potential spoilers when us non-US types are mostly waiting for YouTubers to put the files up, which takes several days. Hurrah for the team of Laurence and Zac, but I’d be even more hurrah if there were an extra “k” in there.
Looking through the schedules, it looks like ESPN’s UK channel had live coverage of The World‘s Series of Poker until about 8am today. One to remember for next year, folks.
Also on my board o’excitement, was just as good as it threatened to be, with Iwan Thomas and Ian Bayley and Geoff Thomas trading correct answers like they were three schoolboys looking for the Paraguayan goalkeeper to complete their sticker sets. The best man won.
It’s a further lab report from in the next Week, and a heads-up for the return of next Sunday. Haven’t seen an episode of this since about 2004, and I don’t think I’ll be seeing one this year.
Million Dollar Mind Game ep 3:
http://youtu.be/tWNW0Pyu4nc
Without being too spoileriffic, I was pleased I got a million dollar question right (although not as quick as some people by the sounds of it).
I got what I suspect is the same one instantly – surprised that kind of people missed it. The other one was rock hard, though.
Shame they had to mess around with the audio track quite so much, and it was proof once again that the US can’t handle the big moments too well.
Is there a full ep. 1 around yet?
Doesn’t look like it but I’ve asked a friend in the US to send me the episode. I should get it in the next few days. Once I received it then I’ll forward a copy to you.
This does deserve spoiler-y discussion at some point. (Perhaps its own post, or perhaps we could retreat to the existing MDMG post to do so?) Either way, still very, very enjoyable.
The opening melody to Prodigy – Spitfire as question music is an interesting choice.
Brilliant scheduling by Challenge. 2 hours allocated to Deal Or No Deal yet they’re done and dusted in 1 and a half hours, so whack on an episode of Catchphrase at the end to pad the time out! 😐
There was no way they could pad out DOND to an hour time slot unless they put added some unnatural breaks (and even then they’d have struggled).
Sky have got enough fillers to do that.
I did question them on how they can use 22 minutes of breaks as the early episodes were 38 minutes in length.
We’ve had the final of Series One of Fort Boyard: Ultimate Challenge and I have to admit the game I was expecting to come up (The scariest game we’ve used) didn’t.
Looks like the promo video I watched was from both series as a few other games didn’t turn up either – although since the games in question are in another promo on YouTube I can actually say what they were. Snake Pit is, in my opinion the scariest game on the fort. Also new, and excuse my lack of knowledge of the French names are Unstable Chair, Turnstile and Boxing Ring.
Also we saw a game I haven’t seen in any other country ‘Raging Sea’ which, despite being a mish-mash of a few other games, was nice to see. As noted above, Fort Boyard joins us in January.
Oh that’s interesting, I probably would have rated the snake pit as about level with spiders and scorpions in terms of raw awfulness (and I say that as someone who doesn’t like spiders but doesn’t mind snakes).
Raging Sea? What happens there, then? Sounds interesting.
In Raging Sea, two opposing players zipline into the sea and swim to a buoy, releasing their teammates in a kayak. Teammate 2 rows to a second buoy to release a code wallet from a basket. The two remaining players use the code to unlock a box of puzzle pieces and race to complete the puzzle from crossbow relay.
Also ‘Hammer Time’ is technically new. It’s a race to hammer four nails into a block, relay style.
Yes, I noticed that some of the “good ol’ good ones” (to use a phrase from Louis Armstrong) did not get used. But I was a little surprised as “Mision Impossible” (which the French call “Ventouse”, and the old UK version called “Burglary”).
Also missing: “Searching Head” (La Tete Chercheuse), which is, to me, one of the spookier games still used on the Fort. Of course, this being a “family” show, they would not be expected to bring back the “Dark Labyrinth”, considering the climax of that game!
The other ten episodes are to run on Disney XD sometime in 2012. In the meanwhile, the same cable channel has a much cheaper-looking production, called “Game On!” running on Saturday afternoon. This is a match between casts of “Pair of Kings” and “Kickin’ It”, and looks like it was put together on a budget of $19.95. (Send them to the Fort and see how they fare!)
Incidentally Andorra have pulled out of the EBU.
Meaning no Andorra in Eurovision for the forseeable future. Aww :<