With thanks to the guy who put it up:
Here is basically the issue with it – it’s based on the very successful French reimagining of the format, but that itself was built seemingly from the ground up as a vehicle for Vincent Lagaf. Once you take Lagaf and his creative direction out of the equation, what you have is a massive hole to fill, which everything here fills in awkwardly. Emdur’s a great old school host but he does not suit this show’s direction particularly, and the rapport between host and co-host that’s central to the French version is just not really here here.
The French show plays with nostalgic elements and will do something new with them, here the showcase feels like a throwback because they can’t think of anything better. Shame really.
The way the prize cue has got whistling in it but shies away from using the French theme is mildly amusing.
Is there an obvious British double-act who could pull off a British TPiR in the style of the French one to erase the memory of Pasquale Price?
The British have never really done announcers to the extent that TPiR demands; remember Leslie Crowther called his own contestants down. This has me wondering whether Ant and Dec could alternate between hosting and announcing for each other, or whether that would be a bit too fast-and-loose. It might only be us who would care.
The funny thing is that Peter (no known relation) Dickson – while not part of an obvious double-act – probably is now a big enough name to be not just an announcer but an actual character announcer on a new version of Price, and has the mechanical experience of announcing the show from the Brucie days!
I know I am probably in a minority but I liked Pasquale Price, it’s sort of 3/10ths way between trad. arr. and the current French show. A proto version of it, if you will, and Peter Dickson was already voiceovering it largely in character anyway, and quite amusingly (“what do you want me to say? It’s a kettle.”), although whether he can pull off physical comedy is another matter. On Buzzerblog’s coverage of this they have a twenty minute precis of the French show and he’s dressed up in drag seemingly mainly to set up a joke about Wheel of Fortune.
It’s not just hosting, the French really put effort into their game set-ups – Ten Chances is reimagined as a captain’s wheel. That’s Too Much is played on an actual miniature railroad with a cart with pump handles. Plinko is, I believe, two storeys high. That is the standard now as far as I’m concerned.
Actually one thing the French do conceptually differently to traditional versions, they like their physical skill based games such as Hole in One, and you can expect at least one to show up each episode in my experience.
Edit: Here’s a fun page, look: http://www.lejusteprixtv.com/?page=jeux-nouveaux
That is a fun page; thank you for sharing it. Click on the rightmost image in the sixth row (giving you the link pops up only the picture but not the text) – it’s the Knock Your Block Off revival we never knew we were all crying out for!
Hang on, according to the front page of broadcastnow (scroll down a bit!), there’s an article with title “Blasts from the past” which says:
Heritage formats like Surprise Surprise, Blockbusters and Catch Phrase are all making a return to British TV. It’s all about feelgood familiarity, producers tell Jake Kanter.
Is Catchphrase making a return? I must have missed this.
Although I guess the keyword here is “like”, but still…
It is currently on the market.
This may not be the right place for this, but if the handful of Bar regulars who’ve helped me out with quiz run-throughs in the past read this, and they are willing and available for a run in London next Friday (18th May) could they please drop me a line on myfirstname.mylastname@itv.com
Ta,
Paul
A little something from me as well, Challenge have announced on their Facebook page that there’ll be a Blockbusters online game coming soon. I’ll keep the Bar updated with any info.
It’s all gone a bit quiet so I shall break the silence with possibly the world’s heaviest rendition of Approaching Menace. (They appear next at the Buffalo Bar in Highbury on Saturday night, or so I read.)
The Ceramic Dalmatians have competition!
It’s Rose d’Or time again!
According to the judges, the top three game shows in the broadcasting world are: The Cube, The Million Pound Drop Live, and the Israeli programme Still Standing.
But wait, there’s more: the top three Live Event Shows were The Eurovision Song Contest, Canadian programme For One Night Only, and our very own Born to Shine.
And there’s game interest in the Lifestyle category. Joining Canadian renovation programme Property Brothers are our own May the Best House Win and The Great British Bake Off.
And the winners are: Drop, Eurovision, and Bake Off respectively.
Thanks David, well done them!
Happy 10th birthday to The Vault!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXwzKjar3ck
Boy, doesn’t that look old.
Well, the last ten years have flown by… 😉 😉
Some more numbers: three series, 32 episodes, three female thirtysomething hosts (Davina undoubtedly the best, Mel obsessed with wearing black, Gabby parachuted in from football coverage).
Two people winning the jackpot in the studio (the second of whom was 18 and knew her arctophiles), four more winning it from the comfort of their armchairs. 25 of these home callers – 83.33 per cent – being female.
Around £3 million paid out over the show’s run – and £800k of jackpot money saved by ITV for no real reason.
And countless examples of the Great British Public’s lack of knowledge about almost anything that isn’t popular culture.
Is it fair to say that The Vault had a lot of potential that was never realised?
After all, it had a great set, a great theme tune, a great title sequence, great graphics, and a great first host.
But the questions were probably just a bit too hard, the players and brokers were probably just a bit too ill-prepared, the rules were probably just a bit too complicated, and the jackpot was probably just a bit too difficult to win in the studio.
And the monkeys never really sorted out these problems.
Sure enough, viewing figures decreased consistently, to the point that hardly anyone watched Karen Shand win a million without actually seeing her…
Shame, really. 🙁
Actually, I hated a lot of this implementation of The Vault. I wonder if now anyone would commission a show where there’s up to 2 minutes of dead air when none of the five active contestants can answer the questions? The Israeli original was far better.
Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, you can see a round of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhTkxuyMxpc The main difference is that the callers are pre-vetted to know the answer so (a) there’s no danger that there’s dead air because there’s always someone you can buy the answer from, and (b) you don’t waste time bargaining with someone who doesn’t actually know the answer. Actually, I think the haggling works better over the phone since you concentrate on the voice more and it gets more stressful as time runs out.
I disagree it had a great title sequence. I thought looked cheap 10 years ago and it looks even worse now. I wished they’d run with the theme a bit more – apart from a bit of boilerplate and the fact that the money was kept somewhere, it didn’t really make much sense.
Mmm, interesting thanks. It’s interesting to see what we kept and what we changed, evidently having the contestant’s face blown up behind them considered an important part of the format.
The fun thing about our version is that they added the telephone contestants for series two to alleviate the dead air that would often happen in series one, and all that changed was filling time with “don’t know”.
However, when that woman won a very large amount of cash in the studio, that was genuinely thrilling in a way not many shows have matched.