This is quite an exciting week actually.
- The Great Escape – I think it’s the last in the series tonight which actually I think is a shame. (Sunday, TNT)
- Who Wants to be a Millionaire School’s Out – just five weeks into the Summer holidays as well. This has rather snuck up. (8pm, Sunday)
- Only Connect – It’s baaaack! This week the Joinees play the Draughtsman whilst Victoria Coren casts a wry eye over the proceedings. (8:30pm, Monday, BBC4)
- Catchphrase – Pilot with Stephen Mulhern films in London on Monday. I expect there will be a recording report. (Monday, London)
- The Line Up – keep all your fingers crossed, I’m hoping to record a podcast on Thursday. It may be terrible. But it might be brilliant. It probably won’t come out for a few days after though.
- Fort Boyard – Last in the main run for 2012 of what’s been an enjoyable year, but I’m especially looking forward to the night-time one-offs over the next few months. (Saturday, 7:35pm UK time, France 2)
The question stacks in Millionaire as of late aren’t the best. Everything is fairly simple up until the Q for 50k and then that’s usually a lot worse, very steep difficulty curve.
They’ve been doing that on the US version for years. As soon as you hit the second milestone (or Round 2 in the current Shuffle format), the questions become the ridiculously arcane and trashy “either you know it or you don’t” type (Lach Trash, as we Jeopardy! fans call it), the kind usually reserved for teams who are doing well on The Million Pound Drop and wouldn’t even be used as the million-dollar question on Millionaire’s early days. Questions have included things like “What were the names of George Washington’s two dogs?” – I wish I were making this up. It’s painfully obvious they’re trying to save money on the prize budget. (The US version also used to provide travel and lodging for all ten of the Fastest Finger contestants. Now they have 1 contestant at a time and don’t even provide travel for them.)
I’ve been noticing this too, particularly so last night. You’d think they’d be tempted to soften it a bit given how starved of a big win WWTBAM is.
On a related note, does anyone know the last time anyone made it past £75k? Has it even happened since The Big Bad Clock was brought in?
Well, as has been said several times before, the current production team isn’t exactly razor-sharp…
According to another board, the Red or Black ep that was shown with the controversy wasn’t the 2nd episode taped- it was the last one taped and they moved it.
Well with that, they’ve spoiled most of the other results…
We know there will be a 1.5 million win at some point.
If they have a jackpot of 1 million next week, it means the ep that was supposed to air this week was a definitive loss.
If they still plan to air it, that means that is now ep 7.
Since there was 500,000 on the line in the original episode and the moved episode, this means there has to be a win in ep 6.
Since there also has to be two losses in a row to get to 1.5 million, that means either this week (ep 3) is a loss, ep 4 is the 1.5 million win, ep5 is a loss, and ep 6 is a 1 million win, or ep 3 is a 1 million win, ep 4 is a loss, ep 5 is a loss, and ep 6 is the 1.5 million win.
It’s confusing, but we know when the 1.5 million win will be- either in ep 4 or ep 6, depending on is there’s a win next week in ep 3. Ep 5 is a loss no matter what.
Well, we now know that episode 4 – which is next week’s – will be the one with the £1.5m win… 😉
Overnight ratings for last night’s definite loss were just 3.3m and 3.06m – the first time since episode 4 last series that the second part rated lower than the first.
Of course it was well beaten by the Eleventh Doctor and the Daleks – and the second part was only half a million ahead of the Paralympics.
At this rate, if the monkeys were to commission a third series, it would probably be almost as big a surprise as John Cleese agreeing to do more episodes of Fawlty Towers…
That’s if there’s a 1.5 million pound win. For all we know, the rumours put about during the spring could be a great work of fiction.
“For all we know, the rumours put about during the spring could be a great work of fiction.”
Oh no they weren’t. 😉 😉
One really isn’t all that surprised, though, that the overnight ratings for Graham Fletcher’s achievement weren’t that much higher than those for the second show last week – only 3.63m, and just 420,000 ahead of the Last Night of the Proms.
Four words spring to mind: nail in the coffin.
Not meaning to sound like I’m looking for attention here, but…
I notice that I’m the only one on here who has mentioned the most recent Pointless and the most recent Secret Fortune. 😕
I’m not saying that everyone else has to do the same, mind. And if people genuinely feel that the latest goof on Red or Black was far more interesting than both, then I respect this view entirely.
I’m just surprised that I’m the only one mentioning these two shows.
After all, what are the chances of a jackpot of nearly £15k being won with not one but three Pointless answers, and of a Secret Fortune of a hundred grand being immediately followed by one of a hundred quid?!
So, with some reluctance, I guess I have to ask this question: Is the general feeling on here that Pointless and Secret Fortune have already reached their respective zeniths? 😕
The Hundred Grand vid’s on Buzzerblog, so I guess that’s where that discussion went.
Living in one of the colonies, I can only keep up from posted videos, and no one’s posted video of the other events (that I know of), so can’t really discuss much.
Well, if no-one else wishes to respond to this question…
To be fair, nobody is talking much about the new Only Connect either, and Monday’s episode was probably, quietly, about as good as the show has ever been. It may even be the case that I enjoy the early episodes in the series more than the later ones, because the relatively less difficult questions towards the start of the series are more to my taste than the spectacular but inaccessible ones late on. I look forward to finding out what this series’ non-tournament matches are in the fullness of time. (Children In Need? 2013 is a Comic Relief year, so another one there…?)
No, I don’t particularly regard either Secret Fortune or Pointless as appointment television. Sadly, these days, other than poker and OC, I’m more interested in the new hotness than anything else… and that other episode of 31 Questions that Brig linked to (on Twitter?) was, indeed, very good.
Des makes some valid points. For my money, what happened on is a complete disruption, something we couldn’t reasonably predict could happen. In retrospect, it feeds directly into the narrative for that programme, of Syco / ITV not being able to organise a party in a bakery. The other programmes are ones where we’d expect something along these lines to happen, however rarely.
On the meta-point, is something I’ll only watch if there’s absolutely nothing else on, and is background television for the ironing of a Sunday evening. Besides, I think they’ve juxtaposed a six-figure and a three-figure win in previous series.
always launch with a really good show, even by their high standards. And didn’t this year, which may be a snook to the scheduler.
I certainly remember a £100 win on Secret Fortune before, and on a £100/£100k finish too.
I still don’t know why I don’t watch that show more to be honest – I really liked it last year but for some reason haven’t felt much like watching it this.
Series 3 of Cube Ukraine premiered Monday night and is available from the usual source.
I’m loving the clock graphics on the side of the Cube.
Also a nice preview of some of the new games, there.
Yes, the new clock graphics are quite nice. I uploaded a screencap from each of the three games that used it Monday night:
http://i.imgur.com/cKMms.png
http://i.imgur.com/w8Jru.png
http://i.imgur.com/cARRw.png
New win music at 40’50”, wonder if this will make it into our series 6? Star Wars is getting a bit old.