OK, an interesting thing has turned up on SRO – Stand Out From The Crowd with Vernon Kay filming 21st September. The description is very brief.
However we do know a few things about it. Noel Edmonds fronted an episode of this for a pitch film you can see on C21. In it, unsuspecting people are surprised in shopping malls and suchlike when the host appears on advertising boards. He sets quizzes and tasks against the clock for money, and contestants can get help from anyone nearby. That’s it really.
Why it now needs an audience and Vernon Kay we hope to find out.
it was quite a success in Italy, but it was on a Sky channel, so it went largely unnoticed
promo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZdARRKZkcA&feature=share&list=PL983E6995EB33ADED
first season 2 winner on Avanti Un Altro!
I noticed! I gasped when he got the last question wrong first time though.
Just a question, it seems to be called Avanti il Primo in the titles. Any reason?
it is a common trick here to separate the part with the lowest audience from the rest of the show.
let’s take yesterday’s official figures
Avanti il Primo! 1.956.000 share 15,58%
Avanti un Altro! 3.003.000 share 18,34%
now the network can say that their show scored 3 million
of course RAI1 does the same
La sfida dei 6 2.921.000 share 19,91%
L’Eredità 4.127.000 share 21,75%
with a similar trick, Mediaset newscasts end with an ad break followed by a segment where they just say “there are no updates, goodbye”
Struggling to see how SOFTC is any different to the old ‘CCTV’ idea on BBC Three.
It’s Only Connect, Turkey-style!
http://www.armozaformats.com/common.html
I did actually think of that Venn-diagram thing as an alternative for Missing Vowels, in the early days.
Out of curiosity, why did you go with mssn gvw ls instead?
I think the official answer is that it was developed for another format that Presentable had knocking around and they’ve always felt it was a good idea that people enjoyed playing.
From my point of view, I like it because it allows you to ask a lot of questions about things that would be otherwise too simple OR too hard to connect with other things).
If we had lots of “What’s the connection between X and Y”, I think it would burn up a lot of ideas that could have otherwise been spun out into a Round 1 connection, as well as wearing out those ‘double meaning’ words we use to create confusion on the grid round.
Mmm, this has been around for a while.
Ugh. I saw the pitch film for this and I was thoroughly unimpressed by it – boring format, mediocre host, a show in a shopping centre (which has been banned in the Lurker format book ever since Touch the Truck) and after the Red or Black scandal, probably some severe issues with vetting the contestants.
Also, the pitch film reignited my childhood nightmares that Noel Edmonds was going to hunt me down and gunge me, so thanks for that. Vernon Kay is likely to be slightly better but I don’t think he’s good enough to lift this one.
Any idea which channel will take it?
It’s being filmed at the BBC but that’s no real indication of anything. Kay’s involvement suggests an ITV1 show, but it might be they’re filming a general pilot to shop round to broadcasters.
Look out for cameras at the local Westfield across the road that evening.
I am about 95% certain that it’s for Channel 4.
That doesn’t surprise me particularly – I saw this and thought of “Relentless” from a couple of years back. I am however surprised that someone’s picked it up, because it really doesn’t seem all that interesting. We’ll see what they do with it, I guess.
I also forgot that Vernon did Home For The Holidays for C4 just last year.
> Also, the pitch film reignited my childhood nightmares that Noel Edmonds was going to hunt me down and gunge me, so thanks for that
I’M NOT ALONE :O
To obfuscate which web site I have been geeking out over tonight, but which I think readers here would eventually enjoy, here is a question far too esoteric for Only Connect.
What connects
The Crystal Maze
Knightmare
Gladiators
Survivor
? There are tons of other shows that also fit the category, but I believe these are the only game shows. Unless, of course, you know otherwise.
They’re all in the action-adventure genre!
…They’re all, um… Shows reformatted and sold to other countries? Maybe?
If I remember correctly, The Crystal Maze was based off of Fort Boyard cos C4 couldn’t make their own version for some reason or another, and Survivor I think was more documentary-ish and then they reformatted it and sold it to the Dutch. I wouldn’t have a clue how it would apply to the other two, though.
The fort was under maintenance and the filming was already scheduled for a particular set of dates, as I understand it.
…It’s a bit of a stretch for Survivor, Gladiators sort of changed I guess when it came over here, though Knightmare changed formats practically ever country it was exported to.
Survivor was sold to the Swedes first, rather famously. But I think you have an interestng train of thought.
Right, Swedes, yes. For some reason I always tend to associate reality formats with The Netherlands. Probably cos of Bib Brother.
Bit of a stab in the dark, but are they all explicitly based on something else?
The Crystal Maze was a rushed reformatting of Fort Boyard, Knightmare is heavily based on 80s RPGs, especially the box art, Survivor is based on surviving in the wilderness, I guess, and… Not a clue how it would apply to Gladiator.
Two of them feature professional participants who initially applied to be contestants. Three of them feature the same ‘actor’ appearing under more than one ‘character’ name but the best I can do for all four is that they all require crossing a bridge over a body of water.
Your clue: merchandise. A specific, interesting, type of merchandise; well-known to be associated with at least one of these, maybe two, but actually applies to all four.
Was there ever a Gladiators book?
I seem to recall there were a couple of annuals.
Oh!
Are there board games of all four of them, which aren’t just straight (or even slightly interesting implementations of)trivia games?
(I know Gladiators, The Crystal Maze and Knightmare do, Survivor is a bit of a guess)
Survivor definitely does. It’s a bit crap, frankly.
Is it they all have board games?
Indeed they did, but so did other game shows. I believe I have found a stronger connection linking those four game shows and *touches wood, crosses fingers* no others. Now this claim of exclusivity may well turn out to be wrong but if it turns out to be wrong then I think we’ll be even happier for it.
<pretending-to-be-Cross-Wits>Between the two of you, you and Brig are on the right lines.</never-a-cross-word-eh>
It can’t be gamebooks, as I don’t think Survivor had one.
I didn’t think it did either and thought I was going to have to go with a non-game-show for the fourth connection, but apparently it did!
In summary, I have been thoroughly enjoying http://www.gamebooks.org. Lots of TV shows and movies have spun off gamebooks, but I think those are the only four game shows… again, unless you know otherwise.
Going further, each of those four shows have spun off both game- and non-game- books. This does require a bit of arbitrary precision in the definition of a gamebook as a choose-your-own-adventure read-the-paragraphs-out-of-sequence book.
The Crystal Maze certainly had several books, some of which were books which incidentally featured games as well as more documentary content, but there was one which definitely was predominantly (if not entirely) a gamebook.
Knightmare supposedly had seven books. You might think of them all as gamebooks, but apparently the seventh was a novel.
Survivor had four gamebooks – see the link above – and it certainly had more descriptive books as well.
Gladiators had two gamebooks, and it also had a series of annuals. They count!
Were there any others? It’s probably only an accident of history that nobody made a Big Brother gamebook, or that would fit the description as well.
Wow, good find.
I remember the Crystal Maze gamebook and Knightmare ones were all Dave Morris, of “whatever happened to Dave Morris?” fame.
Dave Morris has apparently been keeping busy, both alone and with a colleague. I reckon he’s doing OK.
The reason why I’m fascinated by that gamebooks site is that it suggests that (a) the genre is a lot, lot, lot older than you might expect, and (b) still a lot busier than you might expect.
If the spam trap eats this comment for featuring two (2) links then I will sulk.
Well Ian Livingstone’s just released a new Fighting Fantasy book, so evidently there’s still some life in it.
He’s been releasing new ones for a couple of years now, as part of the current republishing of the old ones, as has [The British] Steve Jackson.
The bit that terrifies me is that there’s apparently work being done on a movie adaptation of House Of Hell.
There’s a YouTube version of the pitch film here for anyone without a C21 account: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyXIPBUUIn0&feature=relmfu