TV Cream have done an amusing play along card for Bob’s Full House currently showing on Saturday nights.
I still don’t think the Golden Card is all that as an endgame, though.
In other news, the new Fifty 50 Show is out! And yes! Once again I am a guest (cheap and available). This week we have a chat about all sorts of things, mainly the new shows beginning on Channel 4 afternoons soon, and the career of Phil Spencer of upcoming The ConDom fame, so do check it out.
- Show notes (there are a lot of them).
- Direct download!
- Subscribe in iTunes and never miss an exciting episode!
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I think that was one of my favourite episodes ever of Only Connect, for teams, ad-libs, questions and chat, but it’s remarkable how some days I’m relatively on song with recognising things early and other days – even in the initial heats – I haven’t got a clue. (The latter outnumber the former by a wide margin.) Do contestants frequently cheer their good luck or moan about their bad luck if unusually high or low proportions of topics they happen to know about come up?
Given the relatively low number of questions a team faces during a show, you’d think that the variance is high. But I think because many questions cut across several topics then it’s likely to be a relatively fair test of your knowledge. And also in round 1 (and to some extent round 2) a lot of the questions have in-built ‘workoutability’ so that even if you’re not an expert on a topic, there’s usually something sensible you can guess.
I would say that there are certain questions that are more guessable early than others, but equally we try to ensure that the ones that have a difficult start will end on a very kind note, to level things up.
People do complain about the walls most. Because the connections are more straightforward, there is more of an element of “you know it or you don’t” and sometimes teams will come across subject areas that don’t match their personal knowledge bases at all. The now famous ‘Vajazzle vs Iran/Contra affair’ incident the other week proves this.
“Goodbye to them…”
I really rate the end game – the probability of winning matches the number of questions you get right, and working out the destination is fun and provides opportunities for humour.
There are flaws in the earlier rounds, however. There’s no strategy to choosing particular corners in the first round. And in the MMC round, often there’s not much point in picking off subjects you don’t like when you buzz in for a bonus because they mix the six anyway.
In a reboot, I would:
– change only 2 categories per ‘spin’ of the MMC.
– use the board to reveal not only letters but also a photo of the holiday location (Catchphrase-style, if you like).
– have a printed version of the Golden Card on set as a proveout.
It’s quite remarkable how often people come from MILES behind to win.
I really rate the way Bob ran the endgame, on top of an endgame that is reasonably good itself. From memory, I always enjoyed the way he pointed struggling contestants at the topic material of the question that he was about to ask, off the clock, before he asked it on the clock. Considerable technical merit marks for getting through fifteen questions very cleanly within a minute, too, even with the stop-and-go.
Possibly a more interesting question: would it still work in this day and age; can you imagine the sort of prize that you’d want to give away these days that has seven letters? (PORSCHE? RENAULT? CARAVAN?) Alternatively, could you have – say – have a hidden 5 followed by four hidden zeroes, with players winning the prize that they spell out, so that prizes that could be won could be £0, £00, £000, £0000, £5, £50, £500, £5000 or a jackpot £50000. Winning not just zero pounds but zero thousand, zero hundred and zeroty-zero pounds would be funny, once.
The 50k idea sounds like the $10,000 Dash bonus round from The Money Maze.
Honestly I think the Wonder Wall shows that you can still ‘get away’ with giving away holidays as prizes.
953k (4%) for OC last night. Won’t do rest of ratings today as I’m on a train and too lazy to type them up on my phone, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Cheers Paul. Just out of interest, do you know how Bob’s Full House is doing for Challenge? I have literally no idea what sort of number they’re happy with in that slot.
No idea. We don’t get Challenge ratings I’m afraid. Come to think of it I can’t think of any companies I’ve worked for which got them included in their ratings reports.
No problem, thanks anyway.
It doesn’t appear in the channel’s top ten but they have said on Facebook it’s the highest rated show of the day.
Given that we were up against Masterchef, I think that’s pretty good.
And fireworks.
from Bother’s twitter:
“Now I believe Bonolis has just made a snide comment regarding the quiz that airs at the same time on Rai Uno.”
the contestant was very confused: she was afraid that she got a “shock” in her roll, whatever she meant by that. the “Shock” is a round of L’Eredità, the Rai Uno quiz.
Bonolis joked “yes… but first let’s check this roll, then we’ll play the Guillotine”
and then some risque comment about putting a “roll” into a guillotine
sometimes Bonolis threatens
to switch to L’Eredità because it much quieter.
“but… THIS never happens to Carlo Conti!”
Ha! Excellent! I picked out certain words (I know L’Eredita) but always helps to have the context.
I’m rather pleased to note that the UK Cable Corp. has finally decided to make both S4C and BBC Alba available right across the UK. (There’s also S4C With Audio Description, which might be the most niche thing ever.)
This is particularly good news for game show fans with cable, as it means we can see such shows as and without resorting to rectangular cuboids of dubious provenance.
And by “game show fans”, I probably mean “me”.
Great spot.
Y Lifft is OK, I watched an episode on Clic a little while ago. It’s basically a show built around minigames played on those electronic tables on The Krypton Factor, apparently only working slightly better.
History Channel in the US appears to be doing a pilot for The Great Egg Race…
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/history_casting_for_game_show_fOIGUDde01v0vSJXN8kslI