If you’ve got nothing better to do this Valentine’s Day, Challenge TV are starting to show series one and two of Bullseye from 10pm this evening. Interesting from a historical perspective (clips I’ve seen suggest a few differences between that and the show we know).
In other Challenge TV news, Dick and Dom will be commentating over their new episodes of Takeshi’s Castle – Rebooted starting March. Amazing.
Few things;
Tomorrow night RTL are showing 5 gegen Jauch (celebrity special). There was a small discussion on this when Alle auf den Kleinen was shown earlier in the year. It’s a good watch.
Alle auf den Kleinen has been given a second episode. Applications close on the 18th of February with filming later in the year.
Prosieben have a Raab double bill on the Fri 15th/Sat 16th Mar. Quizboxen is now on a Friday (after bombing on the Tuesday), whilst Schlag den Raab is on the Saturday. The 40th ep of SdR will be celebrated with a world exclusive performance by Robbie Williams.
I’m going to find an episode of this, it sounds like Big Money Challenge Ant!
Right, I’m currently “acquiring” an episode of 5 Gegen Jauch, although it looks to be the first episode and Wikipedia suggests the show changed significantly after episode four.
I’m also getting Alle auf den Klienen.
5 gegen Jauch has changed massively. You might want to find one of the recent episodes too, just for the sake of comparison.
You might want to look at the commentary for Alle auf den Kleinen too. Few notes there.
Dick and Dom for Takeshi’s Castle – makes sense, given their work on Canadian Wipeout knockoff ‘Splatalot’. Be nice to hear them off the leash as well. Does anyone know what times these are broadcast
From March 8th is all I’ve currently seen.
10pm. Which is an odd slot for Takeshi, and for Dick and Dom for that matter.
My guess, is that it’ll be repeated in the 5pm slot.
We were all massively disappointed and sad that they’d decided not to get Craig Charles back as voice-over, but realised that maybe he wasn’t able to do it. However, he has just personally tweeted about it:
“@CCfunkandsoul: I don’t know why I was dropped from Takeshi they asked I wanted to.i said yes and never heard back”.
That is terrible. They asked him, he said YES, but then they dropped him with no word on why? I know most people here probably aren’t interested, but as a big TC fan I am really annoyed. Can’t believe that happened.
Awww, that’s awful. Craig was available and willing to do it, but then dropped with no explanation for Dick and Dom. I’m sure all the Keshiheads (myself included) will be disheartened to hear that
Reading between the lines here, I dare say his agent asked for more and they baulked at it and called their bluff. Maybe I’m wrong but it does happen – you’ll notice quite a number of lifestyle shows have begun to use rosters of presenters and voiceovers in the last few years to keep people on their toes and therefore the costs down. That said, Dave Lamb must be able to write his own cheques for Come Dine With Me.
Fun fact: when The Crystal Maze was hired out to corporate parties, Craig Charles was one of the ‘Richards’ you could hire.
Oh that’s quite interesting and makes sense, although I assumed the reason for having so many people was because it would take so long to make X amount of episodes of Buying Homes For Fun and Profit they’d need several teams to film loads concurrently.
It’s quite fun to notice that of all the Sarcastic Voiceover Competition Shows, everyone else sounds really poor in comparison to Lamb even many years on.
“I dare say his agent asked for more and they baulked at it and called their bluff”
I’m actually hoping that is what happened, as it’s the only thing that’d stop it from being quite so gutting. It’s the way that he said after agreeing he never heard back again that really wound me up. Of course there’s a chance that might not be totally true, but he does seem to be being pretty honest about it. From the sound of Craig’s message it seems as if they just suddenly decided that they didn’t want him (even though he is THE voice of TC over here) and dumped him without any warning. Sad stuff.
Challenge knew how much all the fans of TC wanted Craig back. We couldn’t have done more to try and make them see this. It’s strange that the reason this whole series is happening purely down to fan demand (I personally listed out all the unused footage that they’re creating the new episodes from), yet on one of the major parts, the voice-over, they’ve totally ignored overwhelming viewer opinion.
I’d love to know the true reason behind it, but we never will.
Which gives a follow on question – could you actually hire Mr O’Brien for your own Crystal Bash team building/corporate bash?
Or was he contracted by Chatsworth on a strictly ‘to present the show only’ basis?
I think it was possible though it would have cost you.
Fun fact: Chatsworth couldn’t afford a fee for the pilot show, so his “payment” was a plate of nice sandwiches with fillings of his choice.
Challenge clearly don’t want people to know about this. Twice it has been mentioned on their Facebook page today, and twice the messages have mysteriously disappeared…
Another Tweet from Craig today, if anyone’s interested (thanks to Andrew):
“I just wish they’d told me that they wanted to drop me as I say they made contact asked if was interested I said yes.then……..”
Well 1981 Bullseye is all sorts of bonkers.
* No Tony Green, Bowen just fiddles around with the darts.
* A target board to determine order of play and break ties.
* The first round is baffling. Answerer selects a category and a value, thrower attempts to hit it, question is what it lands on regardless. No apparent bonus for getting it in the right place. No apparent link between difficulty and money.
* Pounds for Points works differently, scores are reset, highest total earns a question worth £25, £50 or £101 based on difficulty.
Rest of the show works basically as we know it.
The ‘called shot’ in Round 1, with the lighting of the ring etc seems to betray early Bullseye as an attempt to rework some of the Golden Shot’s tropes (pick a pomme, specifically). Having not seen the end credits of this episode as yet, anyone confirm whether or not Chatsworth are credited as supporting this yet, as I wondered whether they came in as consultants to do some rule patching.
Incidentally, finally I understand why the original set had two boards, given the presence of the target board. Quite why it couldn’t have been nearest the bull on matchplay, I know not.
The credits showed Chatsworth are still credited.
Couple of other observations.
* Both revolving dartboards don’t have a oche. There is simply a spot on the floor to aim/throw from.
* For the ‘nearest to the bull’ opening round. Neither of the throwers use their own darts. It might explain why a couple of people we saw last night had their darts landing on the edge of the board. A darts weight is imporant to the thrower.
* Interestingly, the matchplay dartboard is set up correctly. For those who watches professional darts. The single 20 is always black. From the 1982 series the single 20 was beige but come 1985 the board was put back to the correct way. I think Bowen said in 1985 it was set up correctly at the contestants and the professional players request.
Big EUROVISION news.
Cascada will represent Germany. I think they may just win it. Big fan base around Europe and it’s a good song. I think Eurovision may be on its way back to Germany.
I wanted to write it here too. I think it’s also interesting to see, how different the three votings were last night. as some of the bands were able to make their fans vote for them (labrassbanda as the huge radio-voting winner), how the judges had a way different opinion (labrassbanda ->10th place, blitzkids mvt. ->first place) and how the telephone voting was the middle of both votings. My favourite was Blitzkids mvt. as they have a special, scandinavian electro sound and they are newcomers. Well known people are rarely big hits at eurovision these days (i might think of engelbert here). anyway, I don’t think Danmark or Germany will win this year…
News just in: Germany win Eurovision.
Canale5 picks up Stars In Danger, Paolo Bonolis hosts
it’s just a celebrity diving competition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DbRerknA3I
but with Paolo Bonolis commenting.
“hey, what a dive!… it sucks. go home!”
RAI counters with
Red or Black – All or Nothing.
the hosts are Gabriele Cirilli and Fabrizio Frizzi (of Wanna Bet? fame)
What I’d love to see once: Japanese TV coverage of poker.
Or, at least, coverage of poker in the Japanese TV style, with approximately seven times as many graphics as are customary on English language broadcasts, hopefully some of which would zoom across the screen at a race of knots.
At a pinch, I would take poker coverage with 1960s Batman-style pop-up graphics. DRAW! ALL-IN! DONK! DOUBLE BELLY BUSTER! ET CETERA!