Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway is back tomorrow, or from the hushed tones of Twitter and internet forums, Ant and Dec’s Second Coming of Jesus Christ Super Fun Show. Good advert.
I am massively intrigued as to how it does. Sure, the original was good fun in a lowbrow Noel’s House Party way and I have no reason to believe the new series won’t be the same (although its appeal was hugely ephemerial, you probably can’t actually remember much of it). The difference is Ant and Dec’s (particularly Saturday Night) stock has fallen over the last few years, I’m a Celebrity and Britain’s Got Talent notwithstanding, what was the last show they did that was a proper bona fide hit?
Given that they apparently stopped doing SNT not because of the ratings (it was still doing OK!) but because they were bored of it, this feels like a bit of an admission of defeat.
If it doesn’t get 7-8m+ tomorrow, everyone will point out that it’s a bit of a failure. I think that’s a bit unfair, I think if it gets 6m everyone should be fairly pleased. It’d be their biggest Saturday night hit in years.
I hope it works out for them.
However, if they are not literally giving away the prizes advertised during the show itself, now Product Placement is a thing, someone ought to be sacked.
It’s going to be very funny when it opens with 10m.
Have they advertised it at all on TV? I had no idea it was tomorrow.
They kinda had a huge “LOOK IT’S COMING BACK” campaign on before I left for 2 weeks at least…
Italian Red or Black, or Red or Black: All or Nothing as the complete title they use on Rai 1.
The whole show is basically exactly the same to the second series to the UK version but with some format tweaks to make the show longer. The set is almost exactly to the UK one but with light beams to the sides and all the games are played in the studio rather than using another studio for the larger stunts.
I swear the Italian producers had taken a joke and picked two people (Fabrizio Frizzi and Gabriele Cirilli) who are like Ant and Dec. They look similar in height and wear similar suits.
The UK version ran for 90 minutes across two parts. The Italian show lasted for 135 minutes (over 2 hours!). I did wonder how they would make it longer and simply they had more stunts in the show.
The format is the same so no luck is involved. You need to time your prediction of colour before you’re forced with one. Get it right then you get the number of points that round is worth.
The order of play was thus.
Game 1 – Played for 1 point
Game 2 – Played for 2 points
Game 3 – Played for 3 points
Bottom two scores face The Decider. If two or more lowest scores are level then they also play The Decidedr. Therefore if the lowest scorer has 1 point but two people have 2 points each then three people play. Person with lowest score on The Decider leaves the show. Seven players now remain
Game 4 – Played for 4 points
Penalty Game – Players are faced with a question. In this case. Which of the two elderly dancers can do a proper splits. Guess wrong and you lose a point off your total.
Game 5 – Played for 5 points.
The Decider played again to remove another player. Now six players remain
Game 6 (Musical act) – Played for 6 Points
Lowest two scores are eliminated automatically. Unless there is a tie then The Decider is played again. Now four players remain
Quarter Final – As with the UK show, one game played, two of each colour. Correct colour proceeds to the semi final.
Semi Final – Duel is played exactly to the UK version in series two with the same massive flaw of choosing your colour or to go first/second. Winner plays The Vortex.
The Vortex – Same rules apply. Player has to set the force of the trigger, watch the flashing sequence and time to release the ball. €100,000 if lands on the right colour. Rolls over to the next show if not.
Basically there is nothing different on their show. All the games played tonight were direct copies from the games across two series we had here with the odd tweak. Remember the balloon winch race on Coronation Street? The same game was played but with six balloons each. As stated, even the bigger stunts played tonight. Like the football target one was all done in the same studio and not in a bigger arena. Although it was called Red or Black, the competitors in the stunts were called by the Italian wording (russo or nero). There were two main observations though.
Firstly, The Decider is more brutal. On the UK version you could follow the speed on how the score goes up to 100 and back down to 0. The Decider they used is more unstable as the speed vary. The first time you might see it go fast but the second time it could go faster. This resulted with one person scoring 0. While secondly there is a difference to the design of The Vortex. Either they made the ball bigger or the hole smaller. As noticed tonight it took an age to get down the chute to land on the colour as it mostly rolled constantly around the rim of the chute. Also to note. Afterwards they had an action replay with a split screen, one camera looking down The Vortex with the other placed underneath The Vortex to see if it does land on the right colour of not.
Looking at twitter it seems the show wasn’t trending and reading the comments via the the hashtag #redorblack there wasn’t one positive comment about the show. So in a nutshell the Italians disliked it.
translating some twitter comments:
“the new frontiers of television: the BOOBCAM”
“looks to me like a mix of Teo Mammucari in primetime on Italia1, the Weakest Link, and a ’90s stunt show”
“I avoided Red Or Black like the plague. Rather than watch Cirilli and Frizzi I’d saw my thumbs off”
“Black has won, the dominant color in the future of Red Or Black”
much of the hate also comes from those who feel that the show encourages gambling.
since when online gambling was made legal in Italy, the cases of people who ruined themselves rose dramatically.
and what does the state do to fight problem gambling?
Red Or Black! -_-‘
and right before elections!
it’s like if they aired Titanic right after Schettino’s shipwreck
wow another great move by RAI!
Pino Insegno will not host Chain Reaction, and in his place…
Enrico Papi -_-‘
Right, pre-recorded bits were very strong, wish it had some other new ideas. Thought it was quite good, I’ll be bored by episode three.
Interesting post on DS with ratings from the show’s last series in 2009:
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showpost.php?p=64429312&postcount=481
14/02 – 7.33m (31.7%)
21/02 – 6.39m (27.4%)
28/02 – 5.81m (25.4%)
07/03 – 6.53m (27.8%)
14/03 – 5.17m (22.7%)
21/03 – 6.03m (26.8%)
Ok for it’s return, but i’m disappointed.
The new Ant vs Dec ‘Into the Unknown’ is basically What’s Next? (if you remember that). Challenge was pretty good, and Tyldesley was actually quite good. Also, I miss Kirsty Gallacher.
The Louis Walsh bit was the best part. Proper laugh-out-loud comedy. Looking forward to the Jeremy Kyle undercover.
There was a lot of pre-recorded stuff. The Little Ant and Dec part was ok, but it was short (pardon the pun) on comedy and the ahh… factor disappeared after the first 15secs.
The new theme is growing on me, but I still prefer the old one (for now anyway). The new set is too dark. The old set, whilst cramped, was better lit and more friendly looking. It’s basically the ‘Red or Black’ set with a bit of purple added.
It’s a shame that Grab the Ads was ditched. The premium-rate phone comp is boring, and adds nothing but a cheap feel to the show. The ‘Supercomputer’ has been nicked from Celeb Juice.
There was very little new stuff, which kinda begs the question, why did they put it on a 4-year hiatus? They said they were running short of ideas, but a lot of the stuff is rehashed from the original series.
I love Takeaway. It’s my favourite show on TV, but I didn’t like the majority of tonight’s show. Hope it picks up, but I doubt it looking at the preview.
Yep. What’s Next was always one of my fave bits so glad it’s basically returned. Interested to read theories that that bit was prerecorded, if anyone knows one way or the other do shout.
Louis Walsh was (perhaps surprisingly) really great value. The segment isn’t anything new (see The Fall Guy, Remotely Funny, Twitter was suggesting BBC3’s Impractical Jokers) but that was the first one that for me provided proper LOLs, much sillier than what’s gone before it, also hilarious when A and D got Walsh into a situation then left him to talk his way out of it.
I thought Little Ant and Dec was very strong as well, the homage to The Apprentice was neatly observed and had some good gags.
The Twitter bit at the beginning went on forever and wasn’t very funny. Such a weak opening idea, surely the point of the opening audience games are that they are quite comically revealing?
I can’t believe they aren’t giving away the ads advertised during the show itself. Might have been understandable ten years ago, I can’t think of any reason it would not be possible now.
The problem is I got tired of the old show and seeing that the new show is pretty much exactly the same as, I can’t help but think I’ll get tired of this as well.
Perfectly happy for it to be a success. I just wish it wasn’t so… lazy.
I got that feeling as well, that it was rather lazy. The Twitter item went on a bit too long. Don’t people realise that you CAN delete your tweets? And another thing, they didn’t really seem to do much with the public like they used to do, like the Jiggy Bank (which my mum loved) and that Rat Run thing they did, dressing a MOTP in a rat costume and had them run in a maze, grabbing bits of cheese. Those were clever.
I didn’t mind the Louis Walsh bit, that DID have some genuine funny moments to it. I’m also looking forward to Undercover on Jeremy Kyle’s show, not so much the Piers Morgan, Simon Cowell and 1D ones (since I can’t STAND 1D!).
I’m also not happy with changing Grab The Ads to a phone-in contest as I used to like Grab The Ads, whether it was the toadstools or the giant baby bouncer.
Overall, it did really smack of laziness especially after a 4-year break. I was expecting more from this and it just felt like more of the same from previous series but only using bits that weren’t very good, not utilising more fun stuff with the audience.
I agree. Jiggy Bank and The Mouse Trap were great. It was great surprising people that weren’t sat down at home watching the show. The games were great, and added a sense of ‘large-scale-ness’ (if you know what I mean).
Also, one of the writers on SNT worked on Impractical Jokers.
The end-number with Robbie Williams was pretty bad. He should have performed his new single, and maybe taken part in a sketch or a game. The show should always end with Win the Ads, and with the underwhelming end song, it seemed a little damp.
Danny DeVito was meant to be the guest announcer tonight, but was obviously replaced by David Walliams. Anyone know why?
Grab the Ads was one of my favourite parts of the show. The individual games, with the celebs that popped up for 5mins, were always well thought out and entertaining. It provided a bit of variety, and made the same week-in-week-out format look lively.
I agree with the your comments about it being lazy. The opener using Twitter was poorly thought out, and had no real LOL moments. The show seems very slow now.
To end, nice tribute to Ed Forsdick at the end of the show. One of the best producers in the business, who turned Takeaway into the smash it is.
In fairness, they’ve been asking for people on contestant sites recently if anyone was working on Saturday nights and would be up for playing a game, so fingers crossed that some sort of large scale OB game happens soon.
Did anybody notice they asked the Win the Ads contestant whether they want to stay (keep the prizes) or play (go for all the prizes)? Of course ITV cannot have Ant & Dec use the six lettered word starting with “g” that was used on all the previous episodes of Takeaway to annoy some bigwigs.
I did love how the audience still clearly shout GAMBLE!!!111 rather than ‘Play’ 😉
I can imagine a big reason for not giving away the ads in the programme itself is that it gives them an opportunity to cross-promote a different show from the channel (if I remember from previous series’ as well, you’ll notice that they only ever feature a show produced by ITV Studios, never something produced by an independent company).
I think that bit’s brilliant, as pretty much 100% of the time when A and D ask if they watched it, the answer is always ‘no’.
I’m not really sure why they bother asking, they say ‘no’ so often but there always seems to be a moment of awkward-ness when that happens. Even when they say ‘yes’ I believe they used to ask ‘so do you remember the adverts?’ to which the answer is invariably ‘no’.
So which Undercover are they saving to spoil The Voice’s opener? Simon Cowell with Piers Morgan or One Direction? BET NOW!
It’s back and… Just as tired as I remembered it was getting, alas. Only four years on so it feels more tired now. I think the idea is to replace Jiggy Bank/Mouse Trap with The Supercomputer though it kind of misses the point by doing so; Ant vs Dec returning to the origins of that segment (i.e. What’s Next) is nice, but hopefully will have room for the ‘smaller’ What’s Next style features (e.g. Countdown from the original set) amongst the big set pieces.
Not a clue why they’re not using PP to allow them to offer the contents of Takeaway’s ads, seeing as allegedly the reason they went for the cross promotion option in the first place was advertisement regulations preventing it…
The main reason for the whole ITV rebrand was apparently because although people watched their big shows (X Factor, etc.) not as many people could remember what channel made those shows. That’s why they’ve added a little ITV logo to the start of all their own shows and essentially mention the channel as much as possible. You might have noticed that in the opening few minutes up until A&D are on stage ITV was mentioned either out loud or the logo on screen no less than 6 times. It’s even in the opening titles twice.
Wow, people are *thick*.
Colour me underwhelmed: it did feel as though nothing had changed from 2009. Even the Challenge Ant and Dec segment felt recycled (hadn’t they abseiled down ITV Towers in the past?)
As in the past, very little happened outside the ITV Celebrity bubble – the game in part one and Win the Ads, and that’s it. ‘Twas ever thus, sadly.
Being optimistic, I hope that they’ve deliberately gone for a retro vibe in the opening edition, and will introduce some new elements in the coming weeks. Not convinced I can be bothered to make an appointment to view.
If we’re to believe the Ratings Leek leaked overnight ratings numbers, SNTV had 6.5m live, another 600,000 on +1. It took out Let’s Dance for Comic Relief (5m).
Yep, that’s what I’ve read. And that’s a good figure, with +1 the high end of my expectation. But it’s lower than the opener for the previous series, despite the hype.
Well, I enjoyed it, as it happens, certainly a hundred times more than I ever did Push The Button, mostly because I want to see Ant and Dec, not some irritating contestants. I did enjoy, as Brig mentions, “Did you watch it?” “No”, but also I noticed that Dec still referred to ITV1 is his opening spiel, presumably that bit of the script he can just recite parrot fashion.
I never thought Win The Ads was much of a closer anyway, if only because they used to dart through it so fast that you ended up with people you don’t know fluking their way to winning. Still don’t think it’s much of a game either. The product placement in the prize descriptions was quite something, I don’t watch much ITV and it took me back a bit. Not bothered about the end of Grab The Ads, the games themselves were vaguely entertaining but the viewers were so perhiperhal to it, it hardly seemed worth the bother. At least with this new thirty second phone in I can fast forward through it (I wouldn’t watch this live, too many ads).
As mentioned, the Louis Walsh concept wasn’t a new thing but it was well-executed. My favourite bit was Ant recycling “Hi, I’m Lionel Blair and I hope you are too”, which is their autobiography he says was their favourite ever line on The Ant and Dec Show. I think it was written by one D Walliams. I thought the Little Ant and Dec bit was funny too, and I’m pleased they’re able to do these comic bits of business again, I always enjoyed them. Ant vs Dec was OK, cos I always like stuff involving going outside the building, but I wish they wouldn’t do challenges when I think they’re going to die.
All in all I rather enjoyed it, there was certainly less of the blatant ITV cross-promotion that made their Christmas show the other year so unwatachable. To my mind, they would have been better off just doing a similar show but simply calling it The Ant And Dec Show, because bringing Takeaway back, no matter how much they try and sell it, looks like a backward step and an admission of failure. Like how The Graham Norton Show is blatantly just So Graham Norton. But I much prefer this Ant and Dec vehicle to any other.
Pretty much agree with the concensus on here – a good opener but a bit too heavy on nostalgia and could do with more brand new content, including IMO a replacement of the main “Win the Ads” game. Indeed it’s worth noting the new element (Get Out of Me Ear) seems to have been the most well received of the night, so a shame it looks like it’ll probably alternate with Undercover.
Not to fussed about the Jiggy Bank and Rat Run – they’re the equivalent of Panel Beaters and Noels House Party IMO.
* sofa soccer from Noels House Party that should say – i.e. features from the days when the show was past it’s best.