So new Catchphrase. It’s OK! It’s like someone’s done a tracing of the original but with thick marker pen, so it’s lost some of the definition but is still basically Catchphrase.
Hey, why not “join the discussion” as they’d say on BBC News 24 or something, we’re having a chat about it here.
One thing that strikes me as being slightly odd about the show is its fascination of mazes in it’s opening title sequences despite the show having nothing to do with them, the original of which still is the best:
A-maze-ing.
A-maze-ing.
AXED.
I was honestly hoping that last one would be the clip of Nick Weir when he falls down the stairs.
Also I think 3D Mr Chips looks better in that second one than he does nowadays. What happened, Mr Chips?
Incidentally: no maze in the US titles, AXED AFTER ONE SERIES.
Someone has uploaded the premiere of the US version for your interest. It looks… well, rough around the edges, and that the UK producers thought long and hard about our version first. It’s cute to see crossover between the catchphrases in the US premiere and the UK revival premiere.
The second biggest difference is that there are no cash prizes for individual main-game catchphrases and that the money in the Super Catchphrase bank goes up, not down, over time. I wildly hypothesise that they’re trying to emulate the neatly-designed part of Wheel of Fortune whereby it’s in people’s interest to delay the solution as long as possible and so viewers at home can solve it before the contestants appear to do so and thus feel smart. It doesn’t really work here because (a) there’s no guarantee that the same contestant will get several tries in a row, thus making it much more likely that you will end up juicing the pot for the other contestant, noting the interest of the essential bankrupt / lose-a-turn spaces on the wheel in WoF and (b) spinning a wheel before a guess takes a few seconds whereas the whole main-game catchphrase routine is very slow in comparison. It might almost work better – though probably not as well as the UK evolution – if there were a motif of “control of the game” and the contestant winning the first main-game catchphrase kept the privilege of first guess each time.
The absolute biggest difference is that the music is rubbish. Forget Roy Walker, Ed Welch was the real reason why people kept watching… and his absence in the revival might be the reason why the ship sinks.
Well it’s certainly not tanking just yet, it beat the mighty Countryfile last night.
I was having a Twitter chat with someone (hello Ben if you’re reading) on how Ed Welch’s Catchphrase incidental music gave him nightmares. I had never really thought about it like that before.
I’ve always found the Wheel of Fortune mechanic a bit weird, I think, in that the easier it gets the easier it is to accumulate from it.
There are quite a few eps of US Catchphrase up on Youtube.
the only memorable thing of the Italian edition was Tiziano Ferro as a contestant before becoming a famous singer.
Here’s the new Run For Money ep…interesting side missions in this one..
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTQzMDE0NDYw.html
The Australian version.
Launched in 1997 with the UK maze titles from the Carlton era. Axed in 1998.
Brought back in 1999 with new maze titles exclusive to their version. Axed in 2001.
Brought back for a third time in 2002 but with new titles that doesn’t feature a maze. Axed for good in 2003.
Been watching some of the older UK and the US episodes- it seems like early on a lot of them were word-based similar to these:
http://www.pleacher.com/mp/puzzles/miscpuz/wackie66.html
I guess because of the limitations of the computer animation at the time- watching later episodes (and the new series) it’s almost entirely picture based…it’s interesting to see how they progressed over the years..
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