Show Discussion: Four Rooms

By | April 29, 2013

Weekdaily, 1:45pm,
Channel 4

Four Rooms is one of those shows which is not massively massively popular, but rather a hit with the people who do actually watch it, so it will be interesting to see how it copes as a daily prospect, and without arguably it’s biggest personality in terms of Jeff Salmon.

In Four Rooms people bring intriguing objects in to sell to the four dealers (three regulars and a rotating spot, so it’s been suggested). They can visit the dealers in any order, but if they don’t like the offer on the table they can’t go back if they walk out. They can also not sell to any dealer if they don’t take any of the offers. It’s quite good fun, and the items are usually quite interesting (in fact some of the interest in the daily show will be seeing if they’ve found enough interesting objects and/or people to fill a 40 episode (I think) run).

Tamara Beckwith off of The Big Breakfast is one of the new dealers, so that’ll be nice.

16 thoughts on “Show Discussion: Four Rooms

  1. Chris M. Dickson

    Not entirely wild about the show moving from weekly to daily and I have a suspicion that it’s a bit slower than it used to be – or, possibly, that they’re paying more attention to some items that they would have dealt with extremely quickly in previous series. (I think there were six items, whereas previous episodes had 5-7 full items and a handful more dealt with extremely quickly.) The set is slightly different, though not worse. Not quite convinced about some of the arty direction and the darkened corners of the screen… very Instagram.

    Nevertheless, parts of the first episode represented the show at its best, and the deals where the outcome is even very slightly more than “here’s £x for it” are the most interesting. I don’t think it can be quite as interesting as a daily show as it was a weekly one, but if all the episodes are this good, it’s easily good enough, and a very strong contender for the top five returning-or-original shows of the year.

    There’s part of me that doesn’t want to have to follow two hour-long daily shows, especially when FFWD’ing isn’t an option here like it is with 5MtaF!

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      Thre were actually six items in that first episode.

      Really enjoyed it – new dealers so far are good value, and I love the fact they’ve all got slightly different moral compasses and personalities as it makes for an intriguing show.

      As ever, always think it’s a shame we don’t find out how much the dealers flip them on for.

      I think there’s too much watchable stuff in the daytime at the moment, and I’ll end up not watching any of it.

      Reply
  2. Steven

    So five consecutive game shows for C4 daytimes, wow.

    I have never seen the show but recorded this out of curiosity. I’m not sure I’ll watch every episode but I thought it was really entertaining; I liked it far more than I thought I would and will deffo be back.

    It seems such a waste in that slot which was getting well under 200k with the Superscrimpers thing that came before it. Hardly surprising though, given where they put Five Minutes to a Fortune.

    Reply
  3. Greg

    Forgot to record episode 1, but based on todays show have to say i really enjoyed it. But then again liked the primetime show. However i can’t understand why it is rerun on 4/7 at 15:00 rather than giving it a more primetime slot. It is almost like Channel 4 have decided the show will fail before even airing it.

    When i heard the show was joining the daytime line up, i though it would air at 5pm. Even up against Pointless and The Chase it is something different than offering a quiz and could have built an audience. I don’t think at 13:45 it will ever find much of an audience, which is a huge shame as it is surely a quality show which deserves better than its timeslot suggests.

    Reply
    1. Chris M. Dickson

      The BBC 1 quiz at 1:50 after Neighbours used to be A Thing, so I’m tempted to wonder whether both Four Rooms and 5MtaF might do better if Channel 4 swapped their timeslots. Unfortunately it’s 5MtaF’s last week and next week it’s back to boring old Come Dine With Me, so we shall probably never know.

      Reply
      1. Brekkie

        I agree – far too many antiques shows on during the day which obviously have an appeal so airing Four Rooms opposite the big quizzes would make much more sense.

        Sadly though thanks to some very poor decisions at C4 (and not helped I guess by some good decisions at the BBC and ITV) they’ve gone from being very strong in daytime to very weak – and even when they have strong programming they’re not giving the best shot when it comes to scheduling.

        Reply
  4. Chris M. Dickson

    Andrew Lamberty is the other Four Room dealer who hasn’t made it from series two to series three, but he has his own show on BBC 2 now. I think it’s a three-off on BBC 2 this week. Essentially Lamberty buys and sells and gives the proceeds to small charities. It’s very active and mobile in a way that Four Rooms isn’t, but a shade predictable and a shade awkward in places. The three episodes might end up being a bit similar – I suspect they’ll all end up at Lamberty’s charity auction – but the travels along the way should be different enough and interesting enough to keep things going. The music is somewhere between Four Rooms and The Apprentice. Enjoyed the first episode enough to keep watching, I reckon, though three episodes is about right; glad to see Lamberty back, glad to see the show being made.

    It would be a stretch to describe this as being at the game show end of the auctions/antiques show spectrum.

    Reply
      1. Chris M. Dickson

        I watched the other two today. Fuzzy feelgood stuff. The pattern of the show is fairly strong, which might point towards the show becoming predictable, but there’s enough variety in the results of the sections of the journey, and the adventures along the way, that episode three was worth watching even after episode two. Three in a row is very strange scheduling. I would tune in to a second series, but random Bank Holiday specials might work even better still. Lamberty is not a totally natural TV presenter but I do think better of him for putting this series on and going to the effort involved, which is presumably a part of why he went in for it.

        I had a look at Jeff Salmon’s Twitter feed today. He talks about Four Rooms and the other dealers to a fair extent but if he mentioned Andrew’s show then I didn’t recognise any mentions of it.

        Reply
  5. Greg

    I see that Channel 4 have moved the last 16 episode of the run back to primetime, Fridays at 8pm a lead in for Million Pound Drop.

    I still think 5pm would be a good slot for this show. I am glad they have done the right thing rather than what they did with The Intern. First moving it to 11pm on channel 4 then banishing the final 2 episodes to 4/7.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      I’m not sure how much moving there has been, it was always meant to be 2×15 ep runs and 8 primetime episodes.

      Reply
  6. Greg

    Ah, my TIVO had last nights billed as episode 15, with next weeks to be episode 16. I thought only 30 episodes had been commissioned, but it makes sense if this was always intended for a short primetime run.

    I thought maybe the “move” was a sign of change coming to CH4 daytime.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.