Well hello there.
Seemingly no audience members wanting to write up the PtB recording, which is fair enough, but tonight we see the thing as intended. ITV1, 7:45pm.
I predict it will be fun albeit not terribly groundbreaking. I’ll edit some opinions in here later.
Alright then, foir me this a firmly 7/10 show, which if you read the internet is about five more than the average person would have given it. But:
- Those bits where Ant and Dec surprised the families was a lot of fun. Yes it was a little bit like The Moment of Truth, or at least the ones when Cilla could be bothered to see the families at any rate.
- It’ll All End In Tiers was absolutely epic. More shows should have quite tense timed skill games with the theme from Please Sir! in the background.
- The sorting the post and Simon Cowell’s teeth games were perfectly adequate, although the games with the cash clock are more fun than games with a fixed penalty.
- Yes the yodelling thing (and indeed the entire show’s set-up) was a bit naff and straight from The Generation Game. But The Generation Game hasn’t been on for years and apparently people are clamouring for phamily phun, so why not? I am definitely not of the persuasion that old things are better because they are old. Also I am intrigued by the idea of “non-viewer involving pap” – the idea that successful gameshows have to have great playalongathome value is one of the greatest fallacies of the last twenty years or possibly more.
- It did seem there were a lot of adverts towards the end, that is because there was almost twenty minutes before the first one.
- Originally I thought the endgame was unbelievably cheap – five-player Simon paying out the first digit for three notes, first two for five all the way to all five digits for 11. I didn’t think this was going to pay-out very big very often (when was the last time you tried memorising an 11 note tune?). One mistake allowed. However, @ThatBenBaker on Twitter suggested to me that if everyone just concentrates on their own notes and the positions of those notes then it should be possible. I was quite surprised to see the jackpot won this evening.
- And thanks to someone who was at the recording for pointing out that apparently the winning family were given an extra lifeline where they could listen to any one tune again. Why did they edit that out?
- I quite liked the disclaimer gags on the voting audience and salt and pepper shakers.
- Ronnie Corbett’s voiceover in post didn’t work at all, if I’m being honest.
Basically it’s fine and I hope it does OK for them.
In other news, I’m told a question was edited out of Innit this evening. Does anyone know why? A question about Chile or earthquakes perhaps? Edit: Alexander MacQueen apparently, thanks Gary.
“fun albeit not terribly groundbreaking”
It’s the new “Fair, but not necessarily just…”!
I’m hoping that this show is at least as good as a format I was developing called Push de Botton where members of the public push around the writer and broadcaster Alain de Botton.
I’ve not really got beyond that bit, but if I was a commissioner I’d be looking into buying it up right now on the strength of that premise.
*Does ‘call me’ hand gesture*
According to a 3am interview in the Daily Mirror, one game will feature a giant sized head of Simon Cowell where you have to count his teeth, which is constantly moving.
Speaking of games…
http://www.nbc.com/minute-to-win-it/how-to/index.shtml
(most of them have readable descriptions- all of them have video descriptions, though the UK probably can’t view them)
Contestants don’t know they’re on until Ant and Dec show up at their house ala Moment of Truth. I approve.
This is alright so far!
£1,000 every 7.5 seconds for game one, in case you were wondering.
Well Mr Greg Scott’s review of the first 17 minutes is as follows:
“Screaming, loud, uneventful, non-viewer involving pap. ”
And I have to agree with him – yes, they’ve not shyed away from comparisons with The Generation Game – but to have the first game of the series on a conveyor belt is handing the critics cannon fodder on a silver platter.
Taking 12 minutes to get to the reveal of that first game was also excruciating.
This is rubbish tat, just like all ITV shows these days. It’s a ripoff of Generation Game, the audience were screaming like monkeys, the families were freaks, it took ages to get to the first game, it was not funny in the slightest.
Another terrible, awful show on ITV like everything else.
I AGREE ANT AND DEC ARE RUBBISH AND NOT FIT FOR THE MONEY THEY GET ITV HAS DROPED ITS STANDERDS ALOT , ANT AND DEC WHAT A JOKE ENTERTAINMENT IN ITS LOWEST FORM
Well this won’t be paying out any massive jackpots any time soon…
I think that was a nice figure
Of course not – it’s on ITV, and nearly every new show on ITV these days is cheap. The channel is struggling financially as not enough people are watching its awful shows.
This is basically a Takeaway cheap replacement for Ant & Dec. It’s not good at all. I’d much rather watch Eggheads.
While it took forever to get to the first game, yes, I didn’t feel it was that bad once it got going.
…But, dear hell, it’s straight out of the 80s but with a 1999 prize budget. Right down to the hair styles Ant and Dec are sporting for it.
And… £50k Simon Says?
Ant and Dec’s other gameshow- Pokerface- was much better. That was the last decent gameshow ITV had, and they axed that for some bizarre reason!
Yea the game took awhle to get started. I agree with the moment of truth feel. I hope they change the game each week. I also prefer it when the cash kept going down rather than a set amount (5k)
There was a nasty gameplay flaw at the end of round 3 – where £2k still had to run off the losing side’s clock, but they were obliged to play on until their total matched the other team’s – so they sort of shrugged their shoulders and half-heartedly carried on until it came to an end. That needs sorting – pronto.
End game was alright, but playing to add digits to a prize fund reeks of dozens of European quiz formats of the last decade, and the whole thing was just a bit…weird, veering from the banal to the mildly-diverting to the ridiculous.
Do you mean round four, and if so wasn’t the point that they could still finish with more money than the team who did it fastest?
I’m not convinced ‘keeping playing until you know which team has actually won the show’ is a flaw myself, think of the money as time, and the team who finishes all the games fastest wins – With the two middle games being for time penalties rather than against the clock.
Also, apparently there was a question edited out of Innit tonight. Anyone know why?
The question was to do with Alexander McQueen. I guess it’s too soon for light-hearted banter on that subject.
That said, a question featuring Alexander McQueen was used on Eggheads a few days after his death and some whinged on Digital Spy, but as you pointed out, IItWI is more a light hearted show than Eggheads. The announcer guy also mentioned about the edit before the show began, so we got the message at least twice. As shown, the prize fund jumped from £30K to £40K.
I watched Push the Button before IItWI (folks watched Let’s Dance) and agree with messers Bother and Scott. It’s okay but features non viewer pap. Not one my parents would enjoy but at least they are trying something different than producing yet another Takeaway.
I was at the recording on Thursday and they edited a big thing out from the final game. As well as the 1 mistake lifeline, the family were they were allowed 1 lifeline where they could hear the sequence again. The family used that lifeline to listen to the 11 not sequence again!
I’m surprised that the show didn’t mention it. The crowd experience was quite good to be honest, and Ant & Dec are really nice chaps. But it’s not something which I’ll want to go see again.
Oh wwo, that’s MASSIVE actually, thanks Samantha.
I’m pretty sure there was fakery on the show: not the first time on an Ant and Dec show, may I remind you.
On the wedding cake round, when the money clock gets to 56,700 the shot changes to show the red family sofa, whilst in the background you can clearly see the red family just adding the THIRD layer of the cake.
At 56,100 the shot is changed to show the blue cake, and in the background the red cake suddenly has FOUR layers. This clearly indicates an edit, BUT the countdown clock just counts down normally throughout the entire game, and has not been equivalently editted.
Is this proof the whole countdown money shots may be fake? Typical ITV. I’m going to complain to Ofcom regarding this.
I love you, Joe.
It’s quite simple. The clocks count down in studio at £100 per sec fair and square. The round goes on for ever, so they have to edit it down for telly. They then speed up the money graphic to match the edit. They then hope that shots of the families will be at times that roughly match the speeded up money graphic. A couple of shots don’t. No harm done though eh?
Hmmm… well, they should tell the public in advance or have a little message at the end of the show saying “the show was edited for entertainment purposes” like what they do at the end of American shows. I felt misled.
Never mind anyway – I’ll be watching In it to win it next week!
But the British don’t need disclaimers like that, because generally speaking we’re not bloody idiots.
You mean Who Dares Wins 😉
So, they axed Beat The Star because of it’s high production costs, and yet this is recorded in the same Pinewood studio, and has more set changes (including fly drops) than BTS – which has to bang up the budget per show than Schlag Den C-list star. Doesn’t make sense.
Other minor gripes.
Don’t advertise the £100,000 as the main prize. You can’t win the full amount…
Calm the audience down..
Wot no phone competition to get back some of the production costs? Or are Maltesers shovelling so much cash to ITV, they don’t need one?
Hello? – are the production team so paranoid about being visited in the middle of the night by the internal truth police, that they have to put a caption on the screen reminding the thick and the stupid that it is 100 member of the audience that are voting.
End game is obviously geared towards the slightly amusing prospect of a family winning the massive sum of around £5. But, if Gallowgate are going to persist with the ‘Dave’ premise, keep the coloured balls graphic on screen after the demonstration and light them brighter when they perform the sequence. Makes the game easier to follow.
A none brain exerting way to spend under an hour – but not better than that at the moment.
6.5 out of ten.
That is probably because Gallowgate didn’t need…
A) OB for the any games outside the studio.
B) Hiring the vechicles, diggers and designer for the mud course.
C) Scaffolding and ropes and safety harness for the high balancing games.
D) Recuiting seven/eight well know celebrities compared to tonight, hiring a unknown yodel singer that would’ve cost pittance.
the list goes on.
I will suspect Push the Button’s budget is way cheaper to the £1 Million per episode what Beat the Star had. I’m still curious to know how much it cost them in 2008 to record the show in Germany.
Are you sure Beat The Star cost ITV £1 million?? Sounds made up to me.
Even top British drama doesn’t cost £1m these days!
It was mentioned last year when it was axed.
BBC1 pulls drama off at £750k per hour for their utter top tier (that’s the one off specials, Doctor Who gets something like £600k per hour iirc.), but iirc non-BBC dramas tend to cost more – Primeval was on over £1m per hour, iirc.
Also I would like to add The X Factor live shows also cost £1 million per show.
So… ITV’s top unscripted shows cost more than BBC’s top scripted shows…
…and the newspapers complain about the BBC’s spendthrift ways?
Good grief. No doubt Weaver will pick up on this one sooner or later.
but X Factor’s £1 Million production cost per show can gather nearly double the ratings (and get loads of ad revenue) compared a show like Ashes to Ashes with 3/4 of the budget.
How much did the additional £6m that got pumped into The X Factor this year increase it’s ratings?
(Oh, I may have made a slight mistake earlier – Primeval had a budget of £6m for S3, which I think might have been longer than S1 and S2 at 13 episodes. 40 minute hours due to it being ITV and you come to about £0.7m per hour)
Basically, yes.
“the idea that successful gameshows have to have great playalongathome value is one of the greatest fallacies of the last twenty years or possibly more.”
Indeed. I’m pretty sure The Crystal Maze utterly disproves such a notion.
And, how long did 50/50 run on CBBC, again?
122 episodes, according to UKGS. Or about half as long as Raven’s lasted so far.
As for the show under discussion, it really is the new Generation Game, asking members of the family to do mildly silly things and finishing with a test of memory. Decent enough, but not appointment-to-view, so a bit like Takeaway.
I did think the guinea pigs were cute….probably wouldn’t work here in the US, but I’ll probably keep getting it (BTW- anyone hear when The Cube UK is scheduled to come back? Is it after this series is done, or later?)
Well the first series went out with the auditions for The X Factor, so it wouldn’t surprise if they did that again this time round.
The Guinea Pigs were probably the strangest visual pun I’ve seen on mainstream television for some time. Saying that, they were adorable.
I have to be honest about Push the Button. I freaking loved it. Not smart, not exactly complex but everyone involved is clearly having a laugh I was watching on my break with the workmates and everyone was enjoying it there. Not must-see by any means but like Brig said, worth watching if you’re about.
There were elements I found tedious (Length it took to get to the start of the games, for example), but, yeah, broadly agree with NJ and Brig. Enjoyable if you’re about, but not worth scheduling around watching or using the ITVPlayer, even if the ITVPlayer were actually good.
Disappointing – the first show felt like a pilot as there are so many things which should have been sorted before getting to air, and I suspect they only got half decent ratings due to a relatively weak Lets Dance for Sport Relief line up this week.
The intros went on forever and were absolutely not necessary. The first game was promising, but the whole concept of the show was lost in the second and third round. They could do with a couple of tricky dilemmas along the way too where family members are given the chance to take individual prizes by “pushing the button” to sacrifice some of their cash.
The fourth game was OK, but the end game was awful – and far too easy too with absolutely no tension and not exactly highly watchable too.
And even Ant and Dec couldn’t hold it together – they say they devised the format for someone else to present but liked it so much they took it for themselves. I suspect that even ITV, broadcaster of Michael Winner’s Dining Stars, saw how weak the format was and would only accept it with Ant and Dec as hosts.
Bring back Beat the Star. Or Poker Face. Or preferbly Duel! Better than Colour of Money though. Just.
Yes, bring back PokerFace, another Antan Dec format, and one rather better than this one.
Bring back Beat the Star. Or Poker Face. Or preferbly Duel! Better than Colour of Money though. Just.
I honestly don’t think I could summarise my opinion any better tbh
Not too sure about this one, some moments made me laugh out loud, but in the end I felt a bit disappointed. Like the Genereation Game, but not as good.
Agree with everyone about bringing back PokerFace, what an awesome show that was. Duel as well, not quite sure why either was axed, any reasons?
I thought I read somewhere on DS that PokerFace cost just too much to make, rather like Beat the Star – and I gather the same would have applied to Duel.
And with the X Factor and BGT – both of which aren’t cheap either – garnering much bigger viewing figures…
PokerFace had the biggest prize budget in British game show history on a per-hour basis I think – Millionaire always worked on £100k per hour, if I remember rightly, and The Vault made that explicit with its jackpot rules, but PokerFace had to give away £1m in every seven-episode run, and with the extra £50k chunks (only one of which was ever lost) and the bailouts over the course of the series, the overall total had to exceed £200k per hour.
As we’ve seen from earlier comments, that’s a massive chunk of the overall costs, not to mention that set can’t have been cheap.
Though it may have had something to do with the £1m jackpot. Maybe they could’ve done a ‘syndicated’ version with a smaller jackpot, like ‘Are You Smarter…’ perhaps. Not too sure how that would go down though. As for Duel, from what I can see it would cost more than £100k per hour, but maybe with a few rule tweaks that could be pushed down? I honestly don’t know, I’m just hypothesising here (is that even a word?)