Happy Bit Between Christmas and New Year! I’m preparing to hand my notice in after winning lifechanging amounts of money (about £500) tipping Mrs Brown’s Boys to top the Xmas Day overnights, as could have you (and indeed some of you did!) if you heard me banging on about the price on Twitter. Don’t forget the inaugural Bother’s Bar Monthly Poker Open is Sunday January 5th, costing $5.50 to play (but a single re-buy and add-on is available), you can buy in now, all the details can be found here.
For now, Challenge’s First Ever Eps weekend approaches. It’s a bit liberal with the term “first ever” in some cases I think, but here’s the line-up, with particularly interesting (i.e. ones Challenge haven’t shown for ages anyway) emboldened:
Saturday 28th:
1400: Dale’s Supermarket Sweep – I might be wrong about this, Guardian’s TV listings suggest it’s the more recent version although I don’t doubt it could be the original. (Edit: It’s the original. Naughty Guardian.)
1430: Takeshi’s Castle
1500: 1 vs 100 – lottery references removed, natch.
1550: Going for Gold
1620: Bob’s Full House
1700: Whittle – We love a bit of Whittle!
1730: Fun House
1800: Ninja Warrior – Stuart Hall voiced this originally. Will it have been revoiced?
1900: Treasure Hunt – Set in Bali and very much a curio, closer to the original French show than the show most people would associate with Treasure Hunt. What’s really interesting is that it’s been given a seventy-five minute slot, so fingers crossed unedited.
2015: Celebrity Squares – Bob’s Big Box Game, this is from the 1993-6 reboot.
2045: Strike It Lucky – can’t say I remember Challenge showing the very earliest series for a while, although I might be wrong.
There is also First ever eps of Challenge’s wrestling coverage.
Sunday 29th
1400: The Crystal Maze – Yeah I know TCM is on Challenge all the time anyway. But it is brilliant. I’m convinced they’re editing out a game so it can fit the current ad break structures though.
1500: Take Your Pick – From 1992 rather than 1955 I expect.
1530: Deal or No Deal – Back in 2005. Simpler times.
1615: Wipeout – This was a great show with Paul Daniels, but certainly last time Challenge showed it is had been edited rather to fit in a three minute ad break, so not much contestant chat.
1645: 321 – From 1978! I had a mild addiction to 321 when Challenge used to repeat them in the small hours years ago, and I actually think the really old ones have a massive amount of charm to them.
1800: Stars in Their Eyes – I don’t remember this only being half an hour when it started, but that’s what it says here. Leslie Crowther hosts – I can’t believe Challenge haven’t considered Crowther’s Price is Right, it is genuinely brilliant and would fit in with their current output really well.
1830: Total Wipeout
1930: Knightmare
2000: Bullseye – from 1981 when it had weird rules.
2030: Blankety Blank – The crowning glory of the whole weekend for me, the very first episode fronted by Terry Wogan from 1979. It’s been given a 45 minute slot too, so let’s hope the only edits are for ad breaks.
It wasn’t so long ago Challenge refused to put anything on that didn’t look modern so I really hope the archive stuff is working out for them.
The Poll of 2013 will commence the following Sunday, so get your thinking caps on.
Ninja Warrior was revoiced in its entirety as part of a reversion by Sky, Jim North does the voice now. However, this is likely to be the 60 minute one off made as an anniversary special, featuring tournament 1, which was done before Stuart got arrested, but after Sky had refused to use him. It’s not great, and not particularly rare, but fair play to them for bothering to do the dub
RE Crystal Maze, I’ve been recording some of the O’Brien episodes lately; I was surprised that they still have only the two breaks in an hour’s programme – after zone 1 and after zone 3, so I don’t think you’ll miss any games.
I’m not even that much of a fan but I’m excited to see Blankety Blank, and Treasure Hunt will be an experience too, don’t think I’ve seen any Series 1 before but I understand it was a little rickety.
Erm yeah, nice one, Challenge!
Awesome. The early shows had a 4, 4, 3, 4 structure, at some point they change to 3, 3, 4, 3, but I’m sure I’ve seen Challenge repeats with 3, 3, 3, 3 – the placings of the breaks might not have changed, but they may be longer.
Or perhaps I’ve got the wrong end of the stick and misremembered.
I watched one of the Christmas shows the other day (which I still believe were an hour long – it was the one with the first ever appearance of the Ocean zone). The games went 3, 3, 4, 4, there was nothing cut from the first two zones (as in the third Richard recapped by saying they had played six games) and obviously there wouldn’t have been five games in either of the last 2 zones and yet there was an extra ad break in between the 2nd and 3rd zones. I can only conclude that each ad break was shorter in duration so that the total of the 3 breaks would equal the total of the two original, but then that seems a bit pointless.
Oh that’s interesting I had never really considered the game pattern of the Xmas specials.
The Christmas specials were a game shorter because there was slightly more filler (taking them all in to see Mumsey, the various wacky methods they used to justify giving them the prizes regardless of how they did, et cetera).
I can’t recall it but can quite believe it, it sounds like something they might have tried at one stage, and presumably got hassle for so stopped.
I believe it went to 3,4,3,3 when Tudor Pole took over (didn’t they introduce a 3rd break then too?) Some of the Series 5/6 repeats are tampered with, with ad breaks moved from their original places and even chucked in mid-zone on occasion (though again, I still don’t think any gameplay is lost).
Pretty confident when it was on C4 it was only ever two ad breaks – different telly rules back then.
I don’t think there was anything to stop them having three breaks, it’s just that they preferred to have two longer breaks for one hour shows.
My understanding is that most early series had 15 games, then 14 but in later series it was deliberately cut to 13 to allow a bit more time for constant post-game reaction. If there were a lot of lockins, a few shows only had 12 games.
I think Brig’s right on this one. The ITC allowed one-hour shows just two internal breaks during the 1990s. Three internal breaks were legalised circa autumn 2000, if I recall correctly it was a concession as part of ITV’s negotiations with the regulator to restore to 10.
The Challenge channel made edits late last decade to add in a third break, usually with sensitivity to the shows. I wish I could say the same about the new owner’s ham-fisted editing to and last Wednesday, throwing in many extra breaks, often in the most annoying places possible.
Bet on Your Baby is a thing in the Philippines. As is series 6 of The Singing Bee. Not sure which is more surprising.
I didn’t think Bet On Your Baby was completely awful, I think The Singing Bee is still going in the US on a country music channel isn’t it? Something like that.
Singing Bee was airing first-run episodes on CMT (Country Music Television) as recently as 2012.
Coincidentally, the host of both The Singing Bee on CMT and Bet On Your Baby was Melissa Peterman.
Last night’s gameshow ratings, on a fairly gameshow intensive night for ITV:
17:30 – Celebrity Mastermind: 3.45m (18.7%)
18:00 – Pointless Celebrities: 4.47m (22.1%)
18:00 – The Chase: Celebrity Special: 4.05m (20.0%)
19:00 – All Star Family Fortunes: 5.12m (24.0%)
20:00 – The Cube: Celebrity Special: 4.33m (18.8%)
Thank you Challenge for a thoroughly enjoyable first eps weekend.
Three things I noticed from the first episode of 321:
1) Dusty Bin smoking a cigarette is the end credits
2) The clues weren’t as hard as in later series (I actually managed to guess most of the prizes)
3) Overly amorous contestants getting their snog on during the closing “wave to camera”
I was amused that they offered a St. Bernard dog as a prize! How ’70s… To be fair, they did offer the nominal value of the dog (£150, probably the equivalent of a high three-digit sum today) as an alternative, plus a year’s supply of brandy.
The political jokes are also showing their age as well – obviously the references are dated, but somehow I don’t think they would fly these days.
Re: 3-2-1
According to her Twitter – Janice Long flogged the tea service she won afterwards and put it on a deposit for a house, and her ex-hubby kept Dusty Bin…
..Now, I wonder if that really was the right thing to do. I wonder how much the ceramic bin is worth nowadays? I know the Blank chequebook and pen is worth 3 figures on the black market.
Have to say – Wogan’s Blankety Blank was proably the best show of the lot (and I was dipping in and out at regular intervals over the weekend) Unlike Les (who wins in the ‘host taking apart the show’ stakes) Wogan actually had more to do, in that he was hosting the show, and, being effectivly the straight man and teeing the gags up for the panel. Ad-libbing at it’s best. Pity the contestant interviews he did were bordering on the pointless.
That said, it appeared that having all the technical scoring and front of celb lighting must have taken up all the budget, as they couldn’t afford silver paint for the scenery edging – and just used grey gaffer tape instead!
Also, anyone know (doubt if there is though) why there was never a ‘based on The Match Game’ credit at the end of the show? I recall seeing the ‘Produced by arrangement with Mark Goodson/Bill Todman Productions’ on the Dawson era shows.
Not crediting the original production is pretty unthinkable in these worldwide format years.
Happy New Year all.
Probably the same reason most of the Australian shows produced by the same production company didn’t credit the original American versions despite being carbon copies – a loophole in intellectual copyright laws.