Sundays 7pm,
ITV
Unusual for us to do this for a documentary series, but this looks like it might be quite good and has had various people we know working on it.
The nation’s sweetheart Bradley Walsh takes a four-part look at the history of the game show featuring interviews with legends and contemporaries, clips and recreations.
It’s primetime ITV so likely to err on the side of entertaining rather than BBC4 dry factual but don’t let that put you off, it’s quite exciting that this has got made in the first place.
So you promote a show called ‘Come On Down’ with a picture of the puzzle board from Wheel Of Fortune. Another bit of confused thinking from ITV.
Despite that – I’m hopefully that there will be at least ‘ahh I did’nt know that’ moment coming along at fairly frequent intervals during every episode…
..and they don’t wheel out the huge porkie Leslie Crowther used to spin in interviews, that he came up with the Come On Down line when he saw the first contestants name to be called was Mary Brown and as it rhymed it stuck. The harsh light of You Tube shows otherwise…
You’ve got your story muddled up there. William G. Stewart wanted Crowther to use the same Come On Down line from the US show because it was essentially part of the format, but Crowther wasn’t keen because (if I recall) his wife Jean thought it sounded too brash – Crowther said half-jokingly “You’re only my producer… she’s my wife!”. But when they went to a take, Crowther said the phrase like a pro.
Stewart DID choose Mary Brown to be the first contestant because he liked the rhyme. But the woman refused to stand up and go down to the stage! So they edited it out and went with another player instead.
Duly corrected and noted. Thanks for ironing out the creases with that, David.
I had it in the back of my mind that Leslie was opening himself up to letters starting “Well, Mr Crowther on my holiday in the states this year I came across…”
Hopefully, there is an interview with William G. in the show, and we see the TPIR bomber jacket he used to wear at recordings on the studio floor..
“So you promote a show called ‘Come On Down’ with a picture of the puzzle board from Wheel Of Fortune. Another bit of confused thinking from ITV.”
It’s not a documentary about specifically The Price is Right though is it, the name and that title card to me is just meant as a homage to classic gameshows, it makes sense to reference more than one show from the genre. ‘Come On Down’ is separate from the Wheel of Fortune board which features the subtitle, ‘The Game Show Story’.
Seeing Ant & Dec listed as “Hosts of Poker Face” made me unconditionally happy.
Well that was fun enough, enjoyed the clips of One Out of Eight and William G Stewart warming up the crowd.
Two clips of The Colour of Money in that hour. Two too many if you ask me.
But it was better than I feared it might be – Bradley’s probably the right host for it. Surprised Sir Bruce got involved if I’m honest given his disdain for the genre these days – how many interviews has he done in recent years where he’s said ‘my one regret is that I did too many game shows’? Which always seemed a bit disrespectful to me given that it kept him in work for a very long time, particularly in the 1980s and 90s when he probably wouldn’t have been given anything else, but that’s by the by.
I expect ITV are paving the way to revive The Colour of Money with a big fanfare as ‘the return of a *classic*’ within the next three years.
Well I think at least three episodes of Colour of Money got more viewers than last week’s episode of international mega hit Rising Star got *in America*. And America’s massive. So that makes Colour of Money an international mega *MEGA* hit, by my reckoning.
Off to update my CV…
😉
If only you had the foresight to pitch it to Keshet first!
Bring back Pokerface! At least Ant and Dec were credited as hosts of that rather than Red or Black?
Bradley certainly is the right host for this- he seems to be very interested in the subject. Nice looking set for the new Celebrity Squares too..
WHERE WAS THE MIDAS TOUCH?
“Bring back PokerFace”.
What an excellent idea.
I liked PokerFace (or as ITV continuity once billed it, Poke Face), but there needed to be an another element to it. As it was, it was just “claim I had a good round” x 5. Maybe you should have claimed a given number of right answers, and then – a bit like liar’s dice – the other players could choose to doubt you.
Interestingly, I’m writing a similar format, wherein one contestant has to predict the progresses of five contestants exactly in order to win the rolling jackpot. Just my experiment on the traditional Q&A format.
Speaking from the other side of the Atlantic, it seemed as if (at least) tonight’s episode focused almost entirely on shows that aired during the evening in the UK, although just about every one of those formats had their birth in the five-a-week U.S. daytime world.
It looks like we’re getting at least some of The Chase next week. But surely they won’t do an hour on quiz shows without Countdown? Or — especially with David’s excellent consultancy — Only Connect!
Suppose it passed an hour..
Could have done with slightly more talking head contributions from those behind the camera on the featured shows, and less from show hosts talking about watching other show hosts at home on TV.
But enough variety of clips (and most if not all from original broadcast tapes rather than You Tube – although Les Dawson’s first Blankety Blank footage did have an odd washed out tinge to it) and the obvious enthusiasm of Brad swept you along.
Should have interviewed Warwick Davis at the MC’s podium on the Cleb Squares set though. At times because of the angle needed for the height issues it looked like Brad was interviewing one of the floor uplighters.
Absolutely, I’d much rather hear production stories from producers who are likely to have the best ones, but I fear the Sunday ITV audience would much rather have familiar faces.
Also I quite enjoyed Janice Long’s story about selling the silverware she won on 3-2-1 for about two grand, which I hadn’t heard before.
2.92m (15.0%)
I was about to say this from @TVRatingsUK
“ITV’s most watched programme of Sunday was part 1 of Come on Down! The Game Show Story (2.97m/15.4%). #TheZoo averaged just 2.28m/10.3%.”
Liked this quite a lot. Suspect it may play better with older and more nostalgic audiences, possibly in line with modern game show demographic expectations.
Watching this on ITV Player, there was a Brian The Robot’s comparison site ad just after the 3-2-1 segment. Marketing tie-up for a revival waiting to happen for a show where the riddles are designed to leave you confused.com….
Interesting thread! Look out for me over the next couple of weeks on this show!
http://www.davidstjohn.co.uk/blog2014.html
Unless you’re not ‘bothered’……. ;o)
You wait one week for a mention of The Midas Touch then you get two at once.
Just watched this second show- great stuff! Looks like my bits will be on next Sunday’s show
CLANG – first noticeable factual error. Mastermind has not had 2 presenters as stated. It has had 3.
Magnus, and Humphries as stated, but Clive Anderson hosted a revival on Discovery. And somewhere in my mind, didn’t Peter Snow host a radio version for Radio Four?
However, another breezy romp with good clip research to find the Eggheads and Chasers before they were ‘famous” made another Sunday evening zoom by..