Oooh yes! Bonolis and Laurenti return to Italian TV tonight for another seven-night-a-week run of Avanti un Altro, one of our favourite foreign shows of the last five years. In an alternate universe Michael Barrymore’s presenting a daily UK version at 5pm on ITV and it would be massive, but seeing as that’s an alternate universe fraught with danger, and that in most other alternate universes the UK version is rubbish, perhaps it going a bit quiet in actual reality might be for the best.
We’re hoping for new characters and lots of new hilarious question types and mucking about – really having no knowledge of Italian is only a small barrier to enjoyment.
Hopefully as in the last few years the full episodes will be online and ungeoblocked. Here is the link, you will need to click on “Puntate Intere” to get to them. The shorter videos *may* be geoblocked.
In the meantime, we might have mentioned this last year, but there’s a new Youtube series of Russian fan-made show Against the Flow (let’s see how this copes with cyrillic: Против Течения ooh not bad) just started based on the AuA end game, check it out:
Against the Flow is super super slickly done BTW, probably a bit lenient in terms of repeating questions, ut other than that…
Gerry Scotti will apparently be returning to the host’s chair March 30th for a few months in a similar job share to last year.
Fun first ep, not much newness really (reggae version of Remember You Must Die, Laurenti dressing up as some sort of 18th Century courtier, slightly new graphics for the end game) otherwise everything present and correct.
And here’s a fun diversion – someone’s made a web version of 21QW:
http://www.samm.me/21q/
Again, really neat although the questions are maybe a bit on the easy side – I’ve played twice and won twice, the first time without making a single mistake.
(I like the fact we’ve managed to make the name 21 Questions Wrong propagate internationally, we only called it that because the rules boil down to “you’ve got to get 21 questions wrong.” It’s just “the final game” on television.)
it’s a close race right from the start!
L’Eredità 2,685,000/3,744,000 (18.37%/20.89%)
Avanti Un Altro! 2,245,000/3,262,000 (16.89%/19.89%)
Paolo Bonolis said that there are now 3 scrolls with a new character (probably a “good” Jinx)
Being this a Sunday episode, it was themed; and the theme was “the Odyssey”
the show was as usual filled with naughty puns. the name of the character Luca Laurenti played as could be translated with “Count Axole Foreal”
Rising Star will end in Germany on Thursday. The finale will include all the acts that made it through the auditions except for the ones who got the boot on Saturday’s episode, because this was the first round of the show’s second level (the so called “Hot seat shows”). All in all 21 acts will perform. The first one will have to reach more than 75% positive votes from the audience to lift the wall. If they succeed and reach more (e.g. 82%) the next performer will have to beat this mark. It goes on and on until aproximately midnight until everyone had a chance to reach the highest percentage.
So we could probably expect quiet an anti-climax if for example the fifth person performing becomes the winner in the end…
By the way, they don’t say this was the only season of the show yet. It is rumoured they might bring it back on Vox or Super RTL. I don’t think the rumours could become true, it’s not the kind of television Vox is looking for right now and Super RTL can’t have something that expensive, I think…
Ha ha, we’ve been saying for years this is basically how The Voice should end probably after the knockout rounds, just one big sing off.
Alright, who was the guy at the end of episode two, some kind of self help guru?
Ah OK, he’s a 90s comic.
a question for david, or anyone else who may know. Has a pictoral connecting wall ever been considered? only asking as I just attempted one with my explorer scouts, which wasn’t OVERLY difficult, and erred on the side of pop culture, only for the best team to get no groups and two connections. Is there something implicitely wrong with picture walls, or do i just have thick explorers?
In terms of the official show, there isn’t enough screen real estate to show 16 pictures successfully. I guess 16 symbols might work.
Part of the problem with pictures is identifying what key word the picture is representing – e.g. is that picture of Ronnie Barker representing shopkeeper, actor, Barker, Porridge, comedian…
Monday Ratings
Nothing significant. DOND gets almost twice as many viewers when Tipping Point isn’t on as when it is.
BBC One
Bargain Hunt 1.99 (36.1%)
Pressure Pad 0.67 (12.0%)
Flog It! 1.77 (18.7%)
Pointless 2.99 (23.1%)
BBC Two
Two Tribes 1.18 (7.7%)
Eggheads 1.11 (6.6%)
Celebrity Antiques Road Trip 1.35 (7.1%)
University Challenge 2.55 (11.8%)
Only Connect 1.90 (8.6%)
ITV
Dickinson’s Real Deal 0.72 (12.5%)
Who’s Doing the Dishes? 0.82 (9.9%)
The Chase 2.39 (19.4%)
Channel 4
Countdown 0.43 (7.0%)
Deal or No Deal 0.74 (9.0%)
Come Dine With Me (R) 0.85 (6.9%)
Thanks Paul.
I know it’s early days, but I find it baffling that OC manages to lose a quarter of its lead-in.
Some nice touches on that video. Let’s hope the winner enjoys his 62 pence winnings.
Boring Ratings
Maybe the decision to move Pressure Pad was a touch premature.
BBC One
Bargain Hunt 1.91 (35.4%)
Pressure Pad 0.75 (14.9%)
Flog It! 1.52 (17.6%)
Pointless 2.71 (22.6%)
BBC Two
Two Tribes 1.12 (7.4%)
Eggheads 1.13 (7.0%)
Celebrity Antiques Road Trip 1.43 (7.8%)
ITV
Dickinson’s Real Deal 0.64 (12.4%)
Who’s Doing the Dishes 0.84 (11.2%)
The Chase 2.29 (20.1%)
Channel 4
Countdown 0.39 (6.9%)
Deal or No Deal 0.62 (8.2%)
Come Dine With Me (R) 0.70 (6.1%)
on the thrid episode of AUA! one of the categories was “L’Eredità” and they even played the L’Eredità theme!
Bonolis “but…can we do this on AUA?”
Salvati “it’s part of a cultural excange”
You see I love this sort of thing, I’d love a UK show that wasn’t afraid to poke fun at (or even just mention) other shows that might be on at the time on the same or other channels, the gags would translate pretty directly and it’d be pretty universal. Aggressive entertainment.
French news.
Rising Star starts on Thursday on M6 – and M6, going down month after month in audience figures, is betting big on it , there’s rumors of a 1M€ budget per episode (which would be an all-time high for a show on the channel, and as much as an episode of The Voice on TF1)
The set is REALLY nice (https://twitter.com/m6/status/511528248883544065) but with those failures of the German version and the ITV version cancelled.. that’s quite alarming.
A Prendre ou A Laisser (DOND) returns in October, same 5.50pm timeslot as Le Maillon Faible currently airing on D8 – top three : 25K/50K/€100K, but with a box similar to Box 23 (double/nothing happens/lose all) at the end, and Banker’s Gamble. Here’s a picture of the boxes ! https://twitter.com/Nico_lepioni/status/511936005579243520
That looks basically horrible, although I see the old notary is back!
Yup, Jean-Louis is back. Well, it’s D8, they’re still a medium-sized channel and they can’t afford a huge prize – currently, Maillon Faible is averaging 500-550k viewers, which is quite good for them at this timeslot, even beating the mediocre Face a La Bande on France 2 and usually gives €3-5K per game out of a €45K jackpot.
Nearly forgot : prize money is split with an home viewer for this new run of APOAL (as in the original series), so it’s even cheaper that you would had thought of 🙁
I can just about live with the prizes, the point of the show is that they scale, but those gold boxes? Bleurgh.
Sad to hear Face a la Bande isn’t doing very well, it looked like quite a jolly take on WWW?/Million Dollar Mind Game when I saw it.
Didn’t took the time to comment on the Face à la Bande post, but in fact it’s just the rip-off of a very popular radio show called Les Grosses Têtes, airing since 1977 on RTL, where the listeners could send questions, trying to stump a team of funny and knowledgable people in order to win a cash prize … seems familiar, no ?
Yesterday, Face à la Bande got 429k/ 4.4%, which is really bad for France 2’s problematic 6pm timeslot
It does occur to me that Chris Evans, in his pomp, had the right combination of mucking about and interacting with characters to have been able to host this really well. Not sure he quite has the public sentiment on his side to a sufficient extent any more, even if he is top-rated morning DJ. (This isn’t at all an original suggestion – for instance, it was made by the late, lamented Travis eighteen months ago.) Perhaps Mel and Sue are in the right place at the right time these days.