BBC2, 6pm, I thought I’d put this here to keep the Zombie Apocalypse thread unsullied.
What an exciting start to the year, we’ve got 1000 Heartbeats next week and Mission: Survive on Friday. AND! I might have something especially exciting for you all at the weekend. I felt in my waters 2015 would be rather more interesting than the last few years and it’s worked out that way thus far.
In other news Four Rooms is back on C4 on Sunday at 7pm, against light entertainment behemoths Countryfile and the LIVE FINAL of Get Your Act Together. Jeff Salmon’s back.
My Twitter timeline right now is 50% the official Two Tribes account RTing excitement of its return and 50% the Eggheads Producer RTing irritation Eggheads has been bumped to 6:30.
WHO WILL WIN THIS EPIC BATTLE?
Two Tribes was good although Richard’s not quite buying the dramatic pauses in the endgame I don’t think.
Sad they cut Richards intro 🙁
Monday has a solid block of 5 or 6 gameshows now. Spread the love, people!
Well, suppose the winners end game for the dosh, does lead to more of a climax than series 1.
However, it would have been nice to see a percentage of the pot, given out to correct placed answers. Get 1 = 25%, 2 = 50% etc, with any remaining rolling into the next show and added to with the grand for thst show and so on.
Result – winner wins something for one or more answers, and a potential nice jackpot slowly builds up.
Hmm, not really with those numbers, if they get two correct (likely) they’d be taking more out than going in after the first show, you may as well not bother.
Grrr. Spot on, Brig.
OK. Offer a set amount of £250 for 1 correct answer, £500 for 2 and £750 for 3, with the rest going into the rolling jackpot for every show.
Sky Vision, which seems to be handling international distribution for 1,000 Heartbeats, has posted this, which appears to be Episode 1. Always fun to read webpage source code!
http://94.23.155.17/skyvisionvidsvr/1000heartbeats_ep1_ep.mp4
Snap review: I like this a LOT. Closest recent comparison would be 5 Minutes to a Fortune, but with the bugs in gameplay mechanics fixed.
Ooh, very good find. I’m enamored with the string quartet and the fast pace of the game, but I do fear it could start feeling repetitive very quickly, especially if everyone winds up bailing at 25,000.
That String quartet is so good
Well found!
This does an awful lot of things right, and yet it feels… just… not… quite there, at the point where you know that it does so many things right that you hold it to a much higher level of scrutiny to see whether it’s a (presumptive) strong year’s-top-five contender or something even more elevated still.
1) Remember the discussions we all had about the element of variety on Pressure Pad? A lots-of-mini-games show does trade on its variety to some extent. I’m on board with the existence of a “everyone has the same game one” stipulation in theory, though seeing the same game three times in a show (with the potential for replays after step-offs) does feel a bit repetitive and make the show start to drag rather more than it probably should. If everyone has the same game one and the same game two before breaking into variety then that’s quite a bit worse.
2) The endings to the cashout game could definitely be more spectacular and dramatic, when everything else about the show looks so gorgeous.
3) It’s tempting to suppose that the contestants’ overall games will play out similarly, but the third player’s remarkably slower heartbeat shows that there is potential for quite a bit of variety. The presumptive 7-6-5-4-3-2-1 motif in the games is neat, though what we’ve seem of the maths-y game fives makes them look rather slow.
4) Perhaps, just perhaps, the games aren’t quite as smart and interesting as they really could do with being. The question-writing isn’t bad at all, but it doesn’t stand out as starring.
5) The first contestant was tremendous, with one of the most fun host-contestant interactions we’re likely to see anywhere, and the others were still very likeable.
Episode 2 isn’t there, but they’ve also got Episode 3:
http://94.23.155.17/skyvisionvidsvr/1000heartbeats_ep3_ep.mp4
I liked it- the string quartet playing according to the heartbeat is certainly unique, and some of the rounds wouldn’t be out of place on Krypton Factor. The fact if you step off the plate you only have to answer the number of remaining parts of the previous question on the new one is a plus. The first round being an either/or for everyone is a good way to ease them into the game.
Though I have a couple of things I have some problems with…
-Unless someone has a very slow heartbeat, I don’t see anyone getting through all 7 rounds plus the Cashout; that means an average of 125 heartbeats per round, which basically means they have to play almost perfect every time (especially on the two mathematical games that were passed on).
-My biggest issue is that they start the heartbeat clock immediately on each question, but the contestant can’t answer until it’s been completely read out- that takes up a lot of time (especially on questions with multiple answers). I tracked the count from when the question started until the word “play” was said- the first contestant alone lost about 80 heartbeats just from that. When you have to average below 125 a round to win, that only makes it harder. They shouldn’t start the countdown until the word “play” is said on each question- it just makes it a bit fairer.
Though it is fun, and the music is superb.
I give it 8 Dubai out of 10.
Yeah, I agree with you about the clock running while they are still setting up the question. I also agree with what Chris says above.
Another thing for me is that you can see many contestants quitting at around the same 250 beat mark. If it were me, I’d have used the game 4 (the combination one) as the final game because it’s the sort of thing that could be done very quickly or it could go on for a long time. Whereas, reading out 5 questions is always going to take so long. Also, losing 25 beats AND going back to the start seems a large double penalty – maybe going back one step would have been better?
All that said, it zips along at a decent pace – if show 1 manages to get well into game 3 in the hour, that’s decent going.
Hi everyone. My name is Paul Farrer and I created this show (also composed and conducted the music). Not sure why our international partners SkyVision would allow any episodes to be viewed so easily before the ITV transmission date, but myself and Dan Baldwin (my co-exec producer) have spoken today about this and will be taking this up with them ASAP….
In the meantime, many thanks for all the positive messages about it. I hope you all enjoy the series and if you have any questions about how it came to life or the mechanics of the show please let me know.
Cheers
Paul.
Hi Paul,
I’ve left my comments over on the proper thread for your show.
However, I love the idea of incorporating a string quartet on to the set, and a live (at the point of recording) element and weave it into the gameplay.
Just wondering how this idea came about?
Knowing how many shows of a similar genre your composed and performed the theme and musical elements for – was it a case of coming up with an idea for a show where the round beds gets to do more ‘heavy lifting’ in the show, rather than a same tempo musical humm in the sound mix which can get rather lost on the contestants and the viewers at home?
Cheers.
Ha ha, oh dear, appears to have been taken down as I was about fifteen minutes into it so will save proper judgement until Monday.
The whole thing has been precisely as exciting as Netflix accidentally putting up House of Cards briefly about a month early.
I like the show a lot. But the games are repetitive and it’s bad they both tried to cash out so early. Couldn’t you have lifelines after every third question? (e.g. 100 heartbeats extra or a wrong answer that is not deducted from you heartbeat total) I’d like that a bit better.
The string quartet is just great. I think one of my favourite game show ideas of the last years.
Although it reminds me a lot of 5 Minutes to a Fortune. It’s not the tone of the show, but the feeling I have while watching it. Probably because of the minigame structure. And although I’m not a big fan of Vernon Kay normally, he’s bloody good on this show.
And I am very happy the show was leaked. As a game show fan from Germany it’s pretty unlikely this format will be adapted one day (as every attempt of having a good game show in Germany seems to fail lately) and on the other hand the dark magic needed for watching geoblocked things seems to barely work for me these days.