It’s all going on

The end of the week is looking WELL ACTION-PACKED:

• Big Brother! Producers are responding to low ratings by effectively rebooting the show on Friday, with four people getting kicked out and four new people going in. All the people not nominated are up for eviction and everybody was nominated is safe, a simple way to get rid of the deadwood, but after effectively penalising the housemates in the shopping task last week for actually doing the task and effectively penalising housemates for not creating enemies you have to wonder what the point of anything is, you might as well keep everyone in for ten weeks then pick a winner at random. Actually that’s a great idea, do that next year Endemol. Also Aaron’s been kicked out for inappropriate behaviour. We might have to revisit our bets over the weekend. The new housemates all seem to be of the stripper and bisexual (that’s what they say at the auditions, they never really are) variety, and one of them will be a “familiar face”.
• It’s the Ninja Warrior UK final this Saturday! Frankly I don’t love the reformatting but it’s still just about  entertaining enough and it’s done good numbers. Who will make it up to the top of Molehill Midoriyama and claim the title of Ninja Warrior?
• Last night a new show called Bullseye started on Fox in the US which basically is made by the people behind Fear Factor and hits all the same beats as Fear Factor but concentrates rather more on the action-stuff – last night had people trying to hit a target whilst swinging underneath a helicopter, trying to grab as many bullseyes as possible suspended underwater by being dunked upside down from a crane and finally knocking bullseyes down around a course driving a buggy. It was fun and entertaining, but the strongest bit for me was the first challenge and it petered off from there, I do wonder how many different variants of closest/most/quickest they can come up with. Worth a watch though.
• It’s the last night of 500 Questions tonight! It’s had a loyal (albeit small) audience but it’s not risen throughout the week (and the point of stripping a show nightly is entirely to promote a “did you see?” attitude which plainly hasn’t happened). Ultimately I think the show was overformatted. Anyway I’ll update the Demographic Dragon with the final numbers tomorrow (it’s a double ep tonight) for reference it was well beaten by the premiere of poverty-porn-dilemma show The Briefcase in pure numbers and the key demo and Bullseye in the demo slightly later last night.

• Benchmark with Paddy McGuinness starts on Channel 4 on Monday afternoon.