Although just to begin with, Only Connect is back on July 13th, which feels surprisingly early. Edit: It’s all go! Hive Minds with Fiona Bruce starts on BBC 4 on July 14th.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, it’s looking very good for a second series of Sky 1’s hilarious Wild Things and people who want to muck around in the Wild Wood are positively encouraged to email gameshowcasting@zodiakmedia.com as soon as possible. There might be an exciting flyer to put up at some point.
Finally in surprise news Decimate are looking for contestants despite the fact the first series was a bit dull really and nobody watched it:
Also sounds like there some changes on the cards if they’re after individual contestants.
In other news French Pointless seems to be coming back with the original host. I wonder why? I wasn’t a big fan of the format changes they made when it was on in 2011 so hopefully they’ve changed it back.
Edit: Wowsers, The Edge is returning as well. Great news for fans of watching people fail to win mid-three figure cash sums. You can apply here.
I also see that The Edge is back too
http://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/beonashow/edge_2015
Oh! I heard a suggestion about this on Twitter, can’t believe it’s actually happening.
The Edge… Decimate… you have to be kidding!!!
Don’t know if this is news but seems like Hive Minds is starting on the 14th July on BBC Four? Promo shows a lot of remixed Only Connect teams, which I suppose is to be expected on any BBC Four quiz show
https://youtu.be/IrgY6H9lCUo
Oh, great spot! Didn’t think this was starting until late in the year.
Also kicking off (BBC2 on 13 July) is Hair, the competitive hairstyling contest. Katherine Ryan takes the host’s role.
I thought last year’s first series was under-rated: positive and encouraging with lots of entertainment. Hope for more of the same in this year’s shorter format. (30 minutes – a snip!)
That’s two shows we’ve given very perfunctory reviews to on Fifty 50 because “they’re obviously not ocming back” getting recommissioned…
This was announced a few days ago but I’ve only just spotted it:
C5 shortens this year’s BBUK (presumably) due to low ratings:
http://www.bbspy.co.uk/bb16/news/0701/channel-5-shortens-big-brother-2015-timebomb-length-final-to-air-18th-july
I really really cannot stand how the producers have meddled in the show this year – it was bad enough last year / early this year with celebs. There have been lots of calls to go to a more basic simpler version with far fewer twists, but that’ll never happen.
I’m still a huge fan of the US/CAN format, so would like to see what people think of that here. Can’t rate much worse than it does now, surely…
(So what do you guys think about all this, etc etc)
I started to watch BB UK about 2 or 3 years ago by watching some highlight episodes. I tried to read about it on digitalspy and so on and I have watched BBBotS every now and then. This year it was already hard to watch the launch night with all that “ooh some timebombs tonight and one housemate will go home” stuff. After that I have watched about 3 episodes of bots and started one highlight episode. But everything I read about this season sounds so annoying. All these twists that are boring and all those cheap attempts to create drama make me not wanna catch up. This season seems just bad.
It’s a shame all the English-language BB franchises have been so twist-heavy this year; BB Canada’s meddling was even worse than ours since that’s supposed to be a game, and the constant manipulations made the whole pointless and unwatchable. At least UK BB has always been more of a circus.
As unsatisfying as the current format is, it still must make money for C5 from phone votes, so I doubt there’s an incentive for them to tweak to an even less proven format
I don’t think the voting provides much revenue these days to be honest, the reasoning behind the show being on is that it tends to bring in a very decent young advertiser friendly audience. Ultimately the show will go on as long as this is true.
Shortening this season feels like a very “cancellation is coming next” move, especially when they then invoke another deus ex machina to save £100k.
Hypothesis: BB in the Channel 5 era is the show critics in the Channel 4 era accused it of being all along?
You’re right about Canada’s twists, and potentially America’s this year (but it’s ok so far). Canada got very close to the knuckle on what was fine to do as a twist.
Survivor has shown that when you have a solid game, you don’t need many twists in it. Yes, you’ll need to slowly evolve it to keep it fresh, but overall you don’t have to throw curveballs in every four seconds. Big Brother CAN/US (and UK) should remember this.
(I am aware Survivor is an aging horse, but its format has changed remarkably little since its inception, with the main change being the introdutcion of immunity idols. Yes exile/redemption islands have tweaked the game, but it’s essentially been the same.)
The counter argument to this is that Survivor only has to fill an hour a week, BB US/Can has to fill three and BBUK seven and you have to fill it with something reasonably entertaining, and as big a fan of the show I was in it’s early years I can’t see it doing as well as that today under exactly the same form.
Like Fort Boyard in a way BB was way ahead of the genre for years, but the genre caught up and overtook and the originals have floundered variously.
And today’s HILARIOUS twist is to slash the prize fund for no reason by £100k. I say no reason, it was for “rule breaking”, but with absolutely no justification given for the amount deducted.
The production decisions of this series have been utterly terrible in my view, every twist has made me gone “Really? Is this really necessary?” and made me so angry because I think people deserve better, and that most of the people on this forum would be able to make a better series than that.
It’s clear that the production team had a vision of what they wanted this series to be. That vision included an option for saving budget (“Cash bomb” has been on the schedules for two weeks, and the only thing they ever do with the prize fund is cut it.)
Let me give credit where it’s due, the producers have succeeded in making the series they wanted. Cheap, unimaginative, nasty. The sort of nonsense that tells me Channel 5 has no quality control.
More on this (and on , because I’ve watched ITV2’s response) in the Week of 19 July.
I’m happy with them to mess about with the prize up to a point, in previous years they’ve still at least given the money away by various means or made it clear throughout the run from the start that failure means punishment, but effectively getting ten weeks work out of them and then pulling the rug does not sit right with me, effectively stringing along both contestants (who may or may not have been decent) and viewers. Especially as there are few fringe benefits to going on BB these days.
Yeah, it’s really frustrating.
What particularly annoyed me about that twist was that it was broken, in several ways. Firstly, if no-one nominated and the prize fund went to zero, what then? (As a contestant, I would seriously consider breaking silence and encouraging this (there is no downside apart from possible eviction, I guess))
Secondly, having watched the video on the BB website, it seems that the button isn’t actually connected to anything – the button was pressed near instantly in the first occasion but the crew/person watching the button wasn’t ready for this and the countdown kept going for another few seconds, this I abhor. If you’re going to play a competition at least adjudicate it right. You can see that at the beginning of this video here:
http://bigbrother.channel5.com/day-54-cash-bomb-nominations
ARGH. *steam blows sideways out of ears*