From 9pm on ITV2. It took us a while to warm to the first series although when we got where The Rubberbandits were coming from it all kind of clicked and I quite enjoyed it. We discussed series one here. This is a bit more like series 1.5 I think, it was originally meant to go out in January so was almost certainly filmed the same time as series one, but new games (and lots of returnees) are promised. Nobody really watched the first series, on the other hand it looks like it costs 10p to make so who knows what lies in the future.
Speaking of ITV2, has Release the Hounds been commissioned for series three? It’s about this sort of time a contestant call would be ending for preparing to film in the Summer, but nothing as far as I know. It did win a Royal Television Society award recently.
And finally! What an exciting weekend, we’ll be “doing” Schlag den Star on Saturday night here from 7:15pm (do join us) and on Sunday Wild Things returns to Sky 1! Hurrah.
On a bit of an aside, anyone read about this Global Poker League that started up this week? Looks interesting, at least on paper; a couple of intriguing concepts (I was watching the first set of matches online off and on yesterday; there were some glitches that probably should be expected with a live first broadcast, and of course the players play online- there will be some live head-to-heads later on- but not bad)…
https://youtu.be/CLjF-ytmBko?list=PL837Xuu0c3yI-WxSHYnaRYLjJdx8koigK
Crikey that’s a very, er, American way of doing things.
It’s been completely off my radar (Although I’m probably less into the game these days than I once was), although it’s perhaps telling that none of the poker peeps I follow on Twitter seem to have mentioned it either.
Edit: It’s giving me flashbacks of the very unsuccessful professional poker league thing they tried a while back.
I know it existed through Liv Boeree’s tweets. I remember the Premier League of poker they use to show which was individuals playing for themselves and sure I remember some sort of competition between teams of players from the same country
Premier League Poker was pretty entertaining though, it worked as a TV show on its own merits and had players that made for good TV and were great players.
I have no clue how I’d follow this.
The Epic Poker League, here it is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Poker_League
A lot has changed in 5 years though- e-sports have really exploded onto the scene, and this seems like it may be able to work in that type of environment (though I don’t know if the live play in Las Vegas and the playoffs in November will go over well- it’s along way off though, and word of mouth might help as the season goes on- plus it has a consistent time slot each week)…I’ll be interested to see how it goes.
Not sure, E-sports are the sort of thing certain people *want* to be popular but I’m unconvinced it has an audience outside of nerds and South Korea.
I can’t wait to see if it can fill Wembley at any rate.
I think this has a good chance of working, only because we are currently starved of decent poker television thanks to the US banning of poker and the lack of sponsorship.
The early stages kinda are for poker geeks, but the later stages are all live and much more likely to appeal to a normal crowd. The reality is at the moment the people watching poker TV right now are poker geeks.
Well the finals are on the 22nd-23rd of November, I’ve set a reminder on my calendar and we can all find out if it was actually worth doing or not. Until poker finds its characters again I predict not.
http://www.globalpokerleague.com/finals-at-wembley/
Edit: No-one in the UK is going to give a toss about the “London Royals”. I mean, honestly.
Hell of a good team, mind – beautifully drafted, Liz Boeree.
I miiiight watch some of the poker live, if I remember it’s on, and if it doesn’t clash with Puzzled Pint.
Schlag den Star music guests on Saturday:
Jamie Lee Kriewitz (The Voice of Germany winner 2015 & Germany’s act at Eurovision this year)
Fleur East
RE: Release the Hounds
I’ve not seen anything about a new series, but with Gogglebox closing down I’m guessing they’ve got to assign a new company to take over, if it is indeed coming back.
We are in discussions about RTH and the same team (IE us in our new venture) will continue to make it. Stay tuned!
Good news!
Great news RE: Release the Hounds
0.2m for TAIGS, about what it was getting last time.
So here’s a fun fact I just discovered, there’s a ‘fuck’ watershed at 9:15 on ITV (and Channel 4), which is why all the swearing gets bleeped out in the first part and not the rest.
I assumed for whatever reason that you had to be consistent throughout an episode. Apparently not so!
I believe the phrase is ‘it’s a watershed, not a waterfall’. Channels have been rapped before for excessive swearing even after 9pm. For instance: http://gu.com/p/27hjn