#hostholdingfourquestioncards
Coming soon to CBBC: Top Class with Susan Calman, a show which aims to find Britain’s smartest school and looks excitingly like it has a passing resemblance to top 80s quiz First Class. I hope there are Paperboy and Hypersports rounds! What’s behind the spinning golden disc! Etc!
Anyway I’m only mentioning this here because here’s a promo shot of Calman holding FOUR question cards. Is this cheating or does it make it four times as good?
Anyway right now I’m currently addicted to watching old episodes of High Rollers on Youtube, the US quiz from the 70s and 80s based around dice-game Shut the Box hosted by Alex Trebek then Wink Martindale. I remember watching it on satellite in the late 80s (I can’t remember if it was part of Sky 1’s Panel Pot Pourri strand or Lifestyle with Diddy David Hamilton). The Martindale version would be the show I grew up with and I love everything about it (one of the all time great themes! Glamorous set! What passes for 1980s US quiz show trivia! When one of the prizes was a bonus game! Golden dice because why not!).
The game, by modern standards, actually isn’t all that great – probably a little too much passing the dice in the hope the opponent rolls bad and loses the game rather than gambling to try and take prizes, but right now I also don’t care. Here is a random episode. Have a good rest of Bank Holiday!
Also coming soon to CBBC is a show called Rank The Prank, a new prank show that pits two teams against each other to see who can perform the best prank on the public, winning team gets to pull a prank on their friends and family. Starts on saturday.
There’s also Hollywood special effects artists helping the kids, which will hopefully make a good show.
I wonder if High Rollers would work “better” if you were allowed to make one or two bad rolls sans insurance before losing, going back to a question after each one. A three strikes and you’re out policy, if you like.
promo for the Italian Boom! starting tomorrow
https://www.facebook.com/canale9/videos/845439898925483/
Interested to see what they do with the format. I expect it’ll be quite similar to the Spanish one.
actually it’s taped in Spain.
https://www.facebook.com/canale9/videos/845431618926311/
here Max does his best to interact with the audience
The one-off game show ‘We Love Sitcom’ airs on September 9th.
From the autumn of 1999, the grand final of the one and only UK Gold series of Ask the Family with Alan Titchmarsh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vWmIAKuKj8
I thought Tim Worthington was a little harsh on this revival in his ATF retrospective. It may have been “not particularly updated” – the only real differences from the Robinson original being the reducing point values for each question, the use of a computer for the picture questions and scores, and the final buzzer round instead of simply “coming to the final question”. And the title sequence wasn’t quite as memorable as the original playing-card motif, or the creepy spinning fairground thingy used in the late ’70s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjprLNd9BCk
But it certainly can’t be described as “bad”, unlike Dick ‘n’ Dom’s much-less-faithful version (which, of course, even they didn’t like). Titchy’s hosting can’t be described as bad, either – he certainly displayed plenty of respect for the show and enthusiasm for the job, and he allowed the families to shine, something that couldn’t really be said about Mr McCourt and Mr Wood.
In fact, I actually think it’s a shame that it only lasted that one series. It can’t be denied that it was never going to get big audiences on UK Gold – but it did also air on BBC2, in a teatime slot recently vacated by the long-running Today’s the Day. Of course, within 12 months this slot was sewn up by another Robinson…
It sounds like the first episode of Go 8 Bit is up on UKTV Play.
Boom! Italian premiere (I don’t know if it’s geoblocked)
http://it.dplay.com/boom/stagione-1-episodio-1/
Think Tank can’t be doing that well; once Red Rock ends, Think Tank returns to 2:15 with Yes Chef at 3:45.
I probably wouldn’t read too much into that, it’s only been there a week and schedules will be set a fortnight in advance.
Why you wouldn’t just wait to schedule it until after Red Rock I don’t know.
7-10 days, if my numerous encounters with their customer service is to be believed. Why they’ve never thought to air their lunchtime quizzes at 4pm and move Eggheads to 4:45 I do not know – it’d provide a robust alternative to Tipping Point.
According to The Sun, The Crystal Maze returning for a one-off for Stand Up To Cancer possibly fronted by David Tennant:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/1699132/crystal-maze-is-coming-back-to-tv-this-year-and-david-tennant-is-being-tipped-to-host-it/?CMP=spklr-_-Editorial-_-TWITTER-_-TheSunTVBiz-_-20160830-_-Showbiz&TV-_-557897367
I would presume they’d film at the London one rather than build an entire Maze for a one-off. Not sure how you’d film it though.
Top Class begins on Monday 12th September at 3:50pm.
https://twitter.com/SusanCalman/status/712221680878407681
This Tweet from Claman indicates that a second series has already been filmed. She says that she was hosting 30 episodes, series 1 has 15 episodes.