Thursdays, 9pm,
ITV2
Or Celebrity Release the Hounds as normal people will call it. Anyway we gathered there was a third series happening and we were wondering where the contestant call-out for it was so when we heard that this third series is going to be exclusively (ITV sub-channel) celebrities playing for charity that rather explains it.
Anyway we like Release the Hounds, previous series have been very funny and featured entertaining scenarios (in the main) but there’s always been one or two production decisions that leave a nagging feeling, we’re keeping our fingers crossed this is the year that knocks it out of the park. And we do like a bit of Reggie Yates, the thinking man’s Stephen Mulhern.
Episode one features stars from TOWIE. If you like TOWIE it’s for you, and if you don’t like TOWIE you’ll get to see them in psychological hell so it’s win win.
Following Tara Palmer-Tomkinson’s untimely death, here’s her appearance on WWTBAM’s first 5th birthday show in September 2003:
I am personally hoping that they repeat the episode of Would I Lie to You she was in. That particular episode was censored to remove some slurs about Jimmy Savile, and it’d be interesting to see how many people would complain now.
How many 5th birthdays did they have?
Only one, but they had two shows to accommodate the three games (the second show aired three nights later). 😉
Oh, lookie at what I found: three episodes of the Italian 100%, which aired on the then newborn LA7.
The rules are a bit different. The quiz is only 40 questions long, after which the lowest scorer is eliminated.
The other two then play a head-to-head round with 10 questions for each player and under a 100 seconds clock. The top scorer of the opening quiz decides who goes first, and has the option to have one of his or her questions replaced.
Who gives the most correct answers (or saves the most time in case of a tie) wins the game and returns the next day. If the winner got at least 5 correct answers, they win €500 but if s/he got them all, then wins a progressive jackpot that grows by €1,000 every day.
whoops, link is here
Blimey, the host sounds like Robin Houston even in Italian!
It’s uncanny isn’t it – if I didn’t know better I’d swear it was him! 🙂
Well, that was a weird ending. I’m not a fan of dangling money on the dog run, then if they fall they’re pretty much done for, there’s no tension after that point. Will see how the series goes but I didn’t think the games this week were particularly strong either.
Release the Hounds:
That was a bit weird and took me a while to get into but let’s look at the positive, I liked the new gamble element for part one, where you don’t give up your headstart but have the option of jumping to grab extra bundles of cash – oh so very tempting, especially when it badly goes wrong.
I love Reggie when he’s taking the piss out of the contestants on the walkie-talkie, I’m glad they’ve dialled back on the in-game comments the last ep started featuring, you don’t want to break from the tension and action during the tense bit. Although I sniggered at the Pete drinking game. The funniest bit for me is when the contestants get unexpected jump scares when they think they’re safe, although evidently the one after the clowns backfired somewhat – would love to know the actual story there.
That was such a weird ending. Quietly amused someone on production improvised “release the clowns”. I was a bit disappointed they didn’t make Bobby do it on crutches for the LOLs actually.
Also, how fortunate Bobby didn’t like clowns.
I thought the second challenge was the best one.
Here’s the first episode of the Geek and Sundry (Felicia Day, etc.) take on “escape room as game show”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp3TyTFkSmw
You can see the later episodes on the subscription Project Alpha web site (though your first 30 days are free, so I guess you could see them all and then cancel) or just wait for them to roll out on alternate weeks on YouTube.
(Admission: I haven’t actually watched it yet myself; am saving it for the coach on Sunday.)
Yep, going to give this a proper post tomorrow.
580k for this last night, which is about double what some episodes were overnighting (urgh) last series. One episode is not yet a trend, but congrats!
580,000 for this last night, which seems pretty good and feels a bit better than what it has got in the past. It’s a decent bit more than Ibiza Weekender got on Sunday, as a network comparison.
And that’ll teach me to refresh before typing! Beaten to it, feel free to delete the above.
Nah that’s alright, you have good network comparison stat.
Fun team (love it when they get a couple on), fun episode, intrigued they repeated the twin house scenario, albeit with a different treasure hunt.
One of the production team (who I used to send break restrictions to in my ITV2 days) suggested on twitter that there are more surprises like this to come. I did think it was one of their better set ups from the previous series, so I don’t mind it being used again – especially as we got a nice close up of the jigsaw to remind us what the old challenge was. I wonder if dearest stepmother is still buried under that rug.
Looks like quite a drop for this last night, not in the multichannel top ten.
Episode three a really great episode, the arcade a massive highlight, as well as the exciting return of the flooded phone booth. One of the top three I think.
It also basically cements my opinion that the show’s much funnier played with relatively normal people with their relatively normal reactions and offhand arguing than attention seekers. It comes across and more low key real and raw, it’s one of the key reasons Wild Things works. Union J seem like such nice boys. Similarly the Love Island team came across as believeable which I wasn’t expecting.
Although admittedly I’m outside the demo now, so whatevs.
I’m a Celeb episode really good fun.