GIVE US YER MONEY! Buying something from Amazon? Well click on this link first, we take a small cut of the profits at no cost to you and enables us to fund bigger prizes for our exciting Happy Hour competitions, and we already give away hundreds of pounds a year. Just imagine!
Do you have anything interesting you'd like to trade? We're always on the look-out for interesting non-UK shows to feature on our Weekend Specials.
In particular, if you have any copies of El Grande Juego de Oca lying around, in it's original Spanish or Italian, please get in touch!
TEDIOUS LEGAL BIT All images and sounds copyright their respective owners probably used without permission (please get in contact if this is a problem), all writing copyright Brig Bother 2004-2007.
LESS TEDIOUS THANKS BIT Comments system provided by Haloscan, webspace kindly provided by Labyrinth Games. Thanks to TP for shows, Michael for logos, KP, DB, Giz. Mister Al, Simon, Andrew and NJ for recaps and you for reading.
8th May 2008
Fort Boyard Fri...Thursday
Well! Whilst the world recovers from the knowledge that The Power of 10 is OFFICIALLY the best new format of the past twelve months and everybody is just plain wrong for not watching it and it getting axed everywhere ACTually, we mustn't forget that Gladiators begins on Sky One this Sunday, along with Don't Forget the Lyrics. So really there's a very obvious candidate for this week's clip, it's Côton-tiges, this clip from 1993.
Meanwhile, TV5 are showing FB from Wednesday at 17:27 (and probably repeated on Saturday nights). Unfortunately when we click on the blurb there's no description, only that it's episode one of ten and that it's 110 minutes long. We'll stick our neck out and suggest it's 2007 being shown.
7th May 2008
Oblivious won it one year as well.
The results of this year's Rose d'Or festival are in!
Best entertainment show: Hider in the House, obviously.
Best gameshow: the ever popular and hugely successful The Power of 10.
Best reality that isn't really reality: The Phone. Which is at least passably good.
Wow, foreigners are weird, aren't they?
6th May 2008
The Clipton Factor: Number One
Here's this week's one series quiz wonder, Number One from 2001 hosted by Krishnan Guru-Murphy. This is the most interesting round. Of course, it's also quite interesting that the production team seemed to change their mind about the titles halfway through recording the series which is why the logo on the question cards and the screens right at the beginning are different to what they became.
5th May 2008
Hey there. Just to let you know, updates are going to be a bit slow for the next month and a half I'm afraid - the place where I work when I'm not running is bar is open very late this term so the students can do some "revision" which means lots of lovely overtime for me so fingers crossed we can do a proper Christmas round-up this year, unless we spend all of it on booze, poker and Haribo in the meantime obviously. Don't hold your breath, we've already pitched Pokerboozibears to them. Try Aldi.
However, we will at least guarantee you two videos a week - likely to be on Tuesday and Friday. And hey! It's the Eurovision in a fortnight.
Tomorrow it's another mediocre quiz from the turn of the millenium we found on the end of a tape recently.
2nd May 2008
Fort Boyard Friday
Yes! Actually on a Friday this week!
Anyway, this is Tir à l'arc (shooting with the arc, apparently). In fact it's the second version - the original only had one target. This one comes from 1993 and there are three targets, but only one of them will release the key, hitting either of the others just releases a fake key.
In other news, Latvia are currently at 50 at Betfair to win the Eurovision! I might just stick another tenner on. Anyway, it's just two-and-a-half weeks until Eurovision, so don't forget to enter our competition.
In other news, does anyone know how well It's Not What You Know is rating? Considering how hard they've pushed it, it seems to be barely registering on the sorts of places you'd expect there to be anything on it.
29th April 2008
The Clipton Factor - The Vault
Viewer deception, eh? It rears its ugly head with ITV going to get a bashing in a soon to be published OFCOM report, and now viewers are UP IN ARMS because the flashing lights on 1 vs 100 suggesting a random selection probably isn't actually all that random. Now of course, one of these types of deception is actually OK and only stupid people care, that of course being the illusion of randomness for the viewers - goodness, we may as well not bother with any form of entertainment ever again if we can't build up a bit of suspense with flashing lights and whatever. However, if the players who have given up time and money are led to believe that something is random when it isn't (which appears to be the case in 1 vs 100's case where whilst you can always get to the chair through sticking it out some people's chances in a "random" selection are more equal than others, and indeed in ITV premium phone-ins case) then that is obviously a very large cause for concern.
Which brings us nicely to premium-rate phone-in competition The Vault. The Vault was so close to being brilliant it hurt and with a bit more thought put into getting rid of the dead air it would have been. And the episode where that girl won £700,000 on live telly is probably one in my all-time top five telly moments, way above when Judith Keppel won the million. But there was always a nagging feeling in quizzers minds... How come of all the people phoned back for the end of show jackpot, 97% were women? (*)
Here is the endgame from the show's first series with Davina McCall, The Vault's first and best host.
(*) Not An Official Statistic.
Ano(n)nymous essay
I see that you review foreign shows here as well, like the Turkish/Serbian/Bulgarian Fort Boyard, so I'm actually having the nerve to tip you off about a Norwegian show.
It's called "Farmen" (The Farm) and it's a bit Survivor-ish. The concept is as follows: 10 people are shipped off to a remote farm that's got NO facilities whatsoever apart from what was available in the year 1800! Here they have to survive for two months while carrying out several quite demanding tasks. The show has been on every year since 2000 or 2001, and for every year the tasks have become increasingly demanding, like building a pier or a functional smoking house in a week.
Every week a new "Farm Master" is elected. The Master makes desicions on behalf of the others, and can be elected more than once, but not twice in a row. Towards the end of the week the Farm Master appoints one of the contestants (usually one they wanna get rid of) as "First Champion" to compete in a "duel". The duel can be a quiz or farm related activities like wood chopping. The First Champion then chooses the Second Champion they want to go up against, and the Second Champion decides what the duel will be. The loser is then sent home.
The earlier years' shows were more pure reality show, but in the three past years there has been an element of fantasy and role playing involved, where the contestants have had to deal with 19th century characters making their lives difficult. It's fun to see how seriously they take these "threats!"
Oh, eh... me again. I watched the finale and realised it's pretty boring, so here is a clip that hopefully is a bit more interesting.
Thanks for that! Obviously we know The Farm as the Endemol reality show with some celebs on a farm and Rebecca Loos famously, er, doing something to a pig, but it looks like the good old Norwegians have taken the format and ran with it. We quite like the idea of role-playing elements, in fact it sounds a little bit like an arable version of that reality show set in medieval times we saw a promo video for a while back but whose name escapes us.
Phew, after all that I think you all deserve a new comment box, so here you are:
28th April 2008
It's Not What You Know
This in on Challenge this evening, we're working but will V+ it, so here's a comment box for this and anything else.
One of this year's Aussie BB contestants is a midget bellydancer.
27th April 2008
Because of work commitments, The Clipton Factor will feature on Tuesdays for the next seven weeks.
And who would have thought Darren Gough would be so rubbish at everything?
26th April 2008
Fort Boyard Saturday
Alright, today we have "puzzle". The key is on the ceiling, the player must stack the rocks to reach it.
Aussie Big Brother starts on Monday. Behind Big Brother is always our favourite stop for Aussie BB news and opinion.
And yes, it is sad that Humphrey Lyttelton has died, we never listened to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, but Life in a Glasshouse is one of our favourite Radiohead tracks. So there we are.
24th April 2008
French Fancies
Well, because there's not much on at the moment we thought we'd share some of the things Cosser has been pointing out to us that's avaliable to have a look at online.
Des Chiffres et Des Lettres - You should know what this is, it's the original French Countdown. Here are the highlights of this year's April Fish edition. If you've not seen the French show before, they don't have an end of game conundrum, they have two duels in the middle of the game - some with letters (find two words that fit a particular theme, spell a difficult word right), some with numbers. This one is about numbers.
Motus - It's Lingo, it started as a game with five letter words but as the years progressed the length of the words has been getting longer - up to nine! Now a draw at the beginning of the show determines what length will be used for the day's game. Here is how to play the game very well, and also how to play very badly (it's in three parts). The final is ten words in five minutes to win the jackpot, but if they do it fast enough they can play a bonus word for bonus cash. Thing to note: host Thierry Beccaro is possibly the most laid back man in the history of gameshows, to the point we could become obsessed.
Pago Pago - one of ALP's lost shows. Interestingly it appears to have sold to Germany of all places. Not much is known (it seems to be an underwater version of Legend of Xapatan), but here's the treasure room. There are other clips there as well.
This week's Fort Boyard Friday will be on Saturday.
Once again we need to remind people that if they don't read the comment boxes they really should because that's where all the good stuff that people find out during the day go that we can't be bothered to regurgitate when we finish work. We have had this conversation before.
Re: The Kids Are All Right and your comment "And who spells it "all right" anyway?" It's a play on words - 'all right' as in 'correct'. Nothing wrong with that at all!
What, really? For God's sake, stop mangling the language. The show should, of course, be called "The Kids Are Frequently Wrong."
22nd April 2008
Challenge are really hammering with the It's Not What You Know ads aren't they? What a pity it is not all that good. But if you've not seen them yet, the show starts next Monday at 9pm.
21st April 2008
The Clipton Factor: Friends Like These
Ant and Dec recently bought the rights to loads of their old stuff like Byker Grove so nobody on digital channels could make a quick buck and embarrass them about their past without their permission.
Never mind though, with Beat the Star confirmed as a moderate success, we feel it's time to unleash a show that people think is a little bit like it: Friends Like These. This one comes from 2001, it's the opening and The Decider.
In other news, the new lighting for Goldenballs is quite nice, isn't it?
Your review on The Kids Are All Right (Sat,BBC1) seems really unfair! The second episode was superb! My kids enjoyed it,in fact the whole family did. (Yeah, but kids are rubbish, aren't they?)
20th April 2008
Schlag den Khan
Beat the Star was quite good fun. Doubtless everyone's going to pick up on the scoring system (one point for game one, two points for game two all the way up to seven points for game seven) which in its original 15 game race to 61 points open-ended live telly incarnation doesn't seem too cheap but with seven games it doesn't work quite as well, game seven will be the decider for pretty much every episode which is awesome if you're a TV exec with a 75 minute slot to fill but rather less good if everyone just cottons on to the fact that it's only the last fifteen minutes that mean anything and only tune in for that. The first episode could have done with another mental game I think, but if there are enough different challenges there's no reason why this shouldn't be a moderate sized hit. Vernon Kay was alright. We prefered the original German graphics.
19th April 2008
Happy birthday us!
We are four! Unfortunately we could only afford three candles on this cake.
We didn't do very much exciting last year did we? The interview with Tim Child was probably the high. We'll see if we can improve on that this year.
Normally on birthdays you get presents, this year our very own Alex Richards (aka Oni-91) has given us a hilarious dance remix of a popular gameshow theme tune. This ticks all the right boxes in that it is a dance remix of a popular gameshow theme tune and that it is hilarious. It even has a rubbish non-pun in the title.
That's awesome Alex, thanks very much! We will add it to Sing the Sig tomorrow.
As ever though on my birthday, I like to give, give, give something fairly rare and interesting. How old are we? Four! What's four in German? Vier! And fear is something used in Fort Boyard, and it's Fort Boyard Saturday. Here in its entirety is Conquer Fort Boyard the US one shot made in 1991 but was deemed so good they held on to it until 1993 to broadcast, according to our research. The ten-minute clip we put up last year is Bother's Bar's most viewed Youtube clip.
Here's Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6, although just beware that the sound is very quiet on part six for some reason and then returns to normal about halfway through. Basically, the winning team need to collect 3,000 Boyards in the 2:30 in order to win the $25,000.
Enjoy! And don't forget Beat the Star is on tomorrow.
17th April 2008
Do you know what's exciting about this Saturday? It's Bother's Bar's fourth birthday. How exciting!
14th April 2008
The Clipton Factor: Ice Warriors
As Gladiators looks like making a successful worldwide return, we thought we would have a look at the show ITV hoped would replace it with the same success: Ice Warriors. The show had even more bluster than the Glads, but unfortunately lacked all the substance. The result was surprisingly dull but quite nice to look at (something something something Dani Behr).
This is the first ten minutes of the first episode. We have also included the 7up sponsorship bumper, because we think it is very important for future generations to know what vending machines will be like in the future.
13th April 2008
No point really
It will get slaughtered by Doctor Who in the ratings of course, so we were quite pleasantly surprised to see that All Star Mr and Mrs (with hilarious soul-esque theme tune) was atually a perfectly entertaining bit of fluff, especially as previously it was the sort of show we wouldn't have gave a toss about. Doubtless this has quite a lot to do with Phil and Fern's marvellous hosting ability, but they've also (gasp!) changed the format with all new rounds (round). Round one is the traditional booth quiz, although only one half of each couple goes into the booth - three questions. Round two is the all-new His 'n' Hers round, the two of them are divided Blind Date style and have two paddles, one blue, one pink. Six questions are asked, they both hold up the paddle which represents the person they think it best applies to, one point per match. The couple with the most matches goes through to the final Jackpot round, again back to the booth with the other person this time, and four questions are asked - three about the person in the booth (for £5k a piece) and one about them (to double the money) for a possible £30,000 charity payday. Anyway, it was a lot more fun than we thought it was going to be. Well done ITV!
Edit: Well apparently it got over 6m! Well there we are.
12th April 2008
The Kids Are All Right But The Show Is Bloody Shite
There is our incisive review. We might expand on this tomorrow, but we can't believe it made it past the pilot stage. In fact if Live and Kicking's John Barrowman wasn't hosting there is no way it would have made a series.
And who spells it "all right" anyway?
We will save Mr and Mrs as a "treat" for tomorrow.
11th April 2008
Fort Boyard Friday
Take a word. Change a letter. Do it again, and you've got a chain. That's how you play-y-y Chain Letters! However this chain is a bit different, it doesn't involve changing letters, it involves climbing.
This comes from 1993. We quite like the Mission Impossible-esque clock here. Unfortunately it's the only episode from 1993 we've got so we'll show you one or two key games from it in future weeks (but not next week though!) and that will probably be it.
In other news, doubtless you've all seen the new UK Glads now (with the official photoshoot not in front of the Pyramid: useless), according to the OTT Blog they've got the same games as the US one minus Danger Zone. That means - yes! Earthquake, the game that everyone loves so much they didn't bother with it after the heats, and that they've called Duel by it's proper name. It's all a bit disappointing to be honest, that's only a pool of eight (plus The Eliminator), although I suppose it didn't hurt UK Glads first series which only had six, albeit six really great ones. LEts hope "Sway Poles" doesn't make series two, eh?
9th April 2008
Things that are awesome in Aussie Gladiators
It's like the last ten years haven't happened. Awesome.
Tom Williams and Zoe Naylor? Awesome. This suits Tom Williams better than The Mole did. They do a good job of being in charge but largely in the background. Awesome.
"Gladia-TORS, are you ready?" Awesome.
They've got "3, 2, 1" flashing on the big screens to go into each event. Awesome.
They've correctly set-up Hit and Run so you can't just duck under the balls. Awesome.
Zoe: "You really are a man... muscle... mountain aren't you?" Thunder: "It's really not uncommon for me to leave girls speechless, Zoe." Awesome!
Viper: "Well the game is called Hit and Run and she did very well in the part of getting hit. HISSS!!!" Awesome!
You know how there's usually one "bad guy" Gladiator in the Wolf/Vulcan vein and it's always male? Well here it's female and it's Amazon. Equality! Awesome!
Basically there's much more killer and less filler when it comes to entetaining Glads than certainly the recent American Gladiators where they didn't really have much personality on show.
Problems? Aussie Glads was always four events + Eliminator. They could fit five in I reckon but this isn't a problem in itself. More, unlike the US version where everyone scores huge amounts of points in each event anyway, rather too many points are given away through disqualification here and in such a short format it can really tip the balance especially when points are quite hard earned.
Otherwise, awesome.
Things that aren't awesome about the new series of American Gladiators
"Sway Poles"?
In other news, like the fact you can now use BBC iPlayer through your Wii, it looks like Bother's Bar can now also be read on your Wii. NO, I have no idea why it's been a bit odd for the last few months, but there we are.
7th April 2008
The Clipton Factor: Cheggers Plays Pop
Well we had an idea for what to put up this week but we forgot it. So instead we picked something at random from The Collection, and the fickle finger of fate leads us to *sharp intake of breath* Keith Chegwin in 1978. This is heavily edited but we felt we had to keep the whole Wurzels performance in.
6th April 2008
US Duel is back. What have we learnt?
Mike Greenberg has lost his pen and has become terrifyingly animated. We preferred the old Mike, we think, although we liked it that he's not scared to take someone to task for covering a joke answer.
They've updated the set. We thought the older one was classier.
But the updated graphics are quite nice.
As doubtless you've gathered, they've dropped the tournament format. Now each duel is worth more money the longer it goes on. This isn't spectacularly unreasonable, other than the one press you have (down from last season's two) you don't actually have much control over your opponent - indeed, winning a duel is more about not stuffing up rather than beating somebody. Here, the longer both of you don't stuff up, the more money you win, beginning at $1k for question one up to $50k for question 10.
The winner gets a chance to double their cash with the Max question (the show is still sponsored by Pepsi) - one question, one chip, one chance, seven seconds. A right answer doubles the winnings from that Duel.
Now they have a decision to make - run off with the money or risk it all on another duel. Five wins augments your winnings to a $500,000 jackpot, which is just as well because nobody who has earnt decent money will risk it all-or-nothing. I don't get why this is a difficult thing for producers to grasp - you want people to take risks but people just aren't going to risk massive money on this kind of thing. Offering safety nets will encourage risk because they'll get to keep a tangible amount. Once you get past about a 12-18 month's wages, people will not gamble all or nothing on an unknown unless you're prepared to make the next step four-five times that, something properly lifechanging. And the progressions get more geometric from there. As a contestant, the jackpot is so far away all you're interested in is the next step.
If they do decide to go on then they get to pick one of three contestants in the UK Duel stylee.
That's it. We found it a bit disappointing to be honest.
5th April 2008
Fort Boyard Saturday
Awesome. Here's manivelle - crank - from 1995. Someone sits in a contraption and cranks themself up the side of the fort to a rope, they untie the rope to release a buoy with the clue attached. Someone then jumps into the sea to retrieve the clue before the time runs out.
I think they missed a trick here, it seems a bit easy. How hard would it have been to have the clue in a locked box on the diving platform, have a key on the buoy and so incorporate the net climbing into the game?
4th April 2008
Sorry! Not many updates this week and to cap it off, Fort Boyard Friday is going to be tomorrow instead. Sorry.
Here is a new comment box as it's a bit far to scroll down to the other one.
1st April 2008
We like Aussie Gladiators
The Glads have all got a ton of personality. Awesome.
But their Pendulum swing seems a bit weak.
What we think of the Turkish, Serbian and Bulgarian tournament version of Fort Boyard
We quite like it, although having watched half an episode only for the rest of the episode not to be there we've had to put two episodes together in order to work out what's going on. So if anyone can answer any of the questions do say something. Of course, Sweden and Russia have used this version (or approximation ) of the show before.
Two teams of four begin. There's a general host in a sort of Master capacity, but each team also has a local host to guide them. Subtitles are there for when the team from a different country is playing.
First game is a race using one of the adventures, such as climbing the wall of the fort. Each game won is worth a key. It's all about the keys.
After this, one team goes into one of the cells of the fort and tries to win a key in the traditional way. Is there a punishment for getting locked in? After they've had their go, the other teamgo to a different cell and play a game. There are messages on the front of each cell, we don't know their relevance.
When both teams have had a go, one person from each team goes up to the watchtower for a puzzley quiz of the "what fits the sequence" variety? Contestants "buzz in" using levers.
Now teams play the cell the other team did before.
Seemingly repeat all of the above, although some of the cells are swapped for adventures. We're just guessing at this juncture.
And then it's the treasure room! Right, down both sides of the door are a set of eight keyholes and it looks like you need either seven or eight keys to be let in. If a team doesn't have enough keys, contestants can put an arm into a plastic tube to claim a key although obviously that means you won't be able to grab gold with it (you can also have individuals wearing two arm restraints for strategy if necessary). The tigers put away, the host pulls the lever to open the door and start the three minute clock. Both teams stand on the FORT BOYARD tiles a bit of paper tells them to stand on, Felindra turns the head the gold falls. Now both teams have whatever time they have left to get as much gold as possible and feed it into their team's chute beside the treasure room door. The door closed, both teams hauls are measured and the team with the most gold wins.
We're not quite sure how the tournament system works so we don't know quite what they win. Still, though.
Anyway it's all quite good fun and it's quite a good interpretation of the format. The most interesting thing is the show's choice of music, a mixture of the original tunes and anything they could get their hands on, seemingly. Of course Sex Machine by James Brown for "tourniquet"!
It is much better than Conquer Fort Boyard, which we'll be putting up in its entirety on Bother's Birthday week which is very soon!
Happy birthday us!
It's like the last ten years haven't happened. Awesome.