Happy New Year everybody! It’s time to make your opinions heard as the vote for The UKGameshows.com/Bother’s Bar Poll of 2017 is now open, and will remain open until Thursday 11th January 2018.
For rules and voting form, follow this link.
In other news look out for Show Discussion posts for And They’re Off! and Wedding Day Winners this Saturday.
I foresee some surprising upsets in the poll this year.
I think I know what you mean. It’s a “meh” year, which does mean that all categories are wide open. I think there were *precisely* five shows in each category that warranted a vote from me.
Hmm, I don’t see it as being a ‘meh’ year. Without spoilering too much, my top 5 were all really good shows, and it’s a stronger top 5 than most years. It’s just that the bottom 5 are a pretty rum bunch.
I think the good shows are all good, but I think I struggle to name anything that *really* blew me away. I think the top end is 8/10 at best (and that feels a bit like rounding in a few cases) and I think I only had to reduce my list of potentials from six to five.
Even my list of shame, with a few shows that were always definitely going to go in, wasn’t that large.
It was a bit of failure to launch scenario with the reboots. The only one which fit the closest to the original was Raven. In my eyes I don’t really call Blind date as a gameshow.
People have all sorts of criteria for determining whether something is a gameshow or not. I think that Alien Fun Capsule really pushes what I’d consider to be one, for example. There are Americans who won’t declare Gladiators a gameshow because it’s ‘sports-entertainment’, like Beat the Clock, but these people should be openly laughed at.
You’re the first person I’ve ever read to suggest that Blind Date, based on The Dating Game, where three people vie to win a date, isn’t one. Interesting.
All I will say about *my* vote at this point is that Countdown gets two Golden Five votes as always. 😉
That said, I was a little bit disappointed that all eight finalists in the series just gone by were men, that the finals of this series went completely true to the seedings (top four seeds in the semi-finals, top two seeds in the final and top seed Tom Chafer-Cook winning), and that there were a few stinky conundrums in these finals too (SUSIFENNT, ORGENESIS and RILEYISMS all went unsolved; the first and last of these were crucial; and Nick even asked Susie what the meaning of the answer to the last one was). But I’m nitpicking, of course – the matches were still great, and Tom was a worthy champion, especially after scoring 134 points out of 135 in his SF.
Lest we forget, Pointless, OC and The Chase have been the Golden Three (so to speak), in that order, every year since 2012. Taskmaster gave them a real good run for their money last year, however, so I’d be quite surprised if they were the Golden Three again – although I still expect Pointless to win once more, thanks to Richard and Twitter… 😉
Wondering if those conundrums you’ve posted are before or after they’ve been revealed!
Was a pretty dull year with very little originality – those in my top 5 weren’t exactly show stoppers – more shows which at the time are a passable way to spend half an hour but once the series is over they’re pretty much forgotten.
Good to see though this year ITV are trying out a 30 minute primetime quiz once again – always felt they should have recorded some regular Family Fortunes in 30-minute slots to fill those random 30-minute slots which crop up next to the soaps, and I do think it’s a better use of the Corrie sandwich than any attempt by ITV at comedy or a bloody cookery show.
https://twitter.com/wchannel/status/948578848685330433
An interesting commission from W, The Wave begins on January 15th. A new physical show hosted by Rylan Clark-Neal and Kerianne Payne.
I’ve watched a preview, it’s not great.
I think my issue with this idea – potentially a good one – is that is must take a fair while (a few minutes?) to swim that far, so it’s going to be one of those shows that’ll have to be edited down a fair bit. And then your excitement level will depend on how well its edited. Anyway, we’ll see.
Avanti Un Altro! promo for season 7 (where the show will reach its 1000th episode!)
http://vod06.msf.ticdn.it/farmunica/2017/12/140464_1606f75f3dea2f/1606f75f3dea2f-11_0.mp4
This is what the small writings read:
:04 “Titanius Elios” (the studio’s name) followed by the studio’s full address
:08 Paolo 1 year old; during a mountain trip; mom always had good taste in dressing me
:12 Luca my great friend; world’s softest dog; at the time I didn’t comb very much
:14 Holidays at sea; show of strength; swimsuits at the time were very small
Good stuff!
4.44m for The Chase yesterday, its highest ever 5pm figure. Gosh. Pointless 3.2m in comparison, which would still be pretty good usually.
No idea if anyone’s posted about it today, but Get the Fuck out of my House started on Prosieben yesterday.
Adapted from a Dutch format 100 contestants move into one house for a family of four. It has four beds, one toilet, one shower, etc. If you want to leave you can just walk out the door, but only the last person standing will be awarded 100,000€.
I will let you know upfront that the first episode was just as harmonious as the first days of CBB this year although it sounds like it would be a lot of trouble.
Here’s how it worked exactly: each of the 100 people has a barcode on their name tag to handle the organisation. About 20 minutes or so after moving in, everyone will vote 5 people for the task of being HoH, I mean Hausboss. while voting no one knows what that person’s advantages will be.
The winner was awarded his own doublebed and his own toilet and bath. (He decided to declare his toilet the women’s toilet and the other one the men’s toilet). After that everyone is ranked and half of the people are in the green area (meaning they can only be evicted by leaving on their own) and the least liked people are in the red. At the end of the week the Hausboss will evict an uncertain amount of people in the red.
The rest of the show is basically Big Brother in a tiny house: 20 people get to play in 4 tasks to win money to buy new stuff (the only food they have is apples and potatoes in very limited amounts).
But before the eviction 3 people get to leave on their own (e.g. if you know the Hausboss doesn’t like you) with the chance to win at least 1000€. Unfortunately it’s a very unspectacular drawing of lots to determine the winner. Then the Hausboss gets to choose to evict 3, 5 or 7 people. (He chose 7 which makes sense given the little food they have and the greater chance in winning, although the edit made it seem an unreasonable choice). In the end of last night’s episode 75 people have made to the next week.
My opinion: It’s a nice little show. The interior is insanely boring Ikea stuff. On the outside of the house (it’s a real house that hasn’t been built for this purpose) the put a red line all around it to symbolize your out of the game if you step over it which looks nice. The games were boring (basketball throwing, football shooting, card throwing and frisbee throwing), but they put the goals mostly outside the house which made for some nice shots. In the end my biggest surprise is the little focus on the contestant’s personalities. I genuinely know about 2 people in the house now, the rest was just shown so we would know them when their evicted. And I really like that. The show was just about chaos and chaos and a little strategic gameplay. Oh and everyone cried every other minute, which seemed incredibly weird.
And Prosieben’s terrible choice of showing ads about every 15 minutes didn’t cause any trouble: the ratings were surprisingly good! (Though not outstanding.)
Interesting, I wonder how easy/hard it is to follow that many contestants, or even how hard/easy it is to start picking favourites?
I think it’s incredibly hard, I really only had one favourite and she was voted out. But you can apparently get to know all hundred contestants on the website of the show if you want. (Who’d want that at this point of the show?) So I’m quite interested in seeing how many viewers will tune in again.