Sunday, 8pm,
BBC1
Well you can’t accuse the BBC of not giving it a chance – it’s got a plum slot on Easter Sunday immediately after rural behemoth Countryfile, but stories of development problems have been abound – four shows shot, two shows actually going out. This is the BBC’s reward to Mel and Sue for not going to Channel 4, basically.
It’s a show that everybody says they wanted back, well here’s your reality. Only Ant and Dec have really mastered the everyman family audience variety show in our current era, but if you told me ten years ago Mel and Sue would have been presenting the biggest show on TV I’d have laughed in your face, so we’ll try not to pre-judge before it actually airs. It’s not as if trad. Gen Game challenges (cake decorating, pottery) haven’t been the subject of recent hits after all.
I didn’t think this was that bad really, although I can’t say I have any desire to watch it again. Quite liked the set, thought Mel and Sue were basically OK, the celeb ‘judges’ didn’t really add anything (wished Johnny Vegas hung around a bit longer though). I wonder how many phallic games they’ve got prepared.
I can understand why everybody thought it used canned audience too much, production wise it all somehow managed to seem too slick and not slick enough at the same time – not really sure each round needs a sting. Contestants didn’t have to do much in the final sketch – did miss Brucie’s floor managing a bit.
They somehow managed to make this 62 minutes, could have done with a harder cut I think.
Nice to see Nick Foster did the music, although pity he didn’t redo the old Conveyor Belt music.
If that was the best of the four shows then I dread to think how bad the two that were dropped were.
And it’s been so harshly edited that they clearly thought it dragged at 75 minutes or whatever they’d planned for.
I agree that Forsyth made the acting round fly, but Giedroyc totally could, if you’ve ever seen her do any character comedy live. It’s a shame they didn’t make more of her talents there.
Meanwhile, the fact that the general public is a lot more telly-savvy these days kills the whole point really, because you just don’t get that awkwardness from the contestants that made the old shows so much fun.
I’m guessing it won’t be recommissioned.
Episode two lost two million on episode one, almost 40%, off a pretty level Countryfile. So that’s quite damning.