Stool Pigeon August 2020 – The Results

By | August 27, 2020

I’ve tried to filter the rubbish, but in truth the only people who know if what’s been left is correct are the people involved and the people who wrote it – therefore there are likely elements of truth but I can’t make any guarantee that it’s completely correct.

Right, eyes down, look in:

  • The latest 90s-originating format to be brought back and fronted by a certain former Big Brother host is… Changing Rooms!

Funnily enough, this came up on Twitter later in the afternoon. The impression I get is it’s not a done deal but it’s certainly on the table.

  • The Wall is coming back with thrice as many episodes as last time, including some celebrity specials. The first series was shot on the set of the Polish, this one has required it to be recreated in England for obvious reasons.

That’s a big order if it’s correct – 18 episodes (although it being recommissioned isn’t really news), they’ll probably split it in two. It’ll be nice to have an audience that appreciates Danny Dyer. Where would they be filming it, Glasgow?

  • Beat the chasers is getting a rule change for series 2, the contestants answer all five questions before tackling the group of chasers, they are only eliminated if they fail to get a single question correct.

Plausible.

  • Guz Khan is rumoured to have been snaffled up by Taskmaster for series 11.
  • Now they’re on Channel 4, the makers of Taskmaster are considering stealing an idea from Come Dine With Me and having a Couples series. Instead of 5 contestants there would be 3 couples who would do tasks both together and apart.

Guz Khan’s a funny guy, he’d be a great get.

I don’t think Couples Taskmaster is going to be a thing, and certainly not this soon. I think the timings would make it difficult to edit – you’d have to have more but shorter tasks.

  • Nobody was surprised to see the I’m A Celeb location confirmed as being a remote place in Wales today. But ACTUALLY, the remote place in Wales that was photographed with production type people in it last weekend, which everyone assumed was the location for I’m A Celeb, was in fact the location for C4’s The Bridge.

It all makes sense! The contestants of The Bridge are building the bridges that connect Ant and Dec to the celeb’s camp. Ingenious.

  • CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of injury
  • Buzzerblog are currently running a piece about a lost episode of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego that was apparently a snakebit production that showed a rather unpleasant injury to one of its contestants. With that in mind, I’m reminded that Scrapheap Challenge showed an individual aggravating a back injury to the point of required hospitalisation, and edited around it in a rather cynical manner. If you ever see the Monster Trucks episode shot in the US, observe the crowd rushing to ‘congratulate’ the victor after his last run – they’re actually rushing to cut the roof off to get him out, as he’d ploughed straight through the finish line with the throttle open and they’d had to cut the engine off. No lasting damage to the person in question, but it goes to show that, in the main, editing tricks can save most things, so it’ll be interesting to see what happened in the Carmen Sandiego case (which in theory should have been posted as this goes up).

I’ve yet to read these articles but I shall in due course. That Scrapheap Challenge story is insane if true.

  • The BBC are planning to bring back Total Wipeout for a proper new series, with Freddie and Paddy hosting – that’s all I know but I presume it’ll be filmed on the set of the upcoming US TBS series.

Dunno. If the BBC want to turn Freddie and Paddy into the new Ant and Dec that’s OK, but it’s not like the Takeover Episodes have been doing very well. Also filming on the US set will likely be more expensive then the BBC are willing to pay for.

  • Richard Osman’s house of Games will return this year for Series 4 after 6 weeks of repeats. It seems that It will be 10 weeks in 2020 and 10 in 2021. Guests include: Full quartets: Aisling Bea, Mike Bushell, Dion Dublin and Sunetra Sarker Maisie Adam, Rory Bremner, James Cracknell and Michelle Gayle Angela Barnes, Denise Van Outen, Melvin Odoom and Greg Rutherford Sally Phillips, Nathan Caton, Ronni Ancona and Colin Murray Two Celebs playing the same week: Jean Johannsen and Stephen Mangan Kae Kurd and Kate Robbins Various other Celebs in different weeks: Les Dennis Catherine Bohart Mae Moore Darren Harriott Jeannette Kwakye Mark Watson If anyone knows any more please add.
  • Nothing really stool pigeon, but I think it’s quite funny: Thanks to Corona German celebrity Big Brother had to place fans that shout and/or sing in the front row, because they must have a 4 meter distance to the next person in front of them and the audience wouldn’t be filled enough if they sat in any other row.
  • Not sure if this is quiz show related or not, but ITV2 has “uncancelled” Britain’s Got More Talent to run alongside the live shows. There are issues with Mulhern’s availability though – so may have a different presenter (Jordan Banjo and Perry).

Interesting scoop if true, although Mulhern was so attached to More Talent it might be too odd without him.

  • Possessed’s The Mole meets Masterchef format Rat in the Kitchen was piloted recently in Manchester, both BBC and ITV showing interest so a commission seems likely.

I actually thought this was already commissioned so there we are. Just buy The Mole, Glenn!

Finally:

  • Imagine Would I Lie to You? but instead of hearing all the stories, under new pandemic rules, you just get to hear the ones that Rob Brydon thinks may be true. That would be rubbish. No one should do that.

I’m detecting some snark. Luckily I can do that, but I get a bit fed up of having to correct people who through no fault of their own cannot which hopefully leads to more relevant conversations. Also the Stool Pigeon was never meant to be a true or false quiz, it was intended for insiders to share, sometimes very interesting, information that they’d rather not put their name to. Also I am a bit bored of in-jokes, and also also Twitter is a thing that exists for that purpose.

Christ that was a bit of a po-faced end! Let’s lighten the mood:

22 thoughts on “Stool Pigeon August 2020 – The Results

  1. Jonathan

    “That’s a big order if it’s correct – 18 episodes (although it being recommissioned isn’t really news), they’ll probably split it in two. It’ll be nice to have an audience that appreciates Danny Dyer. Where would they be filming it, Glasgow?”

    It’s SSE Arena Wembley. One of the audience companies sent out an email about it.

    Which I guess that place isn’t being used for much else right now…

    Reply
    1. Brandon

      But a tweet from someone high up in the production said that there would be no audience, just a few friends of the producers invited. I’m so confused about this now.

      Reply
      1. Brig Bother Post author

        Yes, as I understand people have been contacted from an audience research company, it’s invite only. And they’re filming now!

        Reply
      2. Jonathan

        It’s… “Guest of production” small audience I guess. Email I got looked like it was to mailing list, maybe a subset, but from one of the audience sites and the instruction was to contact an email on the production team.

        Reply
    2. David B

      The bigger order would also explain why they were recruiting for a team of question writers this time. Although that still doesn’t explain why they needed several people for a show that doesn’t really burn through that many questions. Maybe they’re writing for an app or board game or some such?

      Reply
  2. Chris B

    Couple Taskmaster – could see it as a shorter run, maybe with famous comedy duos as well? Anyone who listens to Elis and John on 5 Live (formerly on Radio X) will know they are quite pally with Alex Horne and neither have been on the show and their dynamic on it would be good TV.

    ITV2 and Britain’s Got More Talent, could definitely see that as well. Read some speculation that ITV2 could do worse than un-cancelling the I’m A Celeb after show as well, now they don’t have to cart guests half way across the world and rate better than the Love Island replacements that have been on over the summer in terms of boosting the channels numbers for the year

    Reply
  3. John R

    Apparently there is a million pound winner on WWTBAM in the upcoming series, ssh keep it quiet though not many people know!

    Reply
  4. Philip

    Apparently, Osman was on the One Show today (Thursday) talking about his new book. I believe that they talked about the upcoming season of HOG and he named some future guests. I wonder if they mentioned any other people not included above.

    Reply
  5. Score

    18 episodes of The Wall is a lot, but they’ve filmed 14 episodes of The Hit List in the last few weeks as well so it isn’t that surprising. Suspect they might be wanting to bank episodes of some of their shows in case of any increase in restrictions. Plus they need to get their money’s worth out of building the set in the UK and shooting at Wembley.

    Also it seems unlikely that Michael McIntyre’s Big Show will be able to go ahead as normal this Autumn so some extra episodes of The Wall would cover that slot.

    As for More Talent, BGT is back next Saturday and there’s no sign of More Talent in the ITV2 schedule so I’d be surprised. I don’t think it would work without Mulhern at this stage either. Maybe next year.

    Reply
      1. Thomas Sales

        I’m not convinced. A series of Take Off was commissioned just before the pandemic, which obviously would be problematic to mount. I consider The Wall and/or The Hit List to be a replacement for Take Off.

        Reply
        1. John R

          Something I randomly thought of at 3am…whatever happened to Nick Knowles and Who Dares Wins…the studio is literally made for social distancing!

          Reply
          1. Des Elmes

            The most recent series – the 12th – was recorded in January 2019, and the final episode of that series aired on 7 September 2019.

            Whenever the Beeb have dropped a Lottery show, they’ve gone about it quietly – even the big ones (Winning Lines, 1 vs 100) and the longest-running ones (In It to Win It, Jet Set). I expect the same for WDW – no matter that it too is long-running, has given away at least £1 million over the years and was of course the only one to survive when the draws departed from BBC1, and that dropping it marks the end of Lottery shows altogether, over 20 years after they began with (awful as it was) Big Ticket.

  6. Mr Babbage

    The Scrapheap Challenge thing – there was a tie in book done around the recording of that series, and I think the real story is in that. Without tracking my copy down, Robert wrote that the experts were doing the driving, and one hit a bump on the course so hard that it jarred an old injury and left him temporarily numb. Since they could see he was in trouble they used their remote shut down on the engine to stop it and went over to sort him out.
    I’ve never seen it, but the way it’s described in that is that they all rush over, including the camera operators, so how any of it could have been filmed I’m not sure.

    PS: I’ve found the necessary on DailyMotion of all places, https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5whk00 (46:10 for the run in question). Unbelievably, it seems legit.

    PPS: The Buzzerblog articles mentioned actually seem to just confirm that the ‘lost episode’ story is bogus, and seems to be a conflation of genuine stories about Double Dare, and someone’s fevered mind. But it’s fair to say, the journey is far more interesting than the destination in that article.

    Reply
    1. Brandon

      I said on Twitter this wasn’t the one, because I misread the description, but it does look like this is it right down to everyone rushing over to the car.

      Reply
  7. Mart With An Y Not An I

    I want to suggest that the Beat The Chasers rule tweak for series two doesn’t seem right.

    Given there were 10 recordings and only 5 nightly episodes for series 1- that seems like series 1 and 2 were recorded at the same time, and put to air with the ‘chop and splice’ from different recordings to mix the winnings and beatings with the chasers better.

    So, putting in a ‘cashbulider’ by another name rule change for series 2 seems unlikely – unless Potato/ITV saw what was happening, and made a change half way through recording – which wouldn’t be exactly fair for the contestants who had previously played.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      I think one of the Chasers intimated on Twitter that what went out was what was recorded and that there aren’t more in the can as previously thought.

      Also “unfair on the other contestants” is meaningless, the producer’s main focus is the audience.

      Reply
    2. Brekkie

      That was initially rumoured but indications from the Chasers and ITV are that probably wasn’t the case.

      Hopefully this change isn’t true either – it would just slow the whole thing down.

      Reply

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