American things

By | August 14, 2012

I managed to miss a few American things off the Board of Excitement. Stars Earn Stripes has already begun, Oh Sit! begins tomorrow.

We will get round them soon.

11 thoughts on “American things

  1. Jon Wells

    I don’t know if this has been covered but it seems the BBC is trying to create their own Keith Lemon with non other than Mrs Brown.

    “The show, to be called ‘Mrs Brown’s celebrities’, will see two contestants compete in a quiz with the help of five famous faces from the worlds of music, sport, television and film.”

    http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/tv-radio/mrs-browns-boys-to-become-a-saturday-night-tv-game-show-3200634.html

    I’m not sure what to think about this, it’ll probably be OK. We’ve had Lilly Savage doing gameshows and numerous other fictional comedy creations and Mrs Brown Boys is highly popular at the moment.

    Reply
  2. Mart with a Y not an I

    Hmmm..
    The balance has to be found pretty early on with this Mrs Brown quiz show.
    The fact it’s a non-broadcast pilot will help, rather than throwing it onto Saturday night and watch it scramble around for 8 weeks will help.

    Comedy based quizshows (rather than comedy panel shows)where everything but the actual prizes are played for laughs usually don’t work well, as the audience is confused if it’s real or an well produced spoof. Also, if there is too much trawling for gags, then the actual quiz format will get lost.
    Brave move, interesting concept – hope it works for Brendan and 12Yard.

    Reply
  3. Mika

    Watched Oh Sit. It’s very… meh. Yes, meh. The obstacles aren’t as amusing as Wipeout, the commentary isn’t as funny as Wipeout, and the contestants seem to be a lot more unlikeable. Maybe it’s just me, but seeing the roughness of the play in the first rounds felt a bit much. Although the rules are fairly luck-based, it seems like it’s gonna be another “Alpha-Male Win Everything” kinda show.

    Reply
      1. Mika

        I watched it on Canada’s Much Music site, but, then again, I *am* Canadian. So not sure if it’s geoblocked.

        Reply
      2. David

        The eps are on the CW site now if you can work around geoblocks if you’re not in the US..

        It’s not bad…it’d probably work in the UK as a early Saturday evening show on ITV with slightly modified prize values-if the winner got real lucky and hit all the top value chairs, here that’s 30K plus whatever money they got in obstacle clearing.

        It is pretty physical though- pushing and shoving is allowed (though a contestant was DQ’d for hitting above the neck), and I think it’s a bit unfair to the women, especially in the final round. And there is a fair bit of luck involved- one chair in the first four rounds is always worth zero (which means unless you got through a lot more obstacles than the other players, you’ll be out).

        Reply
        1. Mika

          Yeah, at lot of that is what I was getting at. I’d almost rather the last round was something like, “Do enough obstacles to clear a specific cash value,” at least somehow make the previous rounds worth something. And with the physicality, I mean, I understand they’d need to allow for SOME contact, but to actively encourage it just feels really mean spirited for what should be a fun show. I mean, look at Wipeout’s current middle rounds, there’s tons of contact, but there’s no actively pushing other people off obstacles. And these are just a FEW of the issues I have with the show. It’s just too negative for me to really enjoy.

          Reply
          1. VierkanteO

            Well, that was quite a long sit (…) to watch the full 40 minutes of it. Didn’t live up to the expectations really; the hosts weren’t that funny with their comments, the rounds are basically the same for each one. I agree with Mika that they could have done more with the final round.

            Could have been better and funnier indeed, curious if it will travel like Wipeout, but can’t imagine it actually. It reminded me a lot of Hole in the Wall actually.

          2. Brig Bother Post author

            I think I agree with all of the above, I think there’s a workable format here but it needs to be produced by people who aren’t, well, American.

            Having a big round leaderboard is entirely pointless if the person on the zero seat is basically always going to be going home. The scoring could do with tweaking.

  4. David

    A couple of other bits of US news…

    Amazing Race has doubled the grand prize to $2 million…

    and most of the cast of the new Survivor season is out (except for the 3 returnees, but they’ve been known for a while if you look around)

    http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/08/20/survivor-philippines-cast-lisa-whelchel-jeff-kent/

    (Interesting bit about the Hidden Immunity Idol- they’ll get a clue in one of the rice tins that the Idol is right under their noses- the lid of the tin is actually the idol.

    Reply

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