We’re going to go a bit arty and This American Life on you viewers, I’m Ira Glass. We all know of the story of how Michael Larson managed to break Press Your Luck in the 1980s and won over $100,000 in doing so, but what about the more minor shows where there isn’t large amounts of cash on the line? Friend of the Bar the Internet Celebrity @shoutsatcows reports:
Blockbusters. An early student TV favourite, its early 90s Bob Holness heyday led to ill-advised resurrections hosted by Aspell, Liza “nepotism” Tarbuck and, in today’s episodes, radio’s Simon Mayo. Once you get over the inherent weirdness of seeing a radio personality talking, it’s actually a reasonable attempt at a reboot. While the graphics have been updated, there’s a nice sense of the familiar, from the hexagonal board, via the gold runs, to the knowing hilarity (not hilarity) of asking for a “p” please.
Today’s solo team is a ginger Yorkshire lad called Ryan. Ryan, it turns out, is quite good at the main Blockbusters game, easily dispatching his opponents, despite some wacky answers (“Fonichiwa?”), and them having an extra team member.
What happens next to Ryan? Find out under the cut, when our programme continues.
Welcome back.
Everything goes a bit mad when Ryan steps up for his first Gold Run. If you can’t remember the Gold Run, the board is set up like this [click for bigger]:
The answer’s initials are on each hexagon, and to win, you have to make a path of correct answers from left to right within a minute. Ryan’s a bit of a maverick here, instead of making an efficient five-step bridge across, he answers as many questions as he can, only making the bridge at the final second.
His prize? A trip across the Krypton Factor assault course. In Yorkshire. Where he lives anyway.
Simon asks him to explain his strategy. “I think you get £10 a hexagon, so I was just wanting to build up my cash.” But there’s a flaw. “You only get the money if you don’t make it across.” “Oh.”
Mayo is a little underwhelmed by the unashamed greed, and relishes in pointing out that instead of £80, he’s won a bus trip out. “I’ll remember that for the next one”, he promises, which gets a shocked “whoa” from the audience. This is unprecedented. “I’ve won something, but it’s not worth £80. I’m sounding quite bitter.” “You are, so I’d advise you to stop.” A full dressing down from Mayo. Holness would have had him escorted from the building and shot.
In the second half of the episode, Ryan easily defeats his new opponents, helped massively by only one of them bothering to buzz in, answer or appear to be awake.
Ryan steps up for his second Gold Run. “I would advise you just get from A to B as quickly as you can.” Brutal.
The episode ends with Ryan ready to make his run, but thanks to the magic of Challenge TV showing near constant repeats, we don’t have to wait long.
Will he take Simon’s advice? Nah, of course not.
His strategy this time is to completely ignore the Good Prize at the end, and to rack up as many £10 answers as he can in the minute. The answer’s initials are up on the screen, and the questions on Blockbusters are at the more accessible end of the scale, so you can go some distance just by shouting the first thing you think of.
So he interrupts Simon with a stream of guesses:
“POW. Prisoner of War?” “Which title…” “Prince of Wales. OTM.”
“Delight…” “Over The Moon. SJP.”
“American act…” “Sarah Jessica Parker. SC.”
Here, Simon lets out one word, which belies all the secret thoughts around what a dick Ryan is being. It’s a muttered “yes”, with an implied, “as though it matters”.
Ryan doesn’t try to get across the board, answering nine questions (he’s clearly seen counting them while Simon is trying to talk) for £90.
“You’ve done the calculations for yourself”
“Yeah, £90”
“That’s right. It’d be a shame if the prize you deliberately didn’t…”
“Yeah, it’ll probably be an iPhone”
“I can tell you that it was worth considerably more than £90, so you’ve messed up again”
Boom, such cutting delight. It may have cost them £90, but Simon’s knowledge that the smart-arse has done it wrong again is priceless.
“You’re pulling my leg”
“No.” Simon’s smile vanishes. “I’m not.”
“I bet it’s a weekend away”
“Well, you’re not gonna find out”
“Oh, that’s okay, I’m best off not knowing”
“No, no, we’ll tell you. You might regret it.”
Simon’s toying with him now. Look at that! Not going to tell him what it was, sees the relief, and flips it 180. Harsh stuff from Mayo, pure coldness.
“Bizarre tactics from Ryan there, but it’s his Gold Run – he can play it how he likes”, he lies.
With a third team sent on their way with £30 and an Elonex e-reader (sample Amazon review: “It is far away from todays technologie … The whole handling is contrary to ‘intuitive’ handling – you really have to always remember that everything is different to any other ‘nortmal’ handheld units.”), Ryan steps up for his third Gold Run.
“I’m intrigued to know how you’re going to play this one”, asks Simon.
“I think I’m going to conform this time, just try and get across the board”
The prize he turned down was worth at least £180, double his cash prize. Simon points out that each Gold Run has a higher value prize than the previous one, which master tactician Ryan seems to have over-looked.
This time, he takes things seriously. Amusingly, the first question, “BTB”, is about following the rules. Simon’s obvious irritation at him has worked, and he plays the game properly, his individuality stamped out under a system of oppression and falsehoods like “you can play it how you like”.
We’ve seen Mayo as the tyrannical dictator that he is, upset when things don’t go his way and a young upstart tries to show him up. It’s sickening, sort of.
Ryan’s prize for the third Gold Run is a tablet computer. The brand isn’t mentioned, so you can assume it’s something high quality and high budget, an iPad 9 or something.
“It’s better for me to have won that prize than to have gone around the houses”, he meekly concedes. And with this submission, it appears to be all over for Ryan. His next opponents, Fiona and James, smash him at the regular game. Will they go on and win overall? We’ll never know, because two episodes of low-effort pop-culture questions from yesteryear are more than plenty.
That’s Blockbusters.
Shouts at Cows writes about pop culture and has a Twitter and a website. Join us again soon for more stories of This American Life.
I’m just imagining Ryan’s strategy reveal with “Extreme Ways” playing in the background
I would quite like a button I can have about my person that all times that plays the opening strings to that everytime I press it.
There are some half-decent custom soundboard apps, but especially as you can get buttons that will play the Family Fortunes eep-oorp then somebody should make a customisable member of the family.
And so Ryan declined to go Below The Belt and saw the wisdom of going By The Board?
Well I won’t be shocked to see this on ITV sometime in 2016, considering they now own the production company…
http://deadline.com/2015/09/dance-dance-dance-talpa-reality-format-holland-1201546690/
And speaking of ITV, looks like they have no confidence in Eternal Glory- they’re giving it a Tuesday night slot:
http://www.itv.com/presscentre/ep1week41/eternal-glory
I would be careful assuming that, Dutch media chums have the launch down as “OK” to “a bit disappointing” (albeit quite well in the youth demo) but I’ve not seen or heard anything since, I’m trying to reach out to see if there’s an update.
Successful but not a monster seems to be the “thing”, it looks like its held its 1.4m at least.
This appears to be the place to get Dutch Numbers:
https://kijkonderzoek.nl/kijkcijfers
Re: Eternal Glory – Original show felt a bit second or third tier and looked a bit cheap but had some interesting ideas, the question is how have ITV adapted it? And also the raw figure might not tell the whole story here, it’s designed to try and attract a young male audience (and has done so by picking sportspeople who aren’t especially relevant these days albeit recognisible) so if it succeeds at that then a low figure might be OK.
I also think that weekly elimination shows could be a good bet for Tuesdays – if it flops it flops, but if it builds an audience as the more successful of these tend to then it’s paid for itself. This is why I reckon The Mole might be a canny bet at some point.
The UK’s big TV nights are Friday/Saturday/Sunday, correct? (I know Saturday is for sure)
Things have changes here in the US- back in the 70’s the big night was Saturday, now Saturdays are dead zones (usually reruns, burnoffs, or sports programming now). Fridays are a little better then they used to be (the big joke was Fox sent cult-classic shows to the “Friday Night Death Zone”, but ABC has success with Shark Tank and some comedies, CBS moved TAR there last year and does OK along with some older-schewing dramas, and NBC has a bit of a cult show in Grimm. The main knock against Fri/Sat now is that the younger viewers are out (going to movies, dates, high school events, etc.)
The biggest night, at least to advertisers, is Thursday- movie studios buy a ton of ad time because movies release on Friday most of the time (if it’s a holiday weekend they sometimes start Wednesday or Thursday)- NBC had a big run from the mid 80’s to early 2000’s with comedies and dramas, CBS then had Survivor on Thursdays for a long time, then moved their top comedies to that night (but they also have started airing early-season NFL games), and ABC has done well the past couple of years with female-schewing dramas. Sunday is also a big night, but NBC has dominated the fall months with Sunday Night Football- the spring months have been up for grabs (and a real big trend now is cable shows such as The Walking Dead- it can do better than 90% of broadcast shows some weeks).
Yes Saturday the big shiny floor entertainment night of the week – there have been loads of books and documentaries on it quite recently which are worth a look if you get the chance. It’s also the UK’s big sports coverage day (it’s when most of our football matches get played) usually but limited to daytime and in the late evenings.
Friday’s used to be big comedy nights, more recently they go for raucous appeal early in the evening – let your hair down it’s the weekend.
Sundays are quite difficult to pigeonhole, they tend to be a bit more subdued (back to work tomorrow!), the BBC gets a large slightly older audience (Countryfile and Antiques Roadshow are MONSTERS), ITV used to put out variety and popular drama but struggles compared to its heyday, which is why they try and put The X Factor on for as long as possible.
It’s sometimes quite difficult for ITV to put a cohesive schedule on Tuesdays because that’s when Champions League football was shown live but not every week. However BT have the rights to it now so building something more dependable should be a bit easier.
Am I the only one who thinks those Eternal Glory costumes look a bit Gladiators?
They certainly do!
we already have changes to the AUA! roster
the Mime was fired but its role was taken by Luca Laurenti
the Crusader is a new character (played by the Assistant if you’re wondering) and its category is “crossword definitions” because in Italian “crossed words” is the same as “crusader’s words”
from now on, the episode winner is presented with a smart card to see Mediaset’s premium channels (which carry the Champion’s League this year and they are advertising it like hell)
Aaaaah, I worked out Luca’s doing the Mime job but I had no idea about the Knight’s angle.
A bit off-topic, but Netflix picked up Black Mirror for 12 episodes:
http://tvline.com/2015/09/25/black-mirror-netflix-season-3/
(I’d think they’d release them in waves of two or three eps each- this isn’t a series to binge-watch IMO)
Odds on some episode involving an execution based reality show?
I reckon it’d be treading too similar a theme to the killer theme park one, although you never know.
The newer version of The Outer Limits already did it in 2000:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_Day_%28The_Outer_Limits%29