Doubtless you’ve noticed that ABC in the US are reviving a ton (two) of classic shows for a new Sunday night Summer gameshow block (Pyramid and Match Game aka Blankety Blank), both of which have been done several times before (and Celebrity Family Feud is a going concern) but this time they’ll work because of extra lights and Alec Baldwin.
Needless to say if it all works out I can’t wait for high-chrome remakes of Chain Letters, Crosswits and Runway on ITV next Summer.
RTL II in Germany had filmes two Test The Nation episodes (IQ Test and Music Test) just to find out that Warner Bros., the production company behind these, had not actually found groups to battle each other (e.g. Radio DJs vs. Metal Fans etc.), bit used actors to fill all the empty chairs. The two episodes will not air and it is unsure whether other planned episodes will be produced now.
This follows a huge scandal Jan Böhmermann (the one who might be prosecuted for writing a satire poem about Turkish president Erdoğan) has created about four days ago: The highly popular dating show “Schwiegertochter gesucht” (“Daughter in Law wanted”) is well known for their bizarre lower class participants who have weird hobbies and sometimes seem not smart enough to understand that they are just ridiculed for the viewers’ pleasure.
Jan Böhmermann had succeded in putting two actors into this show (playing father and son) and reveal what the participants have to sign to take part in this show. They are being paid 150€ for a maximum of 30 days of filming, the casting woman ignored that the father drank eight beers a day and wrote in the contract that he drank no alcohol at all, the participants had to sign that they were not handicapped (because making fun of handicapped people is against German media laws) etc… “Schwiegertochter gesucht” is also produced by Warner Bros. putting them into a pretty uncomfortable situation now.
Not really shocked at this, but The Amazing Race is not on the CBS fall schedule for the first time since 2005; they’re holding it for midseason (so at best they’ll have one run next year -and I suspect it’ll be the last season).
I can’t say it’s a show I’ve watched for a number of years, presumably the social media season wasn’t a massive hit.
Last couple of episodes were 0.9/4 and 1.1/4 in 18-49; 5M93 viewers. Given the terrible timeslots (Fri 8 now, trouble with sport overruns before), I’d say it holds its own. Compared to Survivor the same week (Wed 8), rating 2.1/7 9M54, there’s room for improvement.
Pretty surprisingly, I found this season’s stuntcasting agreeable, if a little loud and full of the servile pleasantries required of their job. I’ll take that over the Christian mactors, raging [redacted], and random strangers mouthing “Save me” while Phil tries to force them to breed of seasons past.
Hoping they can push it to a 30th season and give it a proper send-off with one last All-Star series
I’ve just seen the social media series in three days or so, because I like the idea behind the show. But I can’t see why they won that many Emmys. If a team like the WIDM team would make this format, they would make sure that each detour takes approximately the same time (in the first few episodes you had to be lucky to choose the quicker task imho). This really annoyed me. And they always took a cab and had to be lucky with the knowledge of the drivers. It all seemed like a show of luck and little skill. I’ll probably watch older seasons to compare it, but the first season of Pekin Express was much more my cup of tea. (Although I can hardly remember it and might have idealised it a little in the last decade or so).
The luck of the taxis never bothered me, they always struck me as an integral part of the fun.
Mu ch less fun was course design that became too rigid so there wasn’t enough opportunities for the pack to shuffle (I will always remember stages that end on a take-your-turn task followed by straight to the pitstop – what’s tense about that?) and crucially really lazy kick teams when they’re down elements, such as the U Turn and the Yield which you could only use on teams behind you which doesn’t add drama so much as make the ending rather more obvious. Why’s that good?
Interestingly other versions of the show have adapted these things and made hem much more interesting, such as having teams vote on who takes a penalty early in the leg and people find out who has been penalised later in the leg. I loved some of the ideas in the original Aussie series in that there was always something to do at each place rather than become a point to point race.
One thing that a few of the other TAR versions do is a “duel” task- the first team to reach the task point has to wait for another team to get there, then the compete to finish the task first. The winner gets the next clue, the loser has to stay until another team arrives and to the task against them, and so on. Once it’s down to two teams, the winner gets the clue, the loser gets an additional time penalty before they finally get the clue.
Duels are both obvious and brilliant. I would like to see that as a permanent option to most adversarial tasks rather than its own thing though. Specifically, I’d like to see the team whose turn it is to offer exactly one other waiting team the option of playing them instead of the locals. Winner moves on, loser goes to the back of the line.
My problem with taxis isn’t their luck, but rather their ubiquity. Pretty much all other forms of transport give a better sense of place, prettier video, and challenge the competitors more. I suspect the latter is treated as a scheduling bug rather than a gameplay feature, a perceived attitude I blame for breaking a lot of the things that were working in past seasons. This includes the low variance tasks, which lead to the processional legs that annoy us both.
In their defense, they have taken more than a week off their shooting schedule, as well as limiting the use of indoor locations and alternate flight paths due to budget restrictions. Still, I find it difficult to empathise given that they still use about a billion dance troupes per season, decide to pull extravagant stunts in the most expensive location possible (US) and award a pointlessly large prize.
TAR AUS is to be commented both for looking a lot better than you’d assume the budget allows and for trying a number of new things. Having said that, the twist that you seem fond of absolutely repulsed me. If I wanted to watch BB, I would; not to mention it can break the game mechanically in weird manners like the leading team passing the penalty point before all the votes are in or having the ghosts of eliminated teams affecting outcomes.
You may be glad to know that U-turns and Yields are unofficially retired, replaced by the rarely appearing Double U-turn, home of such fun as Team A votes for team C, then team B votes for team A, to guarantee that team C hurts by having to do the Detour task they didn’t choose as well. In effect, this often removes the strugglers in a tight season, or the runaway leader in an uncontested one making for a smaller, more dramatic spread in the final legs.
> not to mention it can break the game mechanically in weird manners like the leading team passing the penalty point before all the votes are in or having the ghosts of eliminated teams affecting outcomes.
Has it ever done this? All the times I’ve seen it used it’s one of the first things in the leg, results coming towards the end of the leg.
I think you’re about ten years late in comparing it unfavourably to Big Brother, the whole show is basically inter- and intra- team clashes these days.
I may be wrong, but I think there were something like two shots between last vote and first arrival once, so a close call is the best I can offer.
And yes, it’s been more than a decade since my last BB. It also wasn’t a value judgement, just pointing out the distance of fit.
And in other news, the theme for the next Survivor season in the US was revealed during the finale last night: Millennials vs Gen-X. Though the rumored twist for the Spring 2017 season sounds more interesting- 6 former winners vs 6 people who made the jury in their season vs 6 early boots from their season…
In other news: Bradley Walsh for Cash Trapped, which doesn’t sound like a very Bradley Walsh sort of show, interestingly.
I’ll put the advert up this evening.