Saturday, 7pm,
ITV
New talent challenge show fronted by Stephen Mulhern, people with unusual talents are put to the test in challenges devised for television, if they can complete the challenge they win £1,000, if they lose they have to take a Take Me Out-esque Walk of Shame.
We saw an episode being filmed although it’s filmed in such a way they can chop and change to form shows with four items as they see fit. I think their ability to put these shows together will be critical to the show’s success, some challenges a bit dull but some are genuinely incredible although it’s shame that there’s not much effort put into the set-ups (compare and contrast with Epic Win which is probably the closest equivalent, let alone You Bet).
It doesn’t hurt that it’s the lead-in to The X Factor, but these days that is no guarantee of success. Still, I reckon it’s you’re probably likely to enjoy it more than you’re expecting although I say that with the caveat that I don’t yet know how it’s been edited.
Fun fact: when they were filming the trailers they were referring to “Xaturday” but evidently in the intervening month they’ve dropped this.
The presenter of Time Commanders has been announced as Gregg Wallace.
Already asking for people to be in another series.
Yes, a second series is planned already for the New Year.
I’m quite liking this so far, amazingly for an ITV show they’re just getting on with it which is quite refreshing! I was worried at the start when they were showing random ‘hilarious’ YouTube clips but since then it has been fine
I think this worked out pretty well! A couple of interesting things of note:
* I think the original intention was to show four challenges (they filmed four at the recording session) and during the edit they upped it to six (they’re actually filming an extra date soon I notice). I think this was a good choice, you couldn’t accuse the show of having a large amount of filler, the conveyor belt suits it.
* They’ve edited out a fair bit of the chat, completely omitted the challenge names (they came up on the big screen on the rotating stage) and the stage rotation which was very slow.
* I was in the audience for the Rubik’s Cube challenge, it was genuinely mesmerizing watching him do that especially with the blindfold on and the standing ovation was unprompted (indeed he was the second filmed that session and we didn’t bother with the first guy). The Challenger was really nervous in his interview, they actually refilmed it after he won to give him a chance to come across better (although I wonder if showing the nervousness is a better story). The cubes genuinely had been mixed by members of the audience on stage beforehand. He got to inspect the cubes before starting the challenge.
* None of the other challenges I saw filmed came up today.
Fact fans. The original pilot for You Bet was recorded in the same studio as this (London Studios 1)- and the team quickly realised they were going to need more studio floor space. I always thought, since reading that, they maybe they wanted a grander ‘arena’ set to mirror the orginal ‘Wetten Dass’ settings, as with a bit of imagination – they did have a lot of space to play with.
I watched ‘Go For It’ last night. The You Bet production team were right to move to larger surroundings.
This show needs to move to larger surroundings. I know why the challenge area is so small. To stop the massive ‘Millitary Tank drives over an obsticle course whilst an under 16 trampoline squad attempt 100 blindfold summersaults in 3 minutes at the same time’ ideas being submitted.
But having You Bet-esque challenges being perfomed, in such a small area looked and felt too restrictive – even though, I’ll admit most of the challenges did fit into that area quite well.
Would help if the circular walk on an pre-challenge interview area was on the far left hand wall of the studio, then the main ‘performace’ area could be extended out in the middle of the studio more. (yes, I know why it’s been put there – as the scenery/props dock doors are top right corner as you look at it on screen)
That said, despite parts of it being edited in a food blender, and one post recording vocal pick-up sounded like it was recorded in Stephen’s wardrobe in the dressing room rather than on the studio floor – I actually enjoyed it.
Would have liked a graphic to display the totals when a certain number has to be achived to win, rather than just the clock – but then I’ve always huffed loudly at the start of every new series of Mastermind, for not having the clock on screen.
I take it for series two, the idea will be to have 4 new challenges, plus someone taking on a challenge from this series as the fifth in each show?
Putting the kit car together is pure You Bet in a good way.
The memory challenges tend to be a bit drawn out and dull, this is what Epic Win did quite well in that they usually dressed them up quite interestingly, I’ll take human barcode reading machine with supermarket setting over naming words from a book. In fairness I never got a great deal out of the memory challenges on You Bet either.
Also marks off for not revealing the answer to the Eurovision video when the bloke got the audio wrong. Goodness knows this appears to have become a thing.
I still quite like this, the pogo stick challenge last night was really good. The JCB champagne thing was pure You Bet and probably could do with a clock.
It’s not setting the ratings alight, 2.4 last week against Strictly, 2.8 without it this week. Pity, but I think that’s an issue with light entertainment generally – if it’s too light people have too many other options. You really do have to grab people by the chops.
They had a 12 year old boy on it today, since they can’t give him £1000, they gave him £1000 worth of table tennis vouchers (his skill was table tennis).