We were alerted to this on Twitter the other day, somebody has uploaded an episode of the much maligned gritty Telly Addicts reboot from 1998. Is it actually that bad? Probably not in retrospect, its main crime being being a completely different show to the show that people had liked perfectly well enough for the previous ten years, now with lousy unmemorable theme tune.
But delve into the suggestions from that and we hit what is surely peak Paul Ross with UK Gold’s TV quiz Telly Stack from 1996. The first round and the final is quite good fun, I find the second round a bit tedious.
And we still haven’t finished! Because also for UK Gold here’s the impossibly cheap Goldmaster with Mike Read, part Mastermind specialist subject round, other part lengthy quickfire quiz. Intrigued how Read just refers to the contestant numbers in the buzzer round rather than the contestant’s actual names.
I would like to know what the thinking behind Pants was.
FYI- Release The Hounds is coming back- but the next run will be an all-celeb series:
http://www.tellymix.co.uk/tv/286116-youtubers-geordie-shore-stars-set-release-hounds-celebrity-series.html
Ahhh, that answers a question – I was aware they had been filming it for next year but had no idea where they were getting the contestants from as I wasn’t aware of a contestant call out.
Speaking if quizzes, here is a quiz about quizzes from bbc news
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37824376
9/10, beaten by Kevin Ashman.
H/T @danielmarkhurst, Tenable with Warwick Davies (was going under the title Tower of 10 at one point) starts 3pm November 14th on ITV. Quiz based around top ten lists.
I wonder if it will be more or less fondly remembered than Tenball with Philip Schofield.
@TomHourigan on Twitter:
“Definitely gonna be rechristened Terrible in the tabloid telly reviews if it’s bad.”
Yeah, feels like a very easy own goal potentially.
And if the questions are dodgy it’ll be called Tenabull..
I’m hoping there’s a glam female assistant referred to as the Tena Lady.
I wonder if there’s a low prize fund, would they call it ten-a-penny?
Apparently there is a chance to win up to £100,000 on every show!!
And how many will actually WIN it? Not many, I’d assume 😉
I’m going to guess it’s going to have a scoring system a bit like 321s (where each correct answer is worth whatever was in your bank the previous round) with an all or nothing end game.
The Christmas special that launched that era of Telly Addicts certainly used to be on YouTube, and with Ant and Dec, Shane Richie and Winkers as contestants it’s more or less the current Saturday night line-up.
I really, really hated the new Telly Addicts, I suppose you’re right to say a lot of it was because it replaced the old Telly Addicts, but I think it was pretty ropey on its own terms. I’ve said this before but when I wrote about Telly Addicts on Offthetelly, one of the creators wrote in and said “The revamp killed it, that is not sour grapes, that is a fact.” I’m not sure they even finished the series, it certainly got conveniently booted around the schedules during the World Cup.
But I really, really loved old Telly Addicts, of course back in those days you had to take your old telly where you could find it. I particularly used to like it when it was alongside Watchdog on a Monday (first at 8pm, then at 7pm, with Watchdog at 7.30) because my dad and I used to watch both in my bedroom while my mum watched Coronation Street, I used to like that little bonding session. I wonder if Telly Addicts was the first show that added graphics “live” during the show, in that the winner of the phone-in competition would appear on screen during the show. I remember someone writing to Points of View about that, baffled about how this ostensibly recorded show could do that.
I also loved the “And they are?” style of questions. The great Neil Miles has uploaded an episode from 1987 recently – https://youtu.be/a957bXwkyyw.
One interesting thing on that is the very short-lived pop video round, which hardly seems in the spirit of the thing. One family gets an absolute stinker of a question in that round, and indeed their questions are pretty solid throughout, not that it was a fix or anything.
And of course there was Noel’s Telly Years, which only I remember, even though they did two series – https://youtu.be/an5-F_Sncy0
Seemingly that was just a way to make more use of archive TV footage, but it looked so low budget, and seemed such a slight format, that at the time I wondered if any of the celebrities talking part thought it was a front for a Gotcha. It’s always good to see Alan Hansen in a light entertainment context, though.
I think in some ways it’s slightly ahead of its time (team elimination! There’s some modern day Part Three jeopardy right there) and the studio is actually quite exciting, but it all lacks the coziness of the original, and the rounds feel like a not as tight version of what went on before.
The opening bits on the mezzanine are perfectly reasonable in the main, although The Beginner’s Guide was like a less good version of Talkabout, the Pyramid like a less good version of On the Box and the final round like a less good version of Channel Hopping. World TV doesn’t really fit, I think the end game is serviceable. I like that Noel’s a bit loose.
It’s basically final series Krypton Factor all over again, you can sort of see what they were aiming at, it’s just that it felt completely unnecessary. And there’s nothing lovable about the presentation and theme, for a show that’s tried to be boombastic it all feels so *wet*.
If we’re talking low-rent shows presented by Paul Ross, I suddenly remembered this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttn21R5BVfs
I quite liked the premise. But it’s not aged well – I also never understood why the set seemed to be ‘leaning’ slightly, like it was on a gentle incline.
I can’t find any on Youtube, but Paul Ross did a show on Anglia called Upshot which was mildly clever:
http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Upshot