The Cellar

TERNIGHT!

• Who Wants to be a Millionaire: The People Play (ITV, 9pm) – Once again real people with real sob stories will get to sit in the chair for the chance to walk away at £20,000. But this time there’s an iOS app! Although I think you’ll be able to play along on the website as well. Tonight’s one is live, but they seem to be recording another one for future use. We’re still waiting for the JLS break-up special.
• And that’s on at the same time as The Apprentice! (BBC1, 9pm) What hilarious things will the stupid contestants come out with tonight? Episode two is on tomorrow, and further episodes go out on Wednesdays.
• First series Fun House and Knightmare on Challenge on Friday from 10pm. Kids telly in prime time, it’ll be interesting to see how that does.
• This Saturday it’s the last Schlag den Raab for a few months. We’ll be providing a live commentary again. This time there’s €1.5m in the pot and Hurts are performing live. So.

In other news, ITV are recording a pilot of Take One For The Team on Friday 24th May. Can’t go I have an engagement, but if you go do let us know what you think. Be warned, it’s at Pinewood.

And look! It’s the new Fifty 50 Show this week featuring David Bodycombe and new panellist Jack Waley-Cohen of our good friends at QuizQuizQuiz.com. Check it out.

• Direct download
• Show notes
• Subscribe on iTunes
• Subscribe on RSS

WWTBAM? is on the look out for civilian contestants so presumably they’re doing another The People Play week or whatever. If you want to appear on “TV’s biggest game show” then the link with all the details is here. Closing date 7th April.

Quiet period at The Bar, sorry, but we do have at least two recordings of new shows happening within the next six weeks or so so that will be exciting.

This Sunday is game two of the Bother Series of Poker, open to anyone who can play and can stake the $5.50. That’s Sunday at 8pm. Here are the details. We had a brilliant turn out for game one, hopefully game two will be just as good.

Here’s my review of the The Chase app, currently on the app store for £1.49 – we don’t tend to mention prices in these reviews because there’s no telling what it’s going to be on any given day. Strike it Lucky came out today as well, a full review in due course but my advice would be save your cash.

So something left me fuming this evening. No, it wasn’t the 21 Questions Wrong CHRISTMAS SPECIAL (on Fifty 50 Show this Christmas Eve!) it was in fact LIVE Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Tonight we had Des O Connor and Lee Mack win £150k, Rosemary Schrager and Hugo Taylor win £20k and JB and Oritsé from JLS win £50k when the time ran out. So who had the brilliant idea of putting the guys the kidz will tune in for in the last hurried cut-short slot especially as it turned out they were much MUCH smarter than you might have expected? Who knew that JLS were mates with Robert Winston? They were BRILLIANT and if ITV were on the ball they’d have let it run over and pushed the news. I don’t think Millionaire has ever left me so angry or baffled.

I would have hoped they’d get to continue in a pre-record they can play out on the New Year’s Special. Failing that, it’d be rude not to invite all four of them onto The Celebrity Chase, on the basis of tonight it’d be epic.

Incidentally, final Pointless filming at TVC tomorrow, I’m informed it’s moving to Elstree in the New Year.

Right, I’m busy for the next few days (although I will still be sproadically around) so here’s a Board of Excitement to tide you over:

• The Great Escape (Sunday Night, TNT in the US) – Episode two of this turned out to be slightly more interesting than episode one, so we’ll see.
• It’s my birthday (Monday, all day) – 31, in case you were wondering.
• Amazing Race Australia (Monday) – This is still a great series generally, but there have been fewer surprising challenges compared to the first one this time round I feel.
• All New Blockbusters (Challenge, 8pm) – The new series begins with a christmas celebrity special.
• Who Wants To Be A Millionaire: The People Play - Three evenings of live shows beginning Monday at 9pm with members of the public. This time round you can play along at home and the results will get announced from the studio, and there’s an “Ask the Nation” lifeline. There will be a Show Discussion post set-up for these specials.
• King of The Mountains (Thursday 8:30pm, Pokerstars) – it’s Le Tour, so it’s time for Le Tour(noi). $10 buy-in tournament. All the details here. It’s open to anybody elegible.
• Reflex (Friday) – This is filming up in Salford. We have people going so look out for a write up.
• Fort Boyard – 2011 episodes on TV5 (not being shown in the original broadcast order, in case you were wondering) on Saturday at 5:24 apparently, although it was meant to be 5:26 this week just gone and they slipped in a ten minute extra programme. Meanwhile episode 2 of the 2012 season goes out on France 2 at 7:35pm UK time, although that was about ten minutes late yesterday as well. Those pesky French and their timekeeping, eh? Discuss the 2012 season through this link.

(Copyright Charlie Brooker) Gok Wan will apparently be hosting Channel 4′s version of Stateside Jerry Springer fronted sleeper hit Baggage. It’s a dating show where increasingly big secrets get revealed about the contestants throughout the show. I can imagine Wan bringing a fun camp element to it. I gather the UK version will be hour long episodes.

Meanwhile, whilst Ask the Nation on next week’s Millionaire isn’t much of a surprise, there will apparently be a playalong game.

I can’t remember the last time there was a Board of Excitement, precumably because there’s been very little excitement over the previous weeks. Here we are though:

• Tipping Point (Weekdays, 5pm, ITV1) – Ben Shephard hosts a quiz based around those coin pushers you see in the arcades. Top prize is £10,000 apparently, there’s a Show Discussion post about this set up for 2pm tomorrow.
• Amazing Race Australia (Monday, Australia) – this continues to be very good, although last week’s episode was slightly weaker than the others.
• And then not very much until SUPER SATURDAY.
• Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (Saturday) – This is for a recording where they try out some new game elements (presumably as a test for the civilian live shows the following week). I was hoping to go to this myself, but a friend’s birthday dinner is falling on the same day so I’ve had to cancel. If you go then of course we are interested in your thoughts. There do not appear to be any tickets left for it.
• Fort Boyard 2011 (Saturday, 5:26pm, TV5Monde Europe) – Last year’s batch…
• 17 Meter (Saturday 7:15pm UK time, Pro 7) – The Whole 19 Yards lives on in Germany. Sounds like there’s some sort of interhost team rivalry being set up this time round.
• Fort Boyard 2012 (Saturday, 7:35pm UK time, France 2) – This year’s batch. So exciting!