The Cellar

The Board of Excitement will be going up at a slightly later time than usual tomorrow, so with exciting things happening on Saturday (Push the Button, Who Dares Wins), here’s a space for you to talk about it.

The highlight for me is tonight’s Solitary v4.0 final, which if it is half as entertaining as the rest of the series should be very entertaining indeed. Last week featured an extreme memory test (being required to memorise a 30-part sequence of colours, acting them out by dunking your face into four containers of differently coloured goo) followed by an awesome treatment involving holding a set of stocks and traversing an obstacle course whilst balancing a ball on the indented stock edge, with the people finishing last having to pay a penalty of squatting in a stress position for increasingly lengthy periods of time. It ended on a cliffhanger – who will crack first? And who will win? I can’t wait to find out!

Dear UK Producers, it is wrong that there are more US shows of interest right now than British ones. sort it out please thanks.

• Minute to Win It (Sunday, NBC) – Two hour debut of the show that’s The Cube but without The Cube and with a time limit.
• The Amazing Race (Sunday, CBS) – Things I learnt from the race this week: a) Cowboy hats don’t come off ever, even while bungee jumping. b) If somehow England meet the USA at the World Cup in the knockout stages, we don’t have to fear penalty shoot-outs. c) German Beatles tribute bands are hilarious. So does this mean they aren’t actually going to Liverpool, then? Bother’s Bar: right again.
• Only Connect (Monday, 8:30pm, BBC4) – Unless they do it later in the series then I look a bit silly but that is the risk you take in being cutting edge but without doing any of the associated research. Anyway, it’s the third quarter-final of this this week, Neuroscientists vs strategy board gamers. Speaking of which, I was very surprised and excited to learn this week that Robert Florence (of brilliant BRILLIANT video games shows Consolevania and BBC Scotland’s Video Gaiden and currently writer and performer in BBC Scotland’s comedy Burnistoun) has his own site devoted to board games. That a minor celebrity (and a fairly talented one at that) does this pleases me immensely.
• St Patrick’s Day (Wednesday, Ireland) – do you like a drink? Well why not have one on the one day a year where it’s legally allowed!
• There’s no Survivor This Week (Not Thursday, Not CBS) – because of March Madness. Some people play basketball, it’s crazy, apparently. So you’ll have to wait another week to find out what other inventive and surprising ways the Heroes could self-destruct. What we have learnt quite specifically is that the Heroes are really rubbish at anything that involes spatial awareness. As many of the puzzles in Survivor challenges seem to involve spatial awareness, that is a problem.
• Solitary v4.0 (Saturday, Fox Reality) – by my reckoning only two more episodes left, so only two more chances to use my ‘I confidently predict this will be like the previous episode, but with one less person in it’ joke you all look forward to on a weekly basis. Last week gave us a brilliant test in a virtual maze followed by THE CHAIR AND CROWN OF NAILS (STUMPY PEGS) (my title), the first treatment this season to genuinely look like an implement of torture. How do you follow that? I don’t know, but otherwise’I confidently predict this will be like the previous episode, but with one less person in it. Edit: Actually, it’s the final next week!

It’s getting lighter outside, but it’s getting heavy on the Board of Excitement, or something.

• The Bother Series of Poker Game 3 (Full Tilt, 2000 GMT/1500 Eastern, Sunday) – basically I’m missing flops and playing really badly, so it’s just free money. Let’s hope that no German bandits interrupt our game (thanks to David for the spam-filtered link). The page for Game 3 discussion is here. Edit: Congratulations to David for winning this, and unbelieveably we were attacked by German bandits. Oh man!
• Man In Box (All week, The Internet): I’m sort of not-quite addicted to this, but I am intrigued to see how it will all play out. Will it be break free… or breakdown?
• The Amazing Race (CBS, Sunday): The Cowboys are one of my favourite teams ever, I think. Although it was quite lucky that the tasks last week basically involved being a cowboy.
• We Are The Champions (CBBC, 4:30pm, Monday to Friday): Back for Sport Relief and repeated on BBC1 next week. Paddy MacGuiness hosts, swapping ‘Take Me Out’ for “away you go!” and celebrity coaches are promised.
• Pointless (BBC2, 4:30pm. Weekdays): The return of last year’s surprise sleeper hit with Alexander Armstrong and geek hero Richard Osman (presumably). It’s still 45 minutes, but there is one less couple so I don’t know how it’s going to work.
• Only Connect (BBC4, Monday, 8:30pm): Second quarter-final with the Brasenose Grads versus Tommy Scott And The Hitchikers.
• The Krypton Factor Grand Final (ITV1, 7:30pm, Tuesday) – Strange things are afoot – not only are there now proper adverts during the ad break, but it was actually advertised before Push the Button last night, despite not actually having been advertisied before now and the fact the ratings have consistently dropped over the series. I’m idly wondering if ITV are considering making a third series off their own back this year if Sage drop out. Anyway I was at the final so I know who wins, it’s a very exciting finish.
• Survivor (CBS, Thursday): This really has been tremendous so far. Although this weeks looks like another brawling-based challenge which seem to be getting more and more violent, which is increasingly uncomfortable viewing.
• Your Country Needs You (BBC1, 8:30pm, Friday): Yes, it’s time to vote for whoever is going to sing Pete Waterman’s Eurovision winning song this year. After last year’s successful series, this appears to be a one off vote.
• Solitary 4.0 (Fox Reality, Saturday): After a rather lacklustre previous episode, last week’s was once again tremendous featuring a bust-out of prison challenge (and OF COURSE the final key was hidden in the officer’s trousers that were hanging up – very Mole-like, which is interesting since US Mole had a similar task of its own a long time ago) and the return of the spin-lots-of-times-on-a-chair-until-you-can-take-no-more Challenge, this season with added mini-golf element. What’s not to like? I confidently predict this episode will be similar to the previous one, but with one less contestant.

Christ, it’s almost Christmas ALREADY.

• The Amazing Race (Sunday, CBS): Well last week’s saw some teams take some excellent transportation gambles, only for the Race organizers to screw over the clever ones with a bunch point. Go go Team Cowboy!
• Only Connect (8:30pm, Monday, BBC4): it’s the first quarter final so the questions are set to be a little harder than usual (although it was nice to see two teams get lots of big point questions last week, good AGGRESSIVE play as we say in poker), this week it’s the housewives favourites the Exeter Alumini vs the Archers Admirers.
• The Krypton Factor (7:30pm, Tuesday, ITV1): the second semi this week, and goodness, how much did those audience shots add to the show? Well worth dropping the intelligence test for, that’s what I say. Don’t know if the audience coloured lighting was in effect, it didn’t look very obvious on screen.
• The Whole 19 Yards (Wednesday, Pinewood Studios) – look out an audience report on Wednesday. Why not try and predict a) how many references to Vernon Kay’s saucy text scandal the warm-up man will make and b) how far over the predicted 8:15pm approximate finish time the recording will overrun to? If you’re reading from Endemol – get your old Total Wipeout episodes on standby, it genuinely worked brilliantly last time. Actually give us new ones!
• Survivor (Thursday, CBS): I haven’t watched episode three yet but I intend to after I’ve written this. Bother’s Bar: reliably mediocre.
• Ant and Dec’s Push the Button (8pm, Saturday, ITV1): Already went on about this in the previous post. This probably won’t get another billing here, but I liked the show enough that I’ll watch it if I’m in.
• Who Dares Wins (8:30pm, BBC1, Saturday): Nicky Nacky Knowles is back for another series of the mildly entertaining list quiz that’s popular here and basically nowhere else.
• Solitary 4.0 (Saturday, Fox Reality): well after the brilliance of the last few weeks, circuit training in a gorilla suit is a bit of a let down. Still though. I confidently predict this episode to be like the last, but with one fewer person in it. 
• The Bother Series of Poker Game 3: Actually next Sunday. If you missed it last time, you missed an amusing conversation about the Austrian version of You’ve Been Framed. You don’t get THAT on Channel 5′s Party Poker coverage.

What’s on the board, Miss Ford?

• The Bother Series of Poker Event 2 (Sunday, Full Tilt, 8pm GMT/1500 ET) – the discussion page for this week’s game is here.
• The Amazing Race (Sunday, CBS) – Well, a week after the first episode and I can’t remember many of the teams except for Mario and Luigi the detectives (one of them is probably called Bob, they always are) and Team Lesbian. That probably makes them my favourites by default.
• Only Connect (Monday, BBC4, 8:30pm) – it’s the final heat of this this week and this week’s cleverly diametrically opposed types are the Booksellers vs Bowlers. I don’t know how the next round has been drawn so expect lots of amusing and inaccurate guesswork.
• The Krypton Factor (Tuesday, ITV1, 7:30pm) – it’s the first semi-final! Ratings for this haven’t really held up that well, but I’d like to see it come back for a third series and put right what went wrong this time round.
• Survivor (Thursday, CBS) – well embarrassingly I haven’t watched ep 2 yet, I was meant to last night, but instead the new The Pet Shop Boys live DVD came through the post so I watched that instead, and as such I intend to wear a cardboard box over my head for most of the next week. I’m sure it is very good though, and will probably watch it later.
• The Bubble (Friday, BBC2, 10pm) – To be honest doesn’t deserve to be here but I put it here just so I can say that I thought it was neither good nor bad, it’s a bit like what you’d expect the TV equivilent of sensual deprivation to be. Which is sort of ironic.
• Ant and Dec’s Push the Button (Saturday, ITV1, 7:45pm) – this should be quite good fun, basically two families taking on several tasks whilst a £100,000 money clock counts down and likely to have a few entertaining Ant and Dec cheeky twists. This is actually recording on Thursday, if anyone’s going do please feel free to do a recording report – I’m not interested in spoilers of results, but I’m always intrigued by the format and what you think of it. I know contestants are asked not to divulge stuff on the internet, two words: assumed name, and don’t say anything that makes it obvious it’s you. So twelve words really. I would go down to this myself, but I’ve only got so much leave and wages, generous as my leave allowance is. Also it’s at rather audience-unfriendly Pinewood. Admittedly, so is The Whole 19 Yards, but that should finish early enough to catch the last train, y’know? In theory. Anyway, it would be quite good if the theme for this was ‘Push the Button’, the controversial Israeli Eurovision entry by Teapacks from a few years ago.
• Solitary v4.0 (Saturday, Fox Reality) – Well last week we had the hilarious game of “input these phrases into the computer where each letter on the keyboard stands for a different letter on screen, deleting everything if you type the wrong one in” (needless to say, I’d be fascinated to know if someone did accidentally type “This sucks Vag” genuinely or someone on the production team has quite an amusingly risqué sense of humour) followed by the always fun Twister meets Laserquest meets neck pain treatment. Again, I’d be quite interested to know how many rounds of a treatment the producers have prepared beforehand, and if there are some sort of hard-and-fast rules they have to use on the fly if the contestants are a bit hardier than originally thought. Anyway, this is episode five, which I predict to be like episode four, but with one less person in it.

What have we got to look forward to this week?

• The Amazing Race (Sunday, CBS): I’ve avoided all details about this so far, except I gather that two ex-Big Brother contestants are on it and Miss Teen South Carolina who said something stupid about Geography once. The first episode will probably be quite similar to the first episode of the other 15 seasons, I confidently predict.
• Valentine’s Day (Sunday, The Western World): Awwww.
• A new feature (Sunday, Bother’s Bar): Try not to get too excited now.
• Only Connect (Monday, BBC 4, 8:30pm): Middle-class but not posh is how it’s going down on Twitter where all the cool working class kids like myself hang out. This week it’s the Insurers vs Gamblers. There’s only one more heat left! But I’ll have to watch this on Catch-up because I’m probably off to see…
• Treasure Tag (Down in That London):… with Cat Deeley on Monday evening. Normally I have an idea as to whether I think I’m going to like a show or not based on the premise before I go to see it, this one has me feeling very mildly positive. I fully expect them to mess that good feeling up by taking six hours to record. Anyway, look out for a write-up if I go.
• The Krypton Factor (Tuesday, ITV1, 7:30pm): I might have to stop billing this if I actually keep forgetting to actually watch it (I mean, I was at the final so I know who wins for goodness sake). This is the penultimate heat, by my reckoning.
• Survivor (Thursday, CBS): Trying to avoid spoilers here (for another day at least, you’ve had plenty of time by then), but quite enjoyed episode one. The villains are brilliant, it feels like some sort of pirate camp over there. Challenges are repeats of old challenges with occasional twists, and I can’t believe how much the survivors really go for it in the brawling-based challenges to the point that I’m beginning to find them mildly uncomfortable to watch. Also Boston Rob is awesome, you Survivor-fan idiots! 
• Solitary v4.0 (Saturday, Fox Reality): Episode two was, in a word, epic, with the completely brilliant Solitary Roulette task (should be made into its own format, until David B pointed out at the poker last week that it was basically round two of 15-1) and a treatment where contestants whack themselves with various objects of varying degrees of kink to make enough noise to register on a clap-o-meter until they can take no more. Just when you begin to think Solitary has run out of interesting avenues to go down it’s still able to surprise and amuse. This is episode four, which I confidently predict will be a bit like episode three but with one less person in it.
• The Bother Series of Poker Game 2 (Next Sunday 8pm, Bother’s Bar, Full Tilt): you missed out on a fun game last week, don’t be scared to join in this one especially as I fully intend on taking David B down. Requests > Search by Tournament ID > #138380498.

It’s American reality season, which is good news for us because that means easy entries:

• The Bother Series of Poker 2010 Event 1 (Tonight, 8pm GMT/1500 ET) – if you’re playing in this tonight then best of luck. If you intend on playing but haven’t deposited with Full Tilt yet, I advise against waiting until 7:45pm to do it, sometimes it can take a little while to go through. You should still be able to join in anytime up until 8:10 in theory, although how it will work out in practice I’m not sure. There’s no lobby chat, so I’ve put a new page up for discussion relating to the first event. When the game gets going, you can chat as a player or as an observer at will, in theory. Good luck!
• University Challenge (Monday, 8pm, BBC2) I don’t normally make a habit of billing (or indeed watching) this, usually tuning in about ten minutes befre the end waiting for Only Connect to come on, and even then mainly to judge the contestants’ attractiveness because yes, even I am sometimes that shallow. However, last week’s was exciting enough to warrant watching it for ‘proper’ reasons, so Uni C gets its first outing on the Board of Excitement.
• Only Connect (Monday, 8:30pm, BBC4) But Only Connect is all about the interesting questions, and this week the people I won’t be making value judgements on are Exeter Alumini vs Gourmands. It’s the Will Young vs Giles Coren battle THE WORLD HAS BEEN WAITING FOR.
• The Krypton Factor (Tuesday, 7:30, ITV1) – this series is just sort of pootling along without really capturing anyone’s imagination, and last week I actually forgot it had been on until the Wednesday. But thankfully I was saved by the V+ Box where I’ve got it on series link and I watched it and it remains still not as good as last year but y’know, entertaining enough. It’s such a shame.
• Survivor: Heroes vs Villains (Thursday, CBS) And probably a day later for naughty Brits. It’s the big two-oh for Survivor and The Probstmeister (as nobody calls him) is back for another season in Samoa with twenty previous players, some for a third time. I’m pulling for Cirie, Boston Rob or Russell to win, all of whom were brilliant players in previous seasons and none of whom won. Also if Boston Rob wins, the fans will go mental which will be funny. And it will be interesting to how much Coach will play up at ‘be’-ing Coach. Maybe one day we’ll get to find out what happened to Tontine. Also I was tipped-off that the third series of South African Survivor – with celebrities! has started, but that they “can’t seem to acquire it.” So there we are.
• Solitary v4.0 (Saturday, Fox Reality) Unfortunately because it’s on right at the end of the BoE week I’ve not normally had the chance to watch the previous episode before billing the following one. So this is Episode 3, it will probably be a bit like Episode 2 but with one fewer people in it, and that’s a Brig Bother GUARANTEE.

…this makes me quite sad.

That being said, I’m intrigued to find out what was cut from the first episode of Solitary 4.0, as my problems with it (entertaining as it still was) went a bit deeper than what may or may not have been cut out by rubbish channel execs. Namely that the make-yourself-sweat task shouldn’t have eliminated someone, because Solitary isn’t about elimination by workload, it’s about elimination by giving up. Also whilst I approve of the strategy element (and indeed, Solitary‘s increasing strategy elements) of the unappetizing drinks treatment (contestants picked at random to combine two foodstuffs to form a drink but have to drink it themselves before everybody else has to do the same), my gut feeling is that strong stomach treatments should come mid-series, when you can play on the contestants’ hunger. Series opening treatment should be something more visual, I think.

In opther news, it is very important to take a minute to note that TV Ark have the titles for top army gameshow Combat, with Emelyn Hughes and Anneka Rice up right now.

Excitement!

• Only Connect (BBC4, Monday, 8:30pm) – it’s Neuroscientists vs Rugby Fans.
• The Krypton Factor (ITV1, Tuesday, 7:30pm)
• The Cube US (London, Thursday night) – we couldn’t get a ticket for this, so I’m expecting lots of comment from people who do go.
• Solitary 4.0 (Saturday, Fox Reality) – thought the first episode was a mite disappointing, I’m not entirely sure I agree with the first elimination like that, and it’s too early to have an unappetizing drinks competition surely? Still, the rest of it looks intriguing, so bring it on. I’ve managed to be very vague to avoid spoilers.
• Accumulate: The Final (Ruon, RIGHT NOW) – WHO WILL WIN DAN PEAKE’S NINETY POUNDS?

And don’t forget that next Sunday is the first event of the Bother Series of Poker 2010.

I’ve updated the Specials Board for your delectation and delight with Alta Tensione, Blokken and what represented your best chance of watching Solitary years ago.

Not much today, but Total Wipeout‘s new series sort of starts this evening on BBC1 at 5:30, and Solitary 4.0 is on tonight in the US as well. I’m out this evening, but hope to have some fascinating opinions for you all tomorrow, alongside the Board of Excitement and some new old features.