Show Discussion: Beat Luke Littler

By | October 29, 2026
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Friday 30th October, 7pm,
Netflix

This is a bit sad really in that The Future Of Sportertainment feels like it’s already been murdered in plain sight by The Celebrity Traitors – the date for this was set months ago and they presumably weren’t to know the BBC were going to change their scheduling strategy from Wednesday/Thursday to Thursday/Friday this year, and as such it’s up against what might be one of the biggest TV episodes of the decade.

That is out of its control. More contentious is that is was billed, basically, as “can you, Johnny Normal, beat Bullseye star Luke Littler over one leg of 501 for £501,000?” which is quite a fun premise but somewhere turned into “can you, Johnny Normal, or a ringer, or a semi-professional, or other Bullseye stars, beat Luke Littler over one leg of 501 for £501,000?” which is a different arguably less fun proposition and I’ve quite enjoyed seeing production tie themselves in knots explaining it away and why it is good it is like this actually aaaaah.

I think the premise is well understood by now – 24 players, up to 20 will get to play, face Luke Littler and if they can best him in one leg of 501 they win £501,000 and the show ends. There is apparently a fun contingency if the show is won early with a separate prize, so no Littler can’t just throw it at 7:55pm and Gary Lineker, Richard Osman and the however many out of 10,000 Manchester Central seats that are filled can’t just stick the Traitors final up on a big screen.

It’s a bit of a reductive blurb here, and I’m not even sure when I’m going to have the time to watch it (I’m off seeing Duran Duran the following night at the O2), but I’m sure it will be decently professional and fun and I will try and catch-up in due course and hope not to be put off/spoiled by the runtime. When you eventually get round to having a look, let us know what you think in the comments.

Ooh, nice

By | October 26, 2026
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Here’s some fun, there’s a free official Knightmare point and click adventure game in development coming out next year to tie in with the show’s 40th anniversary, featuring characters voiced by many of the original cast. Details on the official site.

We never played the Amiga one back in the day, but lets hope it’s better than then Spectrum one.

Late October round-up

By | October 23, 2026
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Some stuff and nonsense gleamed from the Discord and Twitter that you may or may not be aware of.

  • Last One Laughing Halloween starts today on Prime, although best of luck getting much traction whilst Celeb Traitors is on. It’ll probably do alright in +28 though.
  • Beat Luke Littler on Netflix, originally pitched to the public as ‘can a Johnny Normal beat Luke Littler over a leg of darts’ appears to have morphed into ‘can a few Johnny Normals, plus some ringers, semi-professionals and proper professionals which we’re not calling professionals even though some of them have been guests on Bullseye, beat Luke Littler over a leg of darts’ which is a different proposition isn’t it? That’s just a sudden death darts tournament. Anyway that’s on next Friday LIVE against the Celebrity Traitors final.
  • Bradley Walsh’s Million Pound Shot goes out Sunday November 1st on Channel 4 at 9pm. We’ll have a show discussion post for it – it filmed about three weeks ago (or at least a Bradley Walsh pilot had an audience call out filmed three weeks ago), but it sounds like although the premise of three people going for a million quid, all is not what it seems and there are elements they’re not revealing. I’m sure it will be very mischevious and Very Channel 4. It sounds a bit Derren Brown.
  • Ellie and Natasha have done a great sketch on the latest edition of their BBC2 show, about five minutes in, based around a show called Find the Snakes which riffs off all your favourite adventure games and for some reason Mr Blobby from Noel’s House Party.

Betzuki

By | October 19, 2026
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Friend Of The Bar Gary Monaghan (Hercules, Banzai, Wild Things, TV Mayhem, in no particular order) has been in touch. To celebrate 25 years of Banzai to which he no longer has the rights he’s doing a night at Mildmay Club in Newington Green on 25th November that’s a bit like it. There are prizes including (small amounts of) cash money to be won for the most successful teams, and plenty of stupid things to bet on. It ought to be, if nothing else, a laugh. For a tenner for three hours it’s also cheap.

You can buy a ticket by clicking on the poster here.

October 30th: the new January 1st

By | October 14, 2026
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Somehow, and I expect completely accidentally, Friday October 30th is going to be an absolute monster day for formats.

  • It’s the final of Last One Laughing Halloween on Prime (it starts the week previous on the 23rd).
  • It’s the live on Netflix Beat Luke Littler event.
  • It’s the Celebrity Traitors final.

LOL will ultimately be fine, it’ll have a long tail and that’s just as well as Celebrity Traitors will be taking up a lot of the air I presume.

Beat Luke Littler is going to be absolutely fascinating. Broadcast on any other day you’d expect it to get a sampling. Unfortunately in setting the date well in advance it can’t have known Celebrity Traitors would shift from Wednesday/Thursday to Thursday/Friday, so now it finds itself up against the TV event of the year. How is Richard Osman going to cope with being the richardosman on Beat Luke Littler AND recording a timely reaction episode of The Rest is Entertainment? I can’t wait to find out. Anyway you can buy tickets, the auditorium could be anything from extremely busy to extremely empty and there’s no real way of knowing. We will have a Show Discussion post up for it on the day, although I’d expect more chat in catch-up!

Didn’t BBC Quiz Do Well?

By | October 14, 2026
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A story doing the rounds in the broadcasting press yesterday – the BBC will be starting a “quiz and trivia” Youtube channel – think basically the sort of thing on BBC2 daytime, but will apparently be dipping more into the archives. So far, so low thousands. But more interestingly is that it will have original content, and the first new format proposed by Strong Watch Studios is a show called The Quiz Vault with Youtuber Max Fosh, where celebrity guests take part in quizzes based on a variety of old and new formats changing every round with some chat in between. The Quiz Vault launches next year.

Max Fosh is becoming a bit of a BBC darling – he’s about to host more episodes of maths-based quiz for Radio 4 Your Number’s Up recording in a pub near King’s Cross in about a fortnight – you can get audience tickets from SRO.