Sat/Sun/Mon for two weeks, 9pm,
ITV1

This is going up a bit earier than usual because I would like, if I may, to have a quick chat about Saturday nights and ITV entertainment. What are the most recent new game-y hits on Saturday night across the last five years? They are Gladiators, The Wheel and The 1% Club. Each of these shows are straightforward (hit people over the head, answer questions with the help – or not! – of celebrities, answer increasingly difficult IQ style questions) and polished. You can basically pick up what’s happening very quickly, they don’t require no brainpower (well maybe with the exception of Gladiators), but they are quite simple to follow.

When we say Survivor (and more recently The Neighbourhood) are not weekend shows here, that’s because they don’t fit that mould, the last thing people want on a Saturday night is high-concept politicking and yet this is exactly what we’re expected to endure. That’s not to say they would have been more successful on a weeknight, but I would suggest that people are more open to this sort of thing on a weeknight – there’s a decent reason they don’t tend to put The Traitors on on a Saturday, and they certainly wouldn’t launch it there. I’ve got no problem with ITV trying out things (Genius Game was a brave swing and a miss for a channel it was ill-suited to, The Fortune Hotel deserved better but was seen as too derivative, we think probably unfairly), but it also feels like because of these non-hits, any new show is starting with an ITV handicap – it’s just not a destination for this sort of thing for most people.

What’s the solution? I don’t know – as we always say, if it were that easy everyone would be doing it. And it’s into this febrile atmosphere we have Nobody’s Fool, a new high-concept reality show they’re launching on a Saturday night and playing through two weekends. Even Love Island and Big Brother don’t bother airing on Saturdays! It feels like already we might as well write it off already. And that’s a shame because it might be quite good, and if there’s one thing this website still stands for, sproadically updated as it is (do try the Discord), it’s that we like it when good shows do well. Although we should also add we haven’t seen it and might yet be rubbish. In it, Danny Dyer and Emily Atack off of Rivals look after ten people all gathered in a country “smart” house. During their stay they will do quizzes, correct answers add to a prize pot, but they will not know how everyone has done so when it comes to voting people off if you’ve been thick you need to fake it until you make it – other tests of intelligence also feature.

And, you know, that sounds like it might be fun. It ought to at least be quite funny – I get the feeling that’s what they’re aiming for, whether they’ve done enough to overcome the handicap remains to be seen.

Let us know what you think in the comments!

Tuesdays, 9pm,
U & Dave

It’s nice to see Dave try and get back into the game, especially since TLC has basically taken their territory in terms of original programming and on the face of it this sounds Very Much The Sort Of Thing We Like – Mel Giedroyc challenges two teams of comics led by the thinking man’s Stephen Mulhern Ed Gamble and Nish Kumar to “do” bespoke escape rooms, hopefully with hilarious consequences.

The format has actually done pretty well internationally – it’s originally Flemish (so likely to have a slightly insane touch) and has done six series, Amazon Prime recommissioned the German version quite recently and apparently it’s very popular in the Netherlands. For some reason they’ve chosen to launch this right up against the first Eurovision Semi-Final, presumably nobody at Dave believes there’s any crossover in “the sorts of people who’d watch comedians doing escape rooms” and “the sorts of people who are above-averagely into Eurovision”, an interesting strategy and we’ll see if it works out for them.

Four episodes. Let us know what you think in the comments!