Show Discussion: Taskmaster S11

By | March 18, 2021

Thursdays, 9pm,
Channel 4

And so our second series of lockdown Taskmaster airs on Channel 4, who are this series’ gladiators?

  • Charlotte Ritchie!
  • Jamali Maddix!
  • Mike Wozniak!
  • Sarah Kendall!
  • Lee Mack!

So there we are.

It’s The RTS Awards: The Results

By | March 17, 2021

Or at least the ones most relevant:

  • The Masked Singer won Best Entertainment, “which judges described as “a smartly produced, joyful, silly, escapist family watch…and just what we all need right now.”” It is unknown which judges thought Billie Piper was one of the contestants.
  • The Ranganation won best Comedy Entertainment, which is relevant for Trousers or No Trousers. “Judges praised the “genuinely funny, laugh-out loud event – the perfect showcase for the huge talent of its star.” I wonder if they’ll bother going back to the in-person format of the first series after restrictions as the current method seems to work quite well for them.
  • Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back won Formatted Popular Factual, which isn’t really relevant to our tastes but I wanted to big it up because it is good. Also it sounds like Joe Lycett’s Get Your Own Back, which I think we’d all watch.
  • Channel of the Year is BBC1 for it’s brave scheduling of Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance, probably.

Look forward to all of these shows – and more! – adding a RTS Award Winner badge to their title sequences and break bumpers in due course.

Eggheads IS BACK

By | March 12, 2021

On Channel 5! Hands up if you predicted this and don’t work for 12 Yard or Channel 5. I wonder if they’ll be less waffle when four minutes is shaved off for ads.

There’s an argument that if it does the same sorts of numbers it did on BBC2 then it’d be a very smart pick-up for them, but that’s a very big ‘if’.

Stephen Mulhern’s Bank Balance

By | March 10, 2021

They should have gone with “Will they stack it, or will they stack it?” as a catchphrase.

Brig Bother, comment on Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance

ITV Studios and Nippon TV: “Hold my beer.”

Werewolf

By | March 9, 2021

Werewolf/Mafia/Whatever is currently quite in, and the Dutch show Die Verraders which is very heavily inspired by this starts this week – where an informed minority must outwit an ignorant majority without giving themselves away. So here’s how Japan did it:

Unfortunately we can’t find any episodes of the BBC’s 2004 non-hit Traitor with Tony Livesey.

Edit: Relevant and of interest! Gnosia on Switch (£22.49 at time of writing) which is effectively Werewolf as a visual novel, each game lasting around 10-15 minutes. In the 90 minutes or so I’ve played of it, there’s quite a lot of repeat chat and it could do with throwing a bone with regards to overall story a bit quicker I think. Still though, quite good characters.