Probably worth pointing out as it’s easy to forget, the new series of fun multiple choice true/false quiz The Code with Matt Allwright and Lesley-Anne Brewis begins Monday afternoon on BBC1 at 2:15.
I don’t expect many format changes, so you can read what we thought of the first series here.
Edit: Actually it sounds like there’s been a change in round two.
Just popped into our Inbox, the peeps behind Go 8 Bit are doing a twelve hour live broadcast in association with Comic Relief from 9am on Friday 17th with their gaming and celebrity chums, details can be found on comicrelief.com/gameraisers and the stream can be found on Twitch.
To celebrate GSN’s doomed to failure US version of Pointless, here’s another version that I thought did a pretty good job but didn’t last, the German version Null Gewinnt (Zero Wins) from 2012 on ARD. Each episode was self-contained, no rolling jackpot, but you got €1,000 for every Pointless answer you gave anyway. Of course the German Richard Osman is cheating by actually having his computer turned on.
And Paul O’ Grady’s doing Blind Date! Wowsers.
Yesterday I was turned away from a recording of ITV’s Babushka with Rylan, apparently they had already run out of space for general ticket holders 45-60 minutes before door opening on a show that they seemed pretty desperate to give tickets away for if my e-mails box is anything to go by, so we won’t know if it’s still basically Wipeout except with an actual hatred of its contestants and without the entertaining bits dragged out to an hour meeting another show that basically misunderstands Deal or No Deal as the format trailer suggests until broadcast. Applause Store are insistent that the show is “big in America”, which has our American friends scratching their heads in bafflement. This originally had Ryan Seacrest’s name attached to it, although they don’t play it up very much now.
On the upside I did go and have quite a good cash game session at a poker table at the Vic so every cloud etc.
In other news the new Big Brother Canada house looks stunning and GSN are working on a US version of Pointless, which I suspect will go down precisely as well as most other international versions, only more so.
Right, so if you didn’t join in with our Schlag den Star watchalong on Saturday you probably missed Bother’s Bar Does De Slimste Mens – “they” won’t make it so we will – an English language edition of one of our favourite Flemish quiz formats. I thought it would be a good idea to edit that into its own video. So here it is!
I know, right! I quite like doing producer commentary, so I will tell you my thoughts under a cut so as to not ruin the result or anything.
Sundays, 8pm,
Sky One
Hurrah! It’s the return of our favourite award-winning physical gameshow of the last ooh, five years or so, now apparently promoted to the heart of prime time where it isn’t up against Countryfile.
Kate Humble and Jason Byrne try and control themselves as more couples dare to go into the Wild Woods and take home its treasure. Of each couple one of them is dressed up as a giant woodland creature protecting them from the dangers but cannot see anything, whilst their unprotected partner has to guide and direct and take any punishment their sense of direction and communication skills (or lack of) gets them into. The show not only has an eye for broadly comic physical situations, but a real ear for funny, revealing unguarded bits of conversation. We’re also a big fan of the super-tense endgame, our favourite for ooh, ten years probably.
This year there’s a weekly celebrity challenge as well.