Pointless 500

By | June 6, 2013
20 Comments

It’s Pointless‘ 500th episode today! Well done Pointless team. I backed it from episode one and so far it’s the only show I’ve been to see live more than once (not twice, not four times but THREE TIMES TOTAL in fact). I’ve also been part of the Pointless 100 for the recent series going out, so I have no doubt there are more winners than ever.

It’s managed this despite not having the same format for more than about five episodes at a time, which is tribute to the strength of the core idea and its hosting partnership.

Recently on Twitter we described Pointless as The Most British Quiz of All Time (it’s about lists, nobody else in the world likes it or finds it baffling, there was probably another reason) and last year it won the prestigious UKGameshows.com/Bother’s Bar Golden Five, the reader’s vote for most outstanding show broadcast in 2012, beating even the mighty Only Connect (probably the Second Most British Quiz of All Time, narrowly beating The Great British Quiz with Janice Long into third).

To celebrate this event, let’s have a watch of Pointless’ very first episode. It used to have a very different format:


Amazing.

My Man Canned

By | June 5, 2013
8 Comments

Series won’t see the light of day. What a waste! I hope the winners still got paid.

I heard mumblings that this was the case for a while. Don’t know why the story suggests just the pilot filmed, it was definitely a series. We went and saw an episode being filmed and thought whilst it wasn’t amazing or anything it was not really much worse than a lot of weekend evening fluff. Surely you might as well put it out in the Summer when no-one’s watching anyway?

Maybe it suffered from the bane of all shows that take 4 hours plus to film in that most of the audience had left towards the end, and as they were in shot for much of it it made it much more difficult to edit. Lesson there, programme makers!

Of course this isn’t the only show to be filmed and go AWOL. We’ve heard similar mutterings on the grapevine regarding Prize Island, and Reflex was meant to be taking Doctor Who‘s The Voice lead-in slot on Saturday nights, but evidently something’s happened there. Are commissioners really lousy at spotting issues from pilots or something? Edit: Richard Osman suggests both shows are in the can and ready to go.

Oi! GAMESMASTAAAAHHH!

By | June 4, 2013
26 Comments

Right, just a quickie this morning:

  • One of our favourite writers Ellie Gibson has written a feature on an insider’s history of everyone’s favourite teatime show Gamesmaster . I’ve not read it yet (I look forward to reading it later), but on previous form it will be very entertaining. Edit: She was also responsible for the highly entertaining piece on Knightmare for Gameological a little while ago.
  • Tonight’s the night! The night Exit starts on SyFy US. We’re really pulling for it, because it will be a crushing disappointment if it’s rubbish. Hopefully it will be “available” tomorrow. It is of course the American adaptation of top Japanese show Dasshutsu Game DERO! If you watch it, please feel free to talk about it although if you could try avoid spoilers of results that would be grand.
  • And if you’ve ever wanted to watch old episodes of The Mole in Polish (where it was called Agent) with English subtitles then hurrah! You can.
  • Your Face Sounds Familiar records live at Elstree on Saturday nights June 29th until August 3rd. Tickets via SRO.

Sing Your Face Off

By | June 3, 2013
4 Comments

Alisha Dixon and Paddy McGuinness are set to host the UK version of INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION SENSATION (it’s been big in Spain) Your Face Sounds Familiar on ITV, whereby celebrities impersonate more famous singing celebrities for charity. It’s the same celebs on a weekly basis, and Julian Clary is a judge.

More interestingly the US version is to be hosted by John Barrowman and is called Sing Your Face Off.

Sing Your Face Off.

In other news, it’s doctors against fell walkers on Only Connect tonight.

It’s Fort Boyard filming season!

By | June 1, 2013
7 Comments

Yep, starting yesterday with the French and going on for the next month, which means we’re only about a month away from French broadcast, and probably only about a fortnight away from exciting press releases (the UK CITV version films end of June). In the meantime staff and contestants are dripfeeding unofficial information through their Twitter and Twitpics. What has been supposed:

  • It’s going to be in HD for the first time!
  • There’s going to be a Mister Boo this year, suggesting male mud wrestling.
  • Squeaky voiced comedian Willy Rovelli is apparently joining as an ‘Italian cook’ character. Whether this is actually Mister Boo as well I don’t know.
  • One of the new games apparently involves a launderette.
  • Pere Fouras will be doing things in his tower again, but this does not necessarily mean he has left his den. A photo has popped up of a sign with “Pere Fouras Show” in the style of The Rocky Horror Show. No clue what that’s about.
  • It looks like there are new scales for weighing the gold, or at least they’ve replaced the box with a large golden plate. I think that looks like it might be a neat effect, although I think I kind of miss the suggestion that the gold is bagged up by the adventurers and taken away with them as swag.

We get most of our information from FortBoyard.net, especially the forums, so do go and have a look.

IN OTHER NEWS: Sunday night is BotherSOP night – $5.50 to play, 8pm start, and open to anyone. Just four games left of the season, then we all get our Summer Sunday nights back!

Watching Telly: Tipping Point Lucky Stars

By | May 31, 2013
17 Comments

TONIGHT! I went and saw Tipping Point Lucky Stars, the show everybody is just going to refer to as Celebrity Tipping Point. I spent all of it sitting next to Ben Shephard’s delightful Mum (it is great to know that celebrity parents are just as prone to accidentally shoutwhispering answers as well as anyone else in an audience). It was a ton of fun, even if it’s actually not the most audience friendly show in the world. Main format points first, then some interesting production things:

  • The celebs have quite lengthy scripted bits to camera they’ve had to remember for their introductions.
  • There are just THREE celeb contestants in each episode. The game is played exactly the same as regular Tipping Point, except nobody is eliminated after Round One.
  • All counters are worth £100. The jackpot token is worth £20,000. Losers get to keep their money for charity. If the winner takes the end of show trade and loses, they still get £1,000.
  • The mystery tokens are there and may confer comedy booby prizes, the chance at bonus counters by answering a question related to them or even charity cash!
  • And of course there’s an audience, which means lots of oohing and ahhing in the right places. It doesn’t really need coaching, the reactions are pretty natural.

Otherwise it’s the same great show we know and love. I’m not expecting it to be an immediate hit on Sunday nights (starting June 9th, I’ve read), but I think it will grow into one as it will have the new audience of people who work standard weeks develop a love/hate for it.

OK, so now the interesting production bits:

  • This was filmed at Wimbledon Studios where they used to film The Bill, the set of which is still up. It’s actually not an easy studio to find from the map given, although it turns out there’s a fairly simple route in when you know what it is.
  • The studio was hot – really hot, it was the thing most of the people on set remarked about. Apparently they retooled the studio but didn’t put any air coniditioning in, so they had to open the big scene doors between parts to cool everyone down.
  • The audience sit behind the contestants, slightly raised. Interesting thing apparent: it’s actually quite hard to judge the counters in the machine from the angle the contestants and the audience are positioned at. It’s quite deep, but it’s on an angle about 25-30 degrees from your eyeline. The big screen at the end of the studio cuts to an overhead once the counter has dropped (but not until, the director wants eyes forward most of the time). Interestingly I think this shot turns up on Ben’s monitor, because the one time it took ages to show up he was bending over to look at a constant overhead feed in a monitor inset to the immediate left of his podium stage. The audience was about 150 people.
  • Speaking of his monitor, we got to see a shot of what it shows whilst they were doing audio pick ups. Player scores up the top, second row featuring clock and the stats for each drop zone, bottom half for the questions.
  • After each go, a man called George silently runs in and counts the counters that have been pushed over for OFFICIAL confirmation in a style not dissimilar to Jason Bourne. In the first rounds there’s a short pause so he can count, Ben can reveal, then he can take them away. In the final round, he comes in to remove them whilst the contestant picks their next category.
  • Timing. The rule is “three shoves of the shelf” – if anything mysteriously falls after that it will not count (unless it’s the final round, then everything counts).
  • It was all done and dusted within two hours.

I’ve probably forgotten a lot of stuff, so if you have questions feel free to ask (although I’m quite busy Friday generally so don’t be offended if you don’t get a quick response).