Board of Excitement 24-30th Jan ’10

By | January 24, 2010
4 Comments

Hmm, I wonder if anything will be joining the usual suspects this week?

  • Only Connect (BBC4, Monday 8:30pm) Record ratings for the show last week, this week it’s Philosophers vs Hitchhikers. I noticed this week that this show has the honour of being series stacked on iPlayer, which is pretty rare for a quiz. So if you’ve missed an episode, you’ve got until the end of the series to catch-up with it, so it seems.
  • The Krypton Factor (ITV, Tuesday 7:30pm) Despite deciding it had got away with dropping the Intelligence test previously, last week was the first time I felt it needs… something more. We’ll see, though.
  • Total Wipeout (BBC1, Saturday 5:30pm) It’s the first episode of series three, although it’s probably not going to be advertised as such! It’s apparently the only episode on for the next four weeks!  Well done the BBC.
  • Solitary 4.0 (Fox Reality, Saturday) A welcome return for VAL in what will doubtlessly be the most brutal (and fingers crossed not final) series yet. And when we say Saturday, it’s probably not going to be “available” until Sunday, if you see where I’m coming from. Edit: Actually ep 1 is apparently going out on Friday night after the season three marathon and repeatred on Saturday. So there we are.

For obvious reasons…

By | January 23, 2010
17 Comments

… the third series of Total Wipeout begins next week, just two weeks after they started repeating series two on Saturday nights. Good.

Meanwhile more Twitpics regarding the third US season which seems to be filming now. Now Wipeout USA fans, what’s missing from this picture?

Let the games… BEGIN!

By | January 22, 2010
14 Comments

The Bother Series of Poker 2010 details are all up for your perusal, the first game is Sunday February 7th ay 8pm (that’s 1500hrs on the Full Tilt server), will cost $10 + $1 (that’s $10 stake and $1 FT rake) and I’ve added $25 to the prizepool to make it a bit more exciting.

You don’t have to be a regular contributor to play, although it’s nice if you do actually visit us from time to time.

Fun Thing Found on Youtube Thursday: Friday Edition

By | January 22, 2010
3 Comments

I watched a little bit of Take Me Out over the week and whilst not completely awful or anything, it did seem to lack a certain something. Substance, I think it was.

But over ten years ago ITV were doing a sort of similar thing on Saturday nights based on a popular European format of the time: Man O Man. “Girls,” the theme tune rhetorically asks, “what are we looking for?” before ending with “they don’t have to be cool they just have to be fun, a perfect body doesn’t matter just a cute little bum!” In Man O Man, a group of confident guys attempt to impress a large group of women across a number of different disciplines (talent, chat-up lines, swimming trunks, that sort of thing) in order to win a motorbike. And if they fail, Nell McAndrew pushes them into a swimming pool.

The show did alright – it only got one series but was bought back for several one-off specials over the next few years with a more modern looking set.

Of course loads of people said “yeah, but you couldn’t do it the other way round could you?” and the answer is “no, of course not, and that is because of history and gender differences which aren’t just going to go away just because it’s suddenly the 1990s.” Besides anything else, Man o Man was basically immensely silly and hence entertaining.

It’s INFORMATION THURSDAY, and it’s the POLL 2009 RESULT!

By | January 21, 2010
23 Comments

Here.

Poker and Youtube stuff to go up tomorrow now so people don’t miss this most remarkable of posts.

Meanwhile, Greg Scott twittering that he’s going to be hosting an English pilot for Hold On To Your Seat (aka Tout Le Monde Veut Prendre (points) SA PLACE!). Interesting.

Also well done Travis for spotting this. Apparently a US recording of The Cube in London on Feb 4th. What’s that all about, then?

Relic

By | January 21, 2010
22 Comments

It’s Information Thursday, and this afternoon I’ll come back and edit this entry with some opinion on the exciting Relic: Guardians of the Museum which starts at 4:35pm on BBC1 this afternoon.

Here we go then:

  • Three kids go to the British Museum in the dead of night where they’re met by ghostly tour guide Agatha, played by Gemma Arrowsmith in rather whatever the aunt equivilent of ‘avuncular’ fashion.
  • The kids are up against the Dark Lord who goes uncredited and is rather less successful in terms of characterisation. Rather unoriginal and uninteresting.
  • Lots of Scooby Doo running around the museum running away from people dressed in robes = Good. Kids poorly acting as if they are scared = bad.
  •  Agatha leads the team round various exhibits, gives a quick description and then they are whisked away to a point in history where they perform a challenge. Challenges are basically exactly the sort of thing you got in Trapped but with a historical twist (answering true/false questions set by Cleopatra, trying to avoid “scorpions” on a historical dig, hunting for turquiose in an egyptian tomb). None of these challenges are going to set the world alight, but they’ve at least put a little bit of effort into the set-ups and, indeed, the sets.
  • Completing a task means that all the kids get to see a “vision” – a piece of film about one of the objects in the museum. If they fail the task then only one of the kids gets to see it, and will need to try and remember and communicate as much of it as possible to their teammates.
  • After three challenges, the Dark Lord is summoned to the Great Court and asks the kids questions individually about the three visions they have seen. If they get three right before they get three wrong then the Dark Lord is defeated, the kids become guardians of the museum and win themselves a golden scarab. If they get three wrong then they become a new exhibit themselves forever.
  • Not bad as edutainment goes, really. It’s a pity the challenges aren’t a bit more interesting, though.

And later: Poll results and Bothersop information and Fun Thing Found on Youtube Thursday. Oh yes!