Schlag den Raab 13/9/14 #bbsdr

By | September 12, 2014
4 Comments

schlagdenraabSaturday 13th September,
7:15pm UK (8:15 on the continent),
ProSieben and naughty internet streaming

The Summer is OFFICIALLY over as Stefan Raab returns for the 48th time to defend his jackpot from a member of the public across fifteen unusual physical and mental challenges LIVE on German television, having won the last three editions this episode the prize stands at €2m.

And again we will be providing sort-of-live commentary, which doesn’t really work as live commentary because of all sorts of delays. HOWEVER it will likely be fun to listen to, and will likely feature all sorts of fun and games along the way. So why not come and join us? It’s likely the full gang will be here – me, Daniel Peake, Lewis Murphy and TV’s David J Bodycombe. Join us for the whole five-ish hours or just dip in and out as you please.

The musical turns this episode are Maroon 5 and Kiesza. I know! THE Maroon 5!

Here are the deets. They’ll be updated live on the evening:

Here are all the links you need:

Our live commentary stream link will be linked to here! Join us!

This is the primary stream we will be watching live and basing our commentary on.

That stream will probably go down at some point during the evening, here’s our first back-up one. If it all goes down, once we’ve finished panicking, we’ll put up links to streams we can find on here and on Twitter.

Follow us on Twitter for immediate news if something goes wrong. Or because we’re fun guys!!!! @bothersbar, @danielpeake, @ogbajoj, @davidjbodycombe.

Show Discussion: Celebrity Squares

By | September 9, 2014
21 Comments

CelebSquaresLARGEWednesdays, 8pm
ITV1

Warwick Davies is the unusual choice to front a revival of Bobby’s Big Box Game, this time round with a £20,000 jackpot prize and with Tim Vine and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown favourite Joe Wilkinson as regulars. And an extended 60 minute running time, so expect more arsing about from the guests than ever before. Maybe it will work in its favour, maybe it will not. Who knows?

Friend of the Bar Lewis Murphy went to see a pilot of this being filmed last November, he didn’t think much of it.

Of course Wednesday at eight is a traditional ITV light entertainment slot and Big Star’s Little Star and Mr and Mrs have had some success there. However it’s found itself up against the UK’s hottest show in The Great British Bakeoff on BBC1 – if it does 3.5m then it’s not doing too badly, certainly comparable to what’s been in the slot previous that isn’t football.

Challenge buys Chase USA

By | September 9, 2014
16 Comments

Now this sounds like a canny buy, Challenge have bought the rights to The Chase US with Mark Labbett and Brooke Burns, and they’ll start broadcasting them from October 14th. So if you’ve not watched it yet you can see what they’ve done to it enjoy them legally for yourselves.

Pyramid on S4C

By | September 7, 2014
10 Comments

Of interest tomorrow (Monday 5:25pm) on the premier Welsh channel is Pyramid, a new app playalong show.

And we were wondering how you would appalong with it. However, it’s not the legendary word game, rather excitingly it’s being billed as an adventure game set in an Egyptian pyramid beginning with eight contestants and getting whittled down through a series of mental and physical games:

The new adventure show, presented by Rhiain Temple, which takes the 21st Century to Ancient Egypt! Who will solve the Pyramid’s puzzles and evade the traps before the sand hits the bottom of the hourglass? 8 will begin the game but only one will walk away with the Pyramid’s treasures. Some levels will be quick-fire questions; some will be interactive touch-screen games while others will be physical challenges. And you can play along with the show by downloading the app to your phone or tablet.

This, frankly, sounds right up our street. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like it’s going to have English subtitles, but likely worth a watch anyway (it will likely be on Clic tomorrow night if you can’t access S4C otherwise).

Beat It!

By | September 4, 2014
3 Comments

So the other night I got the chance to watch John de Mol’s new singing talent show Beat It! currently going out on Saturdays on SBS6 in the Netherlands (catch-up available but geoblocked).

  • In it, team captains Jan Smit and Gerard Joling act as both judges and partner each to nine singers. The host is hosted by the lovely Kim-Lian van der Meij.
  • For each round, one of the captains will judge three different singers. They will sing at the same time, but the captain will use the console in front of him to pick whose mic is “on” at any time.
  • Over the course of the round the judge will eliminate two of the singers. As they sing, they will use the console in front of them to give each singer a warning (going from green to amber) if they don’t think they’re up to scratch.
  • However if they go from amber to red then they are eliminated in crazy fashion – springboarded into a flaming pool, having a cannon fired at them so they fall into a bottomless pit, mummified, being drowned in ping pong balls, that sort of thing. There are apparently over 40 elimination methods.
  • If some of them seem quite harsh that’s because they use graphical effects – the pit isn’t actually bottomless, there isn’t actually a shark in the water. That swimming pool isn’t actually on fire.
  • Initially this seems like quite a fun idea – as Lewis Murphy commented when I mentioned this on Twitter, it’s 101 Ways To Leave A Talentshow. However. However. It gets surprisingly dull surprisingly quickly. Like Ejector Seat it’s concentrated on the wrong thing as the source of the comedy – because so much of it is CGI half the time we don’t get much if anything in the way of reaction, when the key to the comedy in something like this is always, always the surprised shriek.
  • There are six elimination rounds, each captain finding three winners. The winners for each captain then face off against each other in a semi-final, leaving each captain with their choice of one contestant.
  • Each captain then does a duet with their winning contestant, then the teams stand in a gunge tank.
  • The winner is determined by a vote of the 16 eliminated contestants. The losers get gunged, the winning civilian contestant wins €10,000 and a trophy.

Like I say initially quite good fun in the Sing If You Can stylee, but I did find it outstayed its welcome quite quickly.