Saturday 9:30pm,
BBC1

Rob Brydon hosts a new quiz that’s a bit like Blankety Blank but without the format fee except not.

We don’t have an awful lot to go on, but it’s certainly a show with a bit of history – it was set to be Mrs Brown’s Celebrities, then when Brendan O’ Carroll decided it wasn’t in the brand’s interests to do it (although also suggested it was funny) it was reversioned with Rob Brydon to become Rob Brydon’s Celebrities, and now we have The Guess List. Tellyspy went and saw the pilot last August and said:

It was a bit like Blankety Blank. Two contestants answering questions, with five celebs (Gary Lineker, Hary Judd, Larry Lamb, Deborah Meaden, Sally Lindsay). One contestant then booted and the remaining plays for crap prizes like a breadmaker, chicken strimmer etc. Round one questions are like ‘In a survey, what is the most annoying thing on a plane…’ And in Round Two, the answers are numerical- celebrities answer and then an average is taken and the contestant has to decide whether its higher or lower. I.e how many arguments do the average couple have a week. It was funny and is a lot better than the BBC’s current Saturday night output. Would be very surprised if it wasn’t commissioned. The entire audience were in hysterics.

We’ll see if many other changes have been made.

Saturday 8:30,
ITV

Amazing Greys is the show that pits young people against the elderly in a battle of the ages, each young person tries to beat two of the Amazing Greys out of three in order to earn themselves a £10,000 prize. But it won’t be easy, they might be past their best but these old people are experts in their field. Who will win, youth or experience?

We went and saw the pilot for this back last September where we thought it was alright, albeit nothing standout. They’ve made a couple of changes since then – most noticeably the brilliant Angela Rippon is on board as Paddy’s co-host, I suspect she’ll be cheerleading the Greys with Paddy backing the contestants. Secondly the classical architecture based set of the original has completely disappeared, now looking eerily like the set for the MIA Just 1 Thing filmed a few months previous if the advert is anything to go by (the logo’s changed as well). Finally they’ve made it a touch easier for the contestants – two out of three rather than three out of five, although if Popbitch is to be believed they’ve had to find other ways to help the contestants along because the Greys are too good.

The show hasn’t fared well abroad (in fact it’s been a bit of a failure) so it will be interesting to see if it shines with ITV’s polish. They’ve certainly given it the best possible chance with the Britain’s Got Talent lead-in.

Saturday 5:15pm then weekdays 4:30pm,
Channel 4

And so prosaic quiz week on Bother’s Bar ends with the revival of the show die-hard quizzers love but which I always found a bit dull really – Fifteen to One.

And I think they’re in a tough spot. The reason the original was so beloved is that it was quite dry, question after question after question. This version is going to be less dry, but at an hour long it’s not going to be so quickfire – player chat is promised by Toksvig (everyone gets three goes to reach the Pointless Final, the grand prize is a legitimately large £40k which is easier to have a chat about than an old piece of pot). Diehards are going to rail against it because it feels like they’ve missed the point of the original (which everyone stopped watching), casuals are probably not going to switch over from shows that are already on that look like more fun (and Deal or No Deal feels like a very strange lead-in). Damned if they do and damned if they don’t really.

Still University Challenge managed a successful comeback under similar circumstances (albeit not as a programme double the length with added chat) so you never know. Quoting myself for the record though:

I predict 900k-1m for the first civvy episode and everyone will get excited and go “ooh it’s a hit!” and it’ll be below 700k by the end of week two. I don’t know how much it needs to be seen as a success, but it’s not like Come Dine On A Trip In A Bed is expensive to make.

We’ll see if I look like a genius or an idiot in a few weeks. At the time of writing that prediction we were expecting the first civvy episode to be on the Monday and not the Saturday after the Grand National (which we initially thought was going to be a celeb special), so I expect the first episode to be a bit more of an outlier.

I quite like the soviet-esque theme they’ve gone for in the background, there.