Show Discussion: Boyard Land S2

By | November 5, 2020
10 Comments

Saturday 7th November, 8:05pm(UK)/9:05pm(CET)
France 2

Splash! They’ve recorded six more! But it won’t be going out as a series, as we understand it they’ll be going out as seasonal specials, the first one of which is the Halloween one to celebrate Halloween, er, last week. To be fair, it was probably intended to go out last week but the Six Nations rugby restarted.

We quite enjoyed the first series as a proof of concept, it sounds like they might have beefed it up for series two – we hope they’ve improved its economy so winning a game feels more worthwhile – indeed, the big wheel is now the semi-final and a timed event with loads of Boyards on the line, and there’s a brand new final where the contestants must grab loads of Boyards from a safe and get out in time, apparently modelled on the Scrooge McDuck diving into a load of coins in the intro to Duck Tales. Not to mention new characters and other new events.

We’re extremely interested to note that they filmed these in COVID times but the adverts suggest no obvious social distancing, so we’re intrigued to find out how they’ve got around that, and hopefully they can use whatever they did on Fort Boyard next year which felt like a highly compromised series.

It will be of course overly long at over two hours and that’s where not being a weekly series will probably help it.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Show Discussion: Don’t Unleash The Beast

By | November 1, 2020
22 Comments

Mondays to Thursdays, 5:00pm,
Repeated the following morning at 11:30am,
CITV

Proving that there’s still more exciting stuff in kids TV than in TV being made for grown-ups, our main interest in Don’t Unleash The Beast is that from the adverts it looks like Jungle Run, but if they had to make it slightly different to avoid breaching copyright.

The good news is Jungle Run was great (eventually). They also stopped making it in 2006 so somebody born when JR finished would be really pushing this show’s target demographic, let alone me as a 39 year-old.

Anyway, a group of kids advised from afar by the comic and magician Pete Firman complete physical and mental challenges in the underground kingdom of Halian to find its mysterious treasure but they must have a care not to unleash the foul and ferocious beast as that would be bad, it says in the press release.

Will it fill that Jungle Run/Crystal Maze hole currently in the schedules, or is it going to be a different beast entirely? Let us know what you think in the comments.

The Flying Brig-et Presents Gameshow Sound Effects Vol 3

By | November 1, 2020
4 Comments

Here at Bother’s Bar we know you can’t get enough high quality video content and who am I to argue? Therefore I’m pleased to announce The Flying Brig-et has returned to offer another volume of absolutely sensational vocal sound effects that you won’t believe aren’t the real thing, despite absolutely no formal voice training. How is this possible? Is he a wizard?

What’s more, to keep up with what’s already been done so sounds don’t get repeated in future volumes, there is now a spreadsheet. Have you missed YOUR favourite?

I have also added a new playlist to BrigBox.

Bother’s Bar Plays Badly: Jeopardy! Playshow

By | October 30, 2020
13 Comments

With all these BBPBs, you are really spoiling us! Yes it’s time to take a look at the EU release of Jeopardy! Playshow, out on XBox and Windows 10 Store as well as PS4. I’ve rigged it up to play across Discord and tonight I’ve been joined by TV’s David J Bodycombe and TV’s Alex McMillan, both giants of the TV quiz setting business, we specifically wanted Alex because we could also test out if it has issues with accents. What we discovered was hilarious, but probably not for the right reasons.

The starter game costs just over £20 and comes with 30 episodes. Handpicked packs of 10-13 episodes are available for a little over £8 each. It seems like quite an interesting way to monetise the back catalogue if nothing else.

Of course being a Plays Badly, the sound mix isn’t quite right, you can hear us fine but the actual game noise is way down in the mix, sorry.

They’ve Match Gamed it up

By | October 28, 2020
6 Comments

Some fun news:

Thing is, I’m not sure of Bradley Walsh as host. I think he’s too nice and it requires someone who can undercut proceedings. I get why they’ve done it, he’s the nation’s sweetheart and he’ll laugh at the obvious innuendo… but when you think about old hosts, they don’t tend to laugh at it, they tend to play it with mock horror for laughs. It’s all very well sneaking into a middle-brow quiz like The Chase, on Blankety Blank where it’s expected it’s a different matter. Maybe it’ll end up being brilliant, who knows.

Do you know who’d be a really good potential host of Blankety Blank? Greg Davies.