One Man and His Dog

By | September 25, 2017
4 Comments

Struggling for inspiration a bit after the recent bout of new show excitement, I note that Bother’s Bar favourite Countryfile was doing its annual One Man and His Dog special last night.

OMaHD is a sheepdog trial competition where a shepherd and his dog must guide a flock of sheep round a course using nothing but teamwork, strategy and cunning. It ran as a competition on BBC Two between 1976 and 1999 and then run as a series of Christmas specials every year before merging with Countryfile in 2013. Flockstars is unaffiliated.

Unfortunately footage of the original series is hard to “come-by”, so here picked at random is last year’s special on Youtube.

Schlag den Henssler next Saturday #bbsdh

By | September 23, 2017
16 Comments

One ‘n’, two ‘s’s, next Saturday ProSieben’s Schlag den… returns with a new full time antagonist, competitive German celebrity chef Steffen Henssler and God willing we will also be back with our watchalong offering up a live commentary and some entertainment of our own.

So join us for that! Unless they postpone it again.

William G Stewart

By | September 21, 2017
12 Comments

We’re sad to hear about the passing of legendary producer and 15 to 1 host William G Stewart this afternoon. He was 84.

Whilst most people will best know him as the stern long-running host of the aforementioned quiz, we’re a bit more interested in his producer work, producing some of the finest light entertainment quizzes of the 80s and 90s. The Price Is Right was my favourite TV show as a kid (even if I did find Cliffhanger unbearably scary to watch) – the games, the glitz, loved it. And lest we forget he helped turn around Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush from pre-production limbo-hell to one of the most important and influential light entertainment shows of the last 30 years.

Here from Youtube is the first episode of 15 to 1 from 1988.

It’s the Rose d’Or’s tonight

By | September 19, 2017
11 Comments

One of entertainment’s biggest prizes, tonight it’s the 56th award ceremony for the Golden Roses in Berlin.

I made some predictions for the gameshow category last month when the noms were announced. My opinion’s not really changed. I’ve backed the last three winners, I hope Bigheads will continue my streak. The judges usually pick quite good winners out of the final nominations list, I’ll be pretty content as long as the genuinely terrible but pretty Babushka doesn’t win.

Here’s their website, and here’s their Twitter.

Edit: Bigheads won. Well done Primal Media.

Show Discussion: Bromans

By | September 13, 2017
12 Comments

Thursdays, 9pm,
ITV2

When in Rome do as the Romans do, as the old adage goes. Eight couples travel back to Ancient Rome where the men will compete in tough physical challenges in the hope of making it to the Emperor’s Games at the end of the series with a cool £10,000 on offer to the winners. The ladies will aid and abet and partake in traditional ancient roman activities and help their partners, all under the watchful eye of Tom Bell as the Emperor’s assistant, Roman Kemp the voiceover and Tornado from Gladiators training them as Il Doctore.

It’s Hercules meets Love Island, basically. On a sliding scale, I predict the closer it is to the former the better it will go down on here and personally I can get definitely get down with this sort of thing although now I’m out of the demo whether I’ll find the contestants and their antics (and I predict many, many antics) annoying is another matter.

The set looks terrific though. The show’s from Electric Ray who you might remember were the people behind non-hit Prized Apart, let’s hope they’ve learnt some lessons from that.

If you watched it let us know what you thought in the comments.