Broadcast reporting that The Million Pound Drop is set for a sensational reduced-stakes daytime comeback where players will try to keep hold of £100,000. I hope the money is still in £25k bundles.

Davina’s back but no word on timing (60×60 eps sometime in 2018) or whether it will still use the Million Pound Drapp. Still though.

No reason this couldn’t work, there have been several fairly successful daily versions in Europe.

The Krypton Factor is, of course, one of the top five – maybe top three – gameshows of all time and you can argue with that if you like as long as you understand nobody cares what you think. Even the short lived Ben Shepherd reboot was perfectly reasonable in the main.

For whatever reason I found myself looking up old KF title sequences. Around the period of 1984-1986 they were absolutely terrifying in the way only KF and its pushing of the contemporary technology was able to be.

First of all we have flying over an alien landscape whilst letters, some hands, a giant eye and a big head fly into the screen to kill you over a terrific alien Mike Moran synth soundscape which they had been using for a few years previous:

Now this has been around for years and is old news, however this is relatively new to Youtube, the first and original Art of Noise titles from 1986. It still features the rather easy intelligence test but then it goes in a rather unexpected direction – it’s about 25 seconds into the video:

They don’t make them like that any more. Probably for the best.

Bother’s Bar favourite Release the Hounds is returning for a new Famous and Freaked series (i.e. it’s Celebrity Release the Hounds) later in the year with new host Matt Edmondson who is no stranger to ITV2 (Xtra Factor, Fake Reaction). Of interest is that it’s 5×60 minute eps but with a 120 minute Halloween Special. Goodness.

Also coming later this year: The Bromans, an idea that came out as possibly being called Ladiators a few months ago, sees eight modern day lads transported back to Ancient Rome with their girlfriends to live and play as the Romans did and compete to stay in the show by completing daily physical tasks set by the Doctore with the aim of fighting it out in the Emporor’s Games at the colosseum for £10,000. It sounds like they’re really running with the theme and might be more fun than initially thought. We’re still waiting for series two of Hercules.

I’m off work this week and this afternoon I found myself at a loose end so I was looking through my Youtube recommendations. And something came up I had been meaning to look at for a long time – it’s The Price is Right.

Ah readers, but no. Not The Price Is Right that you are familiar with, the original Price is Right which eventually became The New Price is Right which is the TPiR that everyone knows. It ran variously in daytime and primetime from 1956 to 1965.

It’s fairly simple. Four contestants bid items shown to them. On their turn they must either increase their bid to be higher than the current leading bid or freeze. Sometimes there are is a minimum increment, and sometimes there are one-bids (like you get now). Whoever is nearest without going over wins the prize and occasionally a bonus prize. Sometimes these are a bit outlandish, sometimes there’s a mini-game attached. But it’s really neatly done with some neat ideas. And it all shifts along under the auspices of Bill Cullen, as someone who mainly knows him for his later work he’s really sharp here. You may find the first bonus prize in this surprising.

Doing some research it looks like $1 in 1960 is worth about $8.20 today. There’s actually quite a lot of this on Youtube – the daytime version has smaller prizes as you can probably imagine, but still.