#hostholdingaquestioncard

Weekdays, 3:25pm,
BBC1

Bill Turnbull’s back with a second run of Think Tank, now in a later slot.

Think Tank invites contestants to answer questions with the help (or not) of a resident rotating team of guests known as the Think Tank who have answered most of the questions before the show. In the end the winning contestant gets to answer a “question impossible”, a question none of the Think Tank got correct for a £1,000 bonus.

The first series was alright if polite and unexciting, as we say it’s a knack 12 Yard has of making this sort of thing successfully.

Saturday, 7:15pm,
ITV

Well here’s an interesting one and no mistake, a “one-off summer special” (i.e. broadcast pilot) involving mess going out probably an hour later than it probably ought to against the final night of the Olympics. If you were to ask me if I thought ITV were expecting big things from this then reading between the lines I’d have to concede no, no they probably aren’t.

But we’ll keep an open mind because Possessed are behind it and they’re usually interesting at least. In Spotless. couples are charged with completing tasks in white rooms whilst wearing white clothes and avoiding paint based traps threatening to cover them and losing them money. The “iconic” Spotless Scanner will determine how they’ve fared after each task.

There is no host. They’re being cagey when I asked if there was a voiceover. Will anyone watch it and will it be any good? Let us know what you think in the comments.

#hostholdingaquestioncard

Weekdays, 5pm,
ITV

And so the next Summer quiz contender approaches and this time it’s Jeff Stelling with a UK version of a European reversioning of a light UK daytime panel game. That panel game was The Alphabet Game, the most famous European version is the still running Pasapalabra from Spain (Although it’s travelled to most of the major markets although not still running in many of them).

Three players play games and quizzes based around letters of the alphabet to build up time, the player with the most time gets to take on the current champion in the endgame for a progressive jackpot, if nobody wins the jackpot the person who does better at the game comes back to try again as champion the next day.

The endgame for the popular Spanish show is legendarily difficult (basically you have to get a question right for every letter of the alphabet without making a mistake), often building up for over a year and getting into seven figures so it will be interesting to see if they’ve adapted it at all for the UK market – it only has ten episodes to impress after all and there may be a point where nobody winning anything turns people off. But fans of quiz should be pleased, around 200 questions an episode are promised and Stelling is a safe pair of hands with this sort of thing.