Here’s something unexpected and possibly interesting, Channel 4 are doing a non-televised pilot of travelling contemporary theatre thing The Money. If you’re free this Saturday and can make it to Essex, here are the details.
I saw it at the Cambridge Guildhall in February and here’s a review. Apparently it’s something that has been looked at for television in the past.
From 9pm on ITV2. It took us a while to warm to the first series although when we got where The Rubberbandits were coming from it all kind of clicked and I quite enjoyed it. We discussed series one here. This is a bit more like series 1.5 I think, it was originally meant to go out in January so was almost certainly filmed the same time as series one, but new games (and lots of returnees) are promised. Nobody really watched the first series, on the other hand it looks like it costs 10p to make so who knows what lies in the future.
Speaking of ITV2, has Release the Hounds been commissioned for series three? It’s about this sort of time a contestant call would be ending for preparing to film in the Summer, but nothing as far as I know. It did win a Royal Television Society award recently.
And finally! What an exciting weekend, we’ll be “doing” Schlag den Star on Saturday night here from 7:15pm (do join us) and on Sunday Wild Things returns to Sky 1! Hurrah.
Tuesdays, 9pm,
ITV1
I reckon that a semi-serious celebrity motor racing show might have some mileage (as it were), after all everyone likes the Star In A Reasonably Priced Car bit from Top Gear (and of course Star Makes A Reasonably Priced Omelette from Saturday Kitchen), and driving’s the sort of thing you could get quite good celebrities for as like ballroom dancing it’s considered a “fun” skill.
So with this in mind current newsmaker Vernon Kay challenges eight celebs to compete in various races and driving tasks, beginning with banger racing this evening. From ITV:
Taking to the tracks are rapper Professor Green, singer Ella Eyre, impresario Louis Walsh, comedian Johnny Vegas, Olympic athlete Colin Jackson, TV presenter Mariella Frostrup, weather expert Laura Tobin and actor and broadcaster Angus Deayton.
It’s certainly a good line-up filled with people who don’t really need to do this sort of thing, the big question is will they have the action balance right and have they overformatted it? The fear is it’s Eternal Glory But In Cars and might be better served as a straight celebrity racing league.
Still we’re hopeful and the 9pm slot suggests some confidence from ITV, even if it’s in the Tuesday deadzone. Still, the only way out is to try and grow things, will this be the success?
And we (should!) be back commentating from 7:15pm UK time.
It’s the first of the new style Schlag den Stars – live and hosted by Elton (with Frank Buschmann commentating), so we’re likely to be bluffing our way through initially, but it sounds like it’s basically the exact same format as Schlag den Raab except with two celebs battling it out over 15 games for €100,000. This week the battle of the giants as Olympic weightlifter (and strongest man in the world, it says here) Matthais Steiner takes on actor Henning Baum. No idea if there are musical guests.
Join us!
Great news for fans of lousy quiz setting! The Link is being repeated on Challenge from tonight at 7pm.
We’re having a chat about Das Spiel Beginnt in the comments here.
We’ve been following Tom Scott and David Bodycombe’s Game On over the last few weeks, this week’s game, Quiz Buzz, was probably the most entertaining of the lot.
It’s the kids/drinking game Fizz Buzz, where you take it in turns to count up but say “Fizz” instead of any multiple of three and “Buzz” instead any multiple of five (or indeed any variants of) but instead coming up with something from a list. It’s lucky I wasn’t playing because I suspect the bleep machine would go into overdrive. Also amused in the comments that Fizz Buzz isn’t A Thing in the US.
Next week’s final is Order and Chaos. If you want a sneak peek, here it is played by someone at Grandmaster level.
We’re hearing that Bang On The Money, the Rickie and Melvin fronted Saturday evening gameshow spectacular, is starting a week on Saturday on ITV. It was piloted two months ago and only filmed last week, so that’s fast.
Bang On The Money tasks teams to hit targets exactly (i.e. “bang on”) in a variety of challenges. Looking forward to it.
Edit: The terminally dull 15 to 1 is back on Channel 4 in Deal Or No Deal‘s 2:10pm slot from April 11th. A lot of people have been waiting over ten years for this irony.
Edit Edit: This is wrong as it turns out, there’s still an ep of You’re Back In The Room to go out, apols.