Stuff

By | January 28, 2014
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The penultimate Millionaire is on tonight. Chris Tarrant is doing a fifteen-year retrospective on Feb 11th.

ITV2’s Release the Hounds, fresh from winning a six episode order, is being remade for Germany’s ProSieben under the title Scream! If You Can. It’ll have five contestants and a two hour runtime. I thought the one-off around Halloween last year was a bit disappointing but I’m happy it’s getting another chance to realise its potential. Don’t stuff it up, Gogglebox.

And finally forget the Superbowl this Sunday, the REAL event is the Bother’s Bar Poker Monthly, 8pm start, all the details here.

Show Discussion: The Jump

By | January 26, 2014
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TheJump8pm tonight through Thursday,
9pm thereafter
Channel 4

Davina McCall and Alex Brooker host as a bunch of celebs take on alpine sports, the worst performers having to do a live ski-jump at the end of the show to keep their place in the competition. It’s the Winter Olympics in a few weeks you know.

Wasn’t expecting much from this to be honest, but a few things have changed my mind a bit pre-show – first it’s only an hour (I was expecting this to be a dragged out to a daily 90 minute Famous and Fearless bore-a-thon) and secondly it does have some quite good and unusual celebrities in it amongst the usual suspects:

  • Sir Steve Redgrave!
  • Sinitta!
  • Richie from 5ive!
  • Nicky Clarke OBE!
  • Melinda Messenger!
  • Marcus Brigstocke!
  • Laura Hamilton!
  • Kimberly Wyatt!
  • Henry Conway!
  • Darren Gough!
  • Anthea Turner!
  • Amy Childs!

If it turns out to be half as good as Endemol’s The Games it might end up being quite watchable, but Britain isn’t really so interested in winter sports so we’ll see if that lack of interest translates into low viewing figures at all. Celebrity Ski Jumping didn’t do so well when they tried it in the Netherlands.

Schlag den Brig! 8pm TONIGHT #sdb

By | January 25, 2014
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schlagdenbrig2Tonight, 8pm UK,
Youtube and here

#sdb

#imbackingbrig
#teamdan

OK, we’ve been building it up all week and tonight’s the night.

Tonight Daniel Peake will futilely attempt to beat me over fifteen mystery games devised by TV’s David Bodycombe, whilst Lewis Murphy adjudicates and commentates.

It will begin at 8pm UK time, and the live feed will be up on Youtube and on here. You are invited to tweet along with #sdb or you’ll be able to leave comments on the Youtube channel. It will be expected to finish between midnight and 1am, so feel free to join us late if you want. Me and Dan will not be reading the Twitter or Youtube feeds – we’ll only get what our hosts will be reading out until after the event. Yes I know you think I’m a bit fat and ugly and I’m a man who has been horrible about your rubbish TV show but I’m also acceptably rugged looking (i.e. unshaven) and you still would.


The format is the same as popular German event show Schlag den Raab (Beat Raab!) – each game worth more points than the last (Game 1 = 1 point, game two = 2 points… game 15 = 15 points) so it’s a race to grab 61 points out of the 120 on offer, however unlike on television we will play out all fifteen games even if a winner has been decided. Because it’s a shame to waste the effort.

Please bear with us if there are technical problems. This is actually quite high concept and me and Dan genuinely know little of what to expect and David and Lewis will have to react to whatever happens. If you’re enjoying it do please say hello, we’re likely to be here a while. Fingers crossed it should remain on Youtube after the event, but there is a chance the copyright detectors take it off, I’m informed, so if you can tune in live then do. We will keep you informed through here and Twitter if there’s something you need to know (@danielpeake, @davidjbodycombe and @ogbajoj all worth following as well).

So let the games… BEGIN!

What’s in the Package? Schlag den Brig, 8pm Saturday

By | January 23, 2014
21 Comments

So this came through the post:

sdbrigpack

This Saturday I’ll be taking on Daniel Peake over a series of fifteen mystery mental and skill based games hosted and devised by Crystal Maze game designer and until recently Only Connect question editor David J Bodycombe. Fifty 50‘s Lewis Murphy will be acting as referee and commentator. It’s based on popular German event television show Schlag den Raab, and we’ll be broadcasting the whole thing LIVE on Youtube from 8pm, going on until whenever, likely about midnight.

If you were to tell me that we would be playing possibly increasingly harrowing mystery games from sealed packages whilst under the instructions of a slightly camp man shouting instructions over a webcam on the internet you’d have a) a fucking great plot for a thriller and/or b) a potential Endemol format in the making.

I will be breaking a twenty year rule of not explicitly appearing on camera for this. You are advised to watch live in case Youtube issues mean having to take the whole thing down afterwards.

This is either going to be amazing, hilarious and quite possibly both. Join us then!

Ludus

By | January 23, 2014
10 Comments

Just a quickie to point out in the likely case people missed it (most likely because you’re twenty years above the target age group), Ludus began on CBBC on Monday (and it’s on Mondays at 5pm), a new show where kids try and save their friends and family from becoming game characters owned by camp evil space alien Ludus, amusingly played by Tom Bell (you’ll all be doing the “for-evah!” hand gesture in the playgrounds I’m sure). They do this by playing giant touch screen games, some of which have been repurposed from an older show called Y Lifft. Cube Interactive has helped produce this show and have done the playalong app for it which I have yet to play, although apparently it will sync up even if you’re watching a recording which is clever. Cube also did the app for Y Lifft and also the rather good recent Catchphrase app.

The show’s fairly good fun (although some of the games seem to work better than others). The spaceship used to travel between levels has clearly been inspired by amazing sci-fi horror film Cube, and the end game has more than a touch of The Adventure Game vibing through it (although I wouldn’t for a second suggest it’s on the same level as the vortex really). Not bad.