Edit: Good news everyone! It sounds like Break the Safe has been recommissioned. Despite everything.
Iain Weaver has a ticket for thing that the likes of you might be quite interested in:
Are you free on Friday next week? Think you can outrun a horde of zombies? Can get to east London? Read on!
2.8 Hours Later is a four-mile walk around bits of a city. Groups of explorers set out, and are directed from location to location by actors. Unfortunately, there’s been an outbreak of the undead, and the route passes through clusters of ‘em, grasping and clutching and lurching like ITV2 viewers who couldn’t operate a remote control and reached “Only Connect”.
So the good walk is spoiled by sprints to outpace zombies, culminating in a frenetic run-for-it at the end. 2.8 works as a piece of immersive theatre, and a game of tig. It gets into the places the public don’t normally see, like the underbelly of a shopping centre. It lets people do things they wouldn’t normally, like call the police names. And it pokes gentle fun at the “would you survive the apocalypse” endtimes, because everyone gathers for a pint in the bar afterwards.
Winners get to gloat about surviving the end of civilisation as we know it, and the assurance that they can run faster than me. Losers get make up and then scare the bejesus out of hen parties on the way home.
This is a ticketed event, and tickets sold out in July. Following an injury to my companion, I have a spare ticket available, and I’d like to share it with someone in the game show fandom.
Here’s why: I’m going out to record the sounds of the event and create an audio documentary piece, hopefully good enough for publication. So I will give priority to anyone who will agree to join me and be recorded while answering the question “what just happened?”
Practicalities – the start is 7 pm on 1 November, and it is an all-evening event: don’t expect to be finished before 10. This year’s event is in east London, around Stratford and Canning Town. Face value of the ticket is £40, price is entirely negotiable.
Email the special address twopointweaver@rediffmail.com if you’re interested. I’ll contact all applicants by early next week.
If you’re interested then go for it!
Also! I expect David Bodycombe is still looking for contestants for Pen-damonium planned for this coming Monday, so go and have a look. Why not apply for Pen-damonium and use the prize money to buy Iain’s ticket? Joined up thinking.
The Mirror reporting that Who Wants to be a Millionaire? has finally been put out of its misery. Chris Tarrant is leaving the show after the remaining contracted specials.
Millionaire is probably THE most important TV format of the last twenty years and there is not a single show on television these days which doesn’t try and ape the presentation style or real life human drama element. But like any addiction the viewers required bigger and bigger hits, but there was nowhere left to go once Judith Keppel won the million, and by that point reality TV was in the beginnings of its boom and people the drama of people making idiots of themselves became more appealing than people answering increasingly difficult quiz questions.
In its final years it sort of just bumped along with celebrity specials and the occasional civilian episodes the internet cried out for but few actually bothered watching. And bloody hell, the guys from JLS were *robbed*.
Happily for Chris Tarrant who averages about one properly successful format for every fifty he fronts, he’s probably about due another one. It’s been suggested he’s a regular panellist on upcoming ITV quiz Show Me The Telly, a title that is roughly as appealing as Cook Me The Money but you never know.
Who Wants to be a Millionare? defined a time, but it’s of its time, and may be the last show we ever see that will pull 15m ratings on a regular basis in the UK.
Because obviously:
Nice graphics.
Interesting about the lack of time limits to answer, I think that’s what makes a lot of Italians lose, but going by instinct is a lot of the fun of it I think.
Incidentally Twenty Questions Wrong with Ewan Spence is well worth a listen this week. Probably a few too many Person A or Person B questions (a very easy trap to fall into, in the Brig ‘n’ Dan 21QW “production” “bible” we deliberately set out to try and avoid this) but a fun game.
Don’t know when 21QW will be returning in audio form, we all seem to be moving house.
The Italian show seems to be breaking all demographic records, if Italian TV people on Twitter are anything to go by,
Congratulations to Wie is De Mol? FINALLY winning The Netherland’s Gouden Televizier-ring last week after being nominated forever, their highest television accolade as voted for by the public. And in fact it was a good night all round for people and shows with “de Mol” in them, the amazing Linda de Mol won best female and nephew Johnny de Mol winning best male (Art Rooijakkers was nominated for this one as well). After thirteen years, last series got the show’s highest audiences ever – which makes how the Aussies stuffed up their recent version rather look more baffling, especially as their version won Logie awards and plaudits when it was on first time round.
Anyway, new footage of the next series of WIDM ’14 has been released. Squared Eyes has a run down of the celebrity contestants on his blog – my gut feeling money’s on Daphne Bunskoek right now, based entirely on a photograph and short film. And ThatDarkSpark has put up a subtitled version of the first show’s opening that’s been released as a preview (you may need to look at the video on YouTube to get the subs, which you will need to select using the CC/captions button). They’re off to Hong Kong.
There’s also another WIDM Junior next year, so TWO chances to play “recognise where they’ve borrowed the soundtrack”. WIDM ’14 should begin in January.
Sundays, 8:30am,
ITV and CITV
Laura Hamilton and Andy Akinwolere are back with series four of the teen version of the legendary adventure game.
It’s a pretty good version of the show’s duel format done as a series long tournament which mitigates the lack of surprise in determining the episode’s winners somewhat. If you’ve not seen this version of the show, whilst some of the more extreme terrifying games played by adults aren’t used, that’s not to say this show pulls all of its punches.
If you have watched the French or other international shows this year, there will be a few games you won’t have seen before.
We’re hoping they’ve fixed the thing that they have them shouting for them to get out of timed rooms despite the fact there appears to be no actual penalty for outstaying your welcome, even if it’s just a small penalty. We DO know that Fort Boyard’s legendary tigers are now guarding the treasure room, so that’s nice.