So, basically, the press pack with details of the new games has come out. In the main it looks brill, and also quite I’m a Celeb/Fear Factor inspired i.e. involving lots of creepy crawlies. The show practically invented fear based testing, fell behind the curve, and now seems to have caught up a bit. The Stretcher is the new spiders and scorpions game, and sounds suitably unpleasant.

I’m very excited about the possibilities of the high-tech room, they basically have carte-blanche to make any game they want involving the touch screens.

I’m also very very excited about the prospect of Judge White and the Hall of Judgement – no longer are prisoners automatically released, they must win a game to earn their freedom. Whatsmore for every key the players need to make up the seven required they must win a game or permanently lose a team member. The sense of danger is what we’ve been wanting for years, it’s nice to have it bought back. I understand the argument that we’ve paid the celebs so we want to use them, but even so. I hope they aren’t going to start meddling with the tests to ensure they have at least one prisoner or one key to make up.

There are, of course, question marks. How will fans react to Pere Fouras’ new home? And the show is more than the games, if the music and graphics aren’t up to scratch then it will turn a lot of people off. It feels like the show has had a kick up the backside, I’m really excited to see how this all plays out, and it begins to play out July 2nd on France 2.

The other question mark is how will be the new things affect the proposed kid’s show? We don’t even know the format for the kid’s show yet, but I probably wouldn’t be subjecting 13-15 year olds to half the new stuff.

Edit: Changed the link to Fortboyard.net, as they’ve got different and exciting pictures, including Pere Fouras’ library! Fans of recycling will spot a load of old Boyard things in there. The original link has the two videos.

This was actually touched upon in the Splatalot post but as it’s quiet I thought I’d give it a front page mention in case you missed it. Thanks to Dan Peake for discovering this: an entire episode of 17 Meter on Youtube. 17 Meter is the German version of The Whole 19 Yards, although more specifically this is the German version of the Austrian version of the format called Power Play. the whole thing is about 90 minutes long. Don’t worry, even though there are ten contestants they don’t play the same game nine times:

It actually features more different games in one episode than the entire series of TW19Y, but they lack TW19Y‘s sense of scale and ambition. Not bad though. They do appear to have nicked our scrolling marquees. In the advert for the Austrian version it looks like they have to build something 17 metres straight up, which is a nice twist.

Blimey, this is a bit out of left field. Gavin Henson off of rugby and Charlotte Church is set to become The Bachelor for the UK.

Not the first time the show has been done, BBC3 had their own version. This looks set for Channel Five. In it, a number of women vie for the love of The Bachelor through an elimination competition. By the sounds of it the Welsh rugby team seem to be trying to ignore it.

The show has run for 15 seasons in the US (fifteen!) as well as 7 seasons of The Bachelorette. Unfortunately the only time anyone uses the word ‘batchelor’ in the UK is in relation to Super Noodles, which is likely to count against it.

With McFly on The Cube this evening, this seems like a good place to have a Misc. post.

If you were at Red or Black at Wembley, I’d appreciate it if you posted your experiences on the Red or Black post.