No Rose d’Or prediction this year

By | November 6, 2019
13 Comments

There’s no gameshow category. I can only assume there was some deep soul-searching after coming up with a different conclusion to the one I came up with, on a five-year winning streak, that the Rose d’Or organization couldn’t risk being wrong two years running and have opted to shelve the category.

What we do have is “Studio Entertainment” where you’ll find Michael McIntyre’s Big Show, The Last Leg, Songland, Let’s Keep It Between Us, Dance Revolution and the famously studio bound Holey Moley.

In “Reality and Factual Entertainment” we have 63 Up, Blackout, Employable Me, Our Dementia Choir with Vicky McClure, The Repair Shop, and Stephen Lambert redefining the reality gameshow genre with The Circle.

You can read the full nomination list here.

Upcoming excitement

By | November 4, 2019
4 Comments
  • It’s Schlag den Star this weekend! Sound issues permitting, join us for a Watchalong this Saturday night from 7:15.
  • Wie is De Mol 2020 starts on January 4th. Hopefully subbed!

Finally, I’ve put an Amazon affiliate search box at the bottom of the sidebar. We’ll get a small cut if you buy anything through it. Other shops are available. Happy Christmas!

MTV’s Fear

By | October 31, 2019
7 Comments

It’s Halloween! And what better way to celebrate than to get some young adults to go and explore old abandoned buildings on their own and let them psyche themselves out. If they stick it out to the end they win money.

Channel 4 (I think?) showed the pilot episode of this and I really enjoyed it, two series were made for MTV in the US around 2001. Thanks to a messageboard I frequent pointing out this really interesting interview with the producers.

Here are a load of episodes on Youtube.

Scary Sleepover

By | October 29, 2019
5 Comments

If you hadn’t gathered it’s HORROR WEEK on Bother’s Bar, because it’s Halloween on Thursday. So here’s an episode of CITV’s Scary Sleepover from 2004 where a group of kids try and win a sleepover at Alton Towers from Anna Williamson by surviving a night in a spooky haunted house. If they can survive the jump scares until the sun comes up they win, but if they hit the big flashing escape button they lose. I remember this being actually rather neatly done – decent special effects.

Show Discussion: Killer Camp

By | October 27, 2019
37 Comments

Starting Sunday and then daily until October 31st,
9pm,
ITV2

Well this sounds like Very Much The Sort Of Thing We Like, a comedy reality whodunnit inspired by slasher flicks of the 80s, and made by loads of people who worked on Bother’s Bar horror favourite Release the Hounds.

Contestants turn up at an American-style Summer Camp in Lithuania for fun and frolicks only to discover that there’s a killer amongst them. To win the money, they must a) not get killed and b) unmask the killer. Contestants are eliminated nightly by Bruce the Handyman in horrifying Hollywood fashion. The Killer wins if they get away with it.

And if that sounds like the US show Whodunnit? to you with a bit more 1980s it does to us as well, which is both positive and negative. The big question, and the one that’s going to define how much I’m going to enjoy, is how much agency the Killer has. They won’t be doing any murdering themselves, so what WILL they be doing? Whodunnit‘s biggest format failure (in what was otherwise a fairly fun idea) is that the murderer knew who they were but didn’t actually have to do anything, and even wasn’t told what had happened so they could easily play along as a normal contestant which is terrible when one of the main format points is guessing who did it.

Here’s an interesting behind the scenes look from Broadcast.

I hope it’s going to be brilliant. Let us know what you thought in the comments.