Weekdays, 6pm,
BBC2
It’s fair to say that this Mega Monday has four new shows but there are two shows that are of most interest to us. This is one of them.
Debatable tasks contestants with finding the correct answers to questions for big money but helping or hindering them are a panel of three celebrities who will debate the answers between them. It sounds a bit like a comedy panel version of Think Tank really.
This is the first we’ve seen of Patrick Kielty for a while.
Weekdays, 6:30pm,
BBC2
And so Eggheads takes its regular Summer break (does it? I don’t know) to be replaced temporarily by Make Me An Egghead, a tournament where quizzers compete to become one of two new Eggheads to replace CJ and Daphne.
To all intents and purposes it appears to be exactly the same as Are You An Egghead? from 2009 but with slightly different Eggheads in the line-up. The two players battle it out in a series of quiz rounds on the traditional Egghead categories, winning a round earns the right to pick an Egghead to help you in the final round.
We ponder if “don’t put all your Eggheads in one basket” will make a reappearance.
#hostholdingaquestioncard
Weekdays, 3:25pm,
BBC1
Bill Turnbull’s back with a second run of Think Tank, now in a later slot.
Think Tank invites contestants to answer questions with the help (or not) of a resident rotating team of guests known as the Think Tank who have answered most of the questions before the show. In the end the winning contestant gets to answer a “question impossible”, a question none of the Think Tank got correct for a £1,000 bonus.
The first series was alright if polite and unexciting, as we say it’s a knack 12 Yard has of making this sort of thing successfully.
Saturday, 7:15pm,
ITV
Well here’s an interesting one and no mistake, a “one-off summer special” (i.e. broadcast pilot) involving mess going out probably an hour later than it probably ought to against the final night of the Olympics. If you were to ask me if I thought ITV were expecting big things from this then reading between the lines I’d have to concede no, no they probably aren’t.
But we’ll keep an open mind because Possessed are behind it and they’re usually interesting at least. In Spotless. couples are charged with completing tasks in white rooms whilst wearing white clothes and avoiding paint based traps threatening to cover them and losing them money. The “iconic” Spotless Scanner will determine how they’ve fared after each task.
There is no host. They’re being cagey when I asked if there was a voiceover. Will anyone watch it and will it be any good? Let us know what you think in the comments.
It’s been a long time coming but according to The Mirror Deal or No Deal is finally being let go with the final unaired episodes being shown in the Autumn.
Whatsmore is the suggestion that it will be getting a two week “farewell tour” which sounds like quite a fun idea and it’s a shame they didn’t think about taking the show on the road in the wake of the very successful live shows they did.
The UK version is/was one of the most successful versions in the world, based on the Italian version of the format (which is still running but has been axed and bought back in the interim) it has run for eleven years.
So! The other night I discovered someone had uploaded several episodes of Bother’s Bar mid-90s favourite Incredible Games after a recommended link chain going through The Alphabet Game, Andrew O’ Connor’s Joke Machine and Mouse Trap. They’re all from the David Walliams fronted first series which was certainly the funnier of the two, but the second series probably had slightly better games. None of them were hosted by the late Mark Speight, contrary to popular belief and Bother’s Bar in-joke lore.
I always loved Incredible Games‘ aesthetic, even if the music sounds like it took thirty seconds to create (although I’m a sucker for this sort of spacesynth, so).
Of course the link with this and the recent Alphabetical is that Andrew O’ Connor co-devised it. He really was one of my favourite TV people growing up, you’d think if there were any TV execs who’d have a grasp of what a daytime quiz requires and it’d be worth tempting out of presenting retirement it’d be him.