Rings

By | August 3, 2016
14 Comments

It’s The Olympics this week which will pretty much take up most of television over the next fortnight (the football starts tonight even though the opening ceremony isn’t until Friday) and I thought “wouldn’t it be great if I could illustrate this, right, with a clip of Rio from Gladiators playing Hang Tough hence rings like an allusion to the Olympic Rings?”

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a clip so here’s a video Keith Strachan uploaded from Talking Telephone Numbers (telephone rings, you see) with Emma Forbes and… Danny Baker?


From the pilot, presumably?

Show Discussion: Cash Trapped

By | July 31, 2016
89 Comments

cash_trapped_01Weekdays, 5pm,
ITV

It’s The Chase Summer Replacement time, this year ITV have come at it with a slightly different strategy opening with a show with the same host but with a different format in a clever bid to not haemorrhage viewers – and being supported by Tipping Point for the entire fortnight as well no less. There’s two weeks of this before Alphabetical with Jeff Stelling gets a two week run and somewhere there’s 20 episodes of Rebound to go out.

This show’s big gimmick is not quite entirely original but certainly different enough – six people compete in a quiz to accrue a large sum of money, the winning player then has to try and defeat the five losers in a quickfire quiz – win and they leave with their money (and everybody else leaves with nothing), lose and their bank is wiped out and everybody comes back to play the next day – the losing five having banks that rollover. This comment suggests a mediumfire quiz with a large vindictive element – quick precis: questions on the buzzer, right answer wins cash and knocks someone out, last one standing gets a question for a large bonus, repeat until quickfire final followed by The Final Chase.

Based on one of Bradley’s own ideas and produced by Bother’s Bar favourites Possessed, it will be interesting to see if works well in terms of individual episodes or whether it takes a few rollover games to really get going and if it does is that too long? The Question Jury has beaten it to the punch somewhat in this regard and to me that game isn’t strong enough to tune into day after day. This has got two weeks to prove itself – it’s doubtful it will increase on The Chase but if it can hang on to 1.5m+ by next Friday then it’s done comparatively well.

Watched it? Let us know what you thought in the comments.

Some fun things off of Twitter

By | July 28, 2016
8 Comments

Dara O Briain’s Go 8-Bit, based on a popular comedy show by McNeil and Pamphlion, makes its television debut on Dave on the 5th September.

We are very much looking forward to this, it’s basically comedians playing video games in front of a live audience, precisely the sort of low-ish key thing Dave does really quite well.

Meanwhile thanks to Buzzerblog for highlighting this:

I haven’t listened to it yet (it’s “in” my “queue”) but Planet Money is a hugely entertaining podcast about economics I’ve been listening to for ages and you probably should too.

Bits and Pieces

By | July 26, 2016
12 Comments

Some stuff you may have missed:

  • ITV daytime summer season starts next week with Cash Trapped with Bradley Walsh moving into the 5pm slot followed by Alphabetical two weeks later. The big question is where does Rebound go? Twenty episodes finished filming yesterday, Tipping Point is still down for 4pm next week (wisely – well done to ITV for looking like they’ve got a strategy this Summer). Do they use it to lead into new episodes of The Chase?
  • Hot off the back of Robot Wars returning was a surprise announcement that Time Commanders is returning. They are looking for teams of three to take on the historical wargaming computer sim and then take on other teams. You can apply through the BBC.
  • It’s the Big Brother final tonight! Celeb Big Brother starts on Thursday on Five.

Show Discussion: Robot Wars

By | July 24, 2016
38 Comments

New_Robot_Wars_logoSundays, 8pm,
BBC2

It’s been away for a while but tonight Robot Wars returns promising more story and emotion than ever before, which really captures the appeal of the original.

I’m joking of course, people tune in for watching big old robots fight each other. And we’re not joking when we suggest old, there are teams (and house robots!) here who were part of the original series over a decade ago, and Jonathan Pearce and Dr Noel Sharkey return to commentate and judge ties.

New are hosts Dara O’Briain (it’s vaguely science so it’s Dara!) and new reporter Angela Scanlon, Sethu Vijayakumar and Lucy Rogers join the judging line-up and there’s a new bulletproof arena.

We’re hoping for lots of destruction and not just waiting for a robot to be pushed into The Pit like loads of old battles used to end and got really boring.

It will be interesting to see how this does, the Battlebots revival started fairly strongly in the US but seems to have tailed off rather by series two. Let us know what you think in the comments.