Murder in Successville

By | May 7, 2015
9 Comments

successvilleI’m writing this here not having watched the first episode (because of work, mainly), but it’s on my radar and started last night on BBC3 and Tom F suggests:

Thing which may be of interest, whilst it’s not much like Korea’s, we now have our own improvised-crime-investigation-with-celebrities offering:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05tv211

Does this really count as a gameshow? It’s primarily a comedy, but for me there’s enough of a game in there.

If there’s a legitimate puzzle then it probably counts, or at least Is Likely Of Interest, so did anyone watch it and if you did, what did you think?

Dates for your diary

By | May 5, 2015
8 Comments
  • It’s the Pick Me! pilot in Manchester tomorrow. If you’re going do tell us if it’s any good. Under an assumed name if you’d prefer.
  • This Friday there’s another The Hit List runthrough, with the emphasis on fun for you at home (i.e. they’re testing the software). Follow @hitlistquiz on Twitter for the latest details. The Mysterious Mr B (spoiler, it’s David Bodycombe) suggests from 3-4:45pm-ish and there might be prizes. This is good timing, because you’ve all taken the Friday off to stay up and watch the election on Thursday night. It will be LIVE! on Youtube once again, presumably.
  • The next Bother’s Bar Mario Kart 8 Super Challenge will be this Saturday from around 8pm to around 9:30pm. This one will be slightly different, I’m going to open a private room and you will need to search for me (go online -> Join Friend and look for BrigBother) so it will ensure we can all race together. You MUST have both DLC packs. The previous tourneys maxed out around 12, so if this proves popular you might get a bit unlucky as 12 is the maximum, I’ll shout on Twitter if and when a space opens up. There may well be chat in between races, you will need to accept there might be adult language.

1000 – Wie ist die Nummer 1?

By | May 3, 2015
14 Comments

1000mummer1Thanks to @hideousyolk for pointing this in our direction, last night saw ZDF’s newest attempt at a big Saturday night event show to replace Wetten Dass? and is proof if proof were needed that nobody does large scale studio games like the Germans (Miljoenenjacht not withstanding).

If you want to watch it you can catch it on the ZDF Mediathek for the next week before it disappears into the ether. It is ungeoblocked as far as I can ascertain. It’s a shade under two hours thirty.

In it 1,000 contestants are reduced to a single winner who wins €100,000 by surviving the cut over a number of rounds, beginning with a obstacle course round the ZDF car-park to get rid of 500, a Test-the-Nation style intelligence test to get down to 250, an observation round to cut to 100, balancing on a post to find the top 50, a tactile work-out-the-value-of-coins-by-touch-alone test to get to 25, a “creativity” test involving placing odd shaped bricks into a small case so the case shuts to get to five, a “build an unusual house of cards using beermats” test to find a final two, then the big €100,000 finale is wine glass Jenga. There are occasional guests to break it up. It’s basically Massively Multiplayer The Krypton Factor, the auditorium is quite something.

For me it needed to get on with it a bit quicker during those early quiz rounds – the time limit for each question was rather lengthy and every couple of questions they’d be a chat with some contestants and I’m not sure there’s really any point at that stage – when it gets down to the final 100 and all the games are played on stage the pacing felt more correct. I quite liked the way contestants learnt their fate by hoping their armband lit-up. The games for the final 100 were in the main well shot and lit, although I think the wine glasses probably could have done with some closer overhead shots to show placement a bit better.

Otherwise it’s a fairly entertaining watch which worked rather better than Das Spiel Beginnt back in March. Apparently not a recording without it’s problems though, apparently one contestant had a heart-attack on the obstacle course (they survived) and there was a suggestion of other accidents but you don’t see anything.

If I Ruled The World

By | May 2, 2015
5 Comments

You might have noticed there’s a general election on Thursday – hey, the most important gameshow in real life, yeah? – so here’s an episode of If I Ruled The World, the Richard Osman devised and produced panel show from the late 1990s which is also Sweden’s most popular show, or something.

 

The next Bother’s Bar Mario Kart tourney is next Saturday night, if you want to join in remember to add me as a Wii U friend (BrigBother) and make sure you’ve downloaded both DLC packs.

That’s Yer (Pi)Lot: Name That Tune (2015)

By | May 1, 2015
2 Comments

Well this was certainly different. If the pilot they shot last year with Bill Bailey was quite trad ITV light entertainment, this felt quite alien and brave but in an interesting way that I’ve got no idea how an audience would respond. It was certainly one of the most entertaining recordings I’ve been to…

  • It was recorded at Under the Bridge, off Chelsea football stadium, quite a small music venue. The set was a video wall at the back of the stage, band stage left, the two team podiums (which looked similar to last year’s if I recall) set apart in the middle and that’s it. The background is mainly disco-style blue dots with the name of the round and occasionally the money cast upon it.
  • The audience are seated in the dancefloor area, but between bits of recordings you were able to just get up and get drinks from the bars at the back. Relaxed! There were a lot of people watching from the mezzanine a few foot behind the dancefloor on stools.
  • The host is the brilliant Frank Skinner, very quick to fill with gags as you’d expect but also capable of a sharp put down where necessary. He was dressed in a suit and a bow tie and carried a stick mic (although also seemed to be miced up himself). The music was all provided by Alex Horne and the Horne Section, great choice and able to improvise quickly. Horne also did all the announcing. Fans of The Frank Skinner Show will be pleased to note that Skinner also joins in with the theme tune. I also noticed that the tunes played coming back from the breaks were TV themes with “name that tune” added to the end.
  • Basically the whole thing felt rather more like something from the cabaret circuit or Fringe show rather than a primetime ITV recording. It was referred to a runthrough as well as a pilot, so I’ve no idea. I could certainly understand it more as a runthrough, but then there’d be no need for an audience. It certainly felt different. It’s rather retro in style, but not seemingly in an ironic way.
  • Like last year’s pilot two teams of three play. They will play four rounds (always referred to as “games” to the point where they’d re-record if they said “round”, so maybe the intention is for a different selection to be played each week).
  • Game one was Name That Tune – seven intros played up to the point the lyrics kick in, buzz in and name the tune for £50. Different to last time is that there were a lot more modern tunes in the mix (i.e. Uptown Funk). Scores displayed on the video wall after each round, but surely the contestants are standing in the way.
  • Game two was Twist a Tune – the band play a medley of well known hits but all done in an unusual style – this time country and western. Teams write down the songs on boards. £100 for each song correctly identified.
  • Game three was Build a Tune – The band would play a tune starting with one instrument and gradually adding instruments, buzz in when you know it. Songs started at £400 then halved in value with each extra instrument down to £50. Four songs here.
  • Game four was the classic Bid a Note, best of five tunes, £2,000 for the winners – yup it’s the golden snitch. I always have a problem with bid a note in that it’s not always really that good a game, classic as it is, any time the players think they can name it in one note the clue was clearly too easy. I think the difficulty this time round was basically OK, personally I think you need to have clues that are vague enough to have a few possible responses to make the bidding element actually mean anything.
  • Losers get to keep their winnings.
  • The winning team went thorough to the Prize Tune which is the Golden Medley of old – one of the team must identify eight tunes in sixty seconds, you get timed out after around eight seconds. This is for a car, pictured on the screen. No extra money if they don’t make it.
  • So really not sure what to make of it – a very enjoyable recording certainly but it’s going to be quite an odd final edit I think. I’d love to see it one day. There were two commercial breaks but I don’t know what to read into that.