The Lie

By | April 2, 2014
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Prosaic quiz week continues! TV3’s 3 Studios have prepped The Lie and Crossfire for international sales and whilst Crossfire is basically really boring, I reckon The Lie might have the chance of being a minor success. It’s already had one series in Ireland fronted by Jonathan McCrea, and a Scottish version fronted by comedian Susan Calman began on Monday and if you’re in the UK should be viewable on the STV site.

It’s a simple game – couples are shown a group of statements and must decide within a minute which one is false. The prizes start at £100 at level one (which is the demonstration level as it only has one statement which has to be a lie), £250 at level two (two statements), £500, £750, £1000, £1500, £2500, £5000 and finally £10,000 at level nine which has nine statements. Players get eight categories to play levels 2-9 with. Contestants get one chance during a game to bank money after a level to guarantee a prize – the longer they leave it the more they guarantee but if they haven’t banked and give a wrong answer they leave with nothing, and of course they can bail after each round. After level four they get a “lucky three” lifeline which reduces the number of options to three, but then they only get ten seconds to lock in a decision, for some reason. The well-worked upside down pyramid motif suggests that someone has thought the whole thing through.

It’s a simple game and it avoids a lot of production pitfalls in only being half an hour – reveals are not especially tedious (although obviously there will be one during a throw to break) going straight for the “is that the lie?” when they could have easily gone round the houses and generally the show doesn’t outstay its welcome. It also has quite swish minimalist graphics (although streaming online the writing is a bit small on the 21 inch widescreen monitor), quite a nice simple set and quite a neat ZX 48k Spectrum-esque soundtrack.

It’s not a must-watch and it doesn’t bring anything very new to the table, but what’s there is competent and reasonably engaging. It also feels quite winnable. I think if I was to make one small suggestion, maybe an optional way for contestants to “green out” the statements they believe to be true on the screen might aid viewer (and contestant) understanding when there’s a lot of statements on screen, Picross style, as long as everyone’s aware they only HAVE to lock in a lie.

Bother’s Bar Poker – Sunday at 8pm

By | April 1, 2014
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We interrupt prosaic quiz week to remind you (and indeed me) that it’s Bother’s Bar Poker this Sunday from 8pm, if the daylight savings automatically work (ahem). Join us for cards and fun for $5.50, with additional chips available for a further $5 (in fact you have an optional rebuy and an optional add-on). Winner takes all unless ten or more turn up, so likely to be a decent pot for the winner. Come and join us!

It’s prosaic quiz week here at Bother’s Bar

By | March 31, 2014
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There are shows we like and there are shows that are popular. Hopefully these things coincide. Sometimes they do not, but I like to think I understand why they are what they are. It’s really not all down to the formats, you can change something a bit dull on paper to something that comes alive on the the screen.

This week we’re going to celebrate new shows with apparently simple formats which may or may not have some spark to them (usually not), beginning with TV3’s Crossfire, currently going out on Monday and Friday nights, and which was ungeoblocked on Friday but now apparently you will need to use the dark arts to watch. In it, popular TV and radio personality Sean Moncrieff (Don’t Feed the Gondolas) hosts a quiz with lots of easy questions which looks like there might be some strategy but actually the correct strategy is laughably simple – pick on whoever is doing the worst. There’s not much banter (although Moncrieff tries to keep it light), it has a dark set with with neat lights on the podiums.

Round one – you’re asked a multiple choice question. If you get it right you can attack another player or go for a second question. If you get this second question right you’re forced to attack someone for two points. Everybody has 10 lives, whoever runs out of lives first is eliminated (for some reason they count up from zero and not down from ten but there we are). If you’re attacked you can’t attack the same person back immediately so basically three people continue to attack each other until someone gets unlucky, because once you start attacking someone there’s no point splitting your venom.

Round two – lives are reset and now everybody answers very easy questions on the buzzer. Getting a question right knocks a life off of someone, so when someone starts going the other two pick on them. And that’s it.

Round three – Lives are reset and you can continue taking questions until you decide to push your luck no further and attack with the built pot or you get it wrong, in which case your opponent can opt to steal the pot if they think they know the answer, or opt to reset but take control if they don’t. The winner gets €200 for every life left and gets to come back next time.

It’s basically quite boring and has really easy questions. But if you like boring shows with easy questions, it gets through 50-60 in the time which isn’t awful.

Apps Upside Your Head: Tipping Point

By | March 30, 2014
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tpointiosOut now on iOS, Android to follow
£1.49

Barnstorm seem to be really talented guys – not content to create a really good app for The Chase now they’ve turned their hand to the show that’s currently propping up ITV’s 4pm slot. And it’s not a let down.

As we’ve always said, when you want an app you want to be able to play a decent approximation of the show – that’s what people want. Barnstorm also have the knack of getting the feel of the shows right as well – it looks like the show (very much so in fact, the camera angles are spot on) and sounds like the show (although the soundtrack is not really a big selling point, they certainly understand the benefit of a metallic clunk).

And if you want to play the show you’re well catered for – you can play with up to four human players crowded round an iPad (and presumably an iPhone) with computer players taking places where necessary (although you can also play with them off). The rounds are the same, albeit with the caveats that all the questions become multiple choice once you’ve pushed a buzzer, and the turn order in round two is highest score to lowest (whereas on TV the person with the highest score gets some control over turn order as strategy). The mystery tokens are worth a small cash bonus. The questions themselves are a bit harder than the ones on the telly I think even with the multiple choices, but like any multiple choice quiz sometimes the alternate answers make it a bit too obvious what the right answer is. I’ve only had one dodgy question so far regarding the length of time people got to recall items on The Generation Game (which varied over the show’s thirty years really).

The machine is actually a thing of beauty, you pick a dropzone and push a button to launch the chip, and they seemed to have programmed various speeds and angles into it like you’d see on television – so yes you’ll get some which bounce a bit, ghost drops, some that land then roll around a bit. They all make metallic clanks as they get pushed over. It’s great fun, or at least it would be if suspense wasn’t so stressful, you will try and get something which is hanging tentatively over a shelf to fall off using sheer force of will. The machine will stay in play as long as it will move something as it shoves, and the subtle shine on the counters will alert you to anything moving. There was a moment when it seemed to think something was moving back and forth very slightly and I thought it would never move on but just like on telly, three shoves of the shelf and we’re back to a question.

Really if you’re a fan of Tipping Point the app is difficult to fault. There’s also a solo quick game mode, 60 seconds of questions followed by the final if you don’t fancy a full game. Recommended.

It’s Schlag Saturday! 29th March 2014

By | March 28, 2014
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schlagdenraabSaturday 29th March,
7:15pm UK time,
ProSieben or naughty streaming

#bbsdr

Once again our German friends are putting on a large scale live large TV show and if a plucky member of the public can outplay Stefan Raab over 15 games they will be taking home €1m.

There will also be live music from Bastille, who a friend of mine has played with, and Clean Bandit. And likely a third mystery act as well.

And once again we’ll be providing a live-on-a-slight-delay Youtube commentary.

However this month it’s a bit more exciting than usual because the gang are spending the day filming bits for the forthcoming Schlag den Baar in two weeks on on April 12th. Some of us will be travelling to and from London for the day and might not all be back for the beginning. As such you’re advised to keep an eye out on our Twitter feeds and the comments below for links and updates.

Here is a fun summary:

Here’s the link to our live commentary.

This is the stream we will be watching live and basing our commentary on.

That stream will probably go down at some point during the evening, here’s our first back-up one. If it all goes down, once we’ve finished panicking, we’ll put up links to streams we can find on here and on Twitter.

Follow us on Twitter for immediate news if something goes wrong. Or because we’re fun guys!!!! @bothersbar, @danielpeake, @ogbajoj, @davidjbodycombe.

It’s Scotti un Altro!

By | March 25, 2014
10 Comments

So I’m still of the belief that if done correctly, Endemol’s Next One (the English title for Avanti un Altro) could be massive over here. I think there are dangers – none of the other international versions seem to be having as much fun as the Italians are, and the ringleader of the Italian show is Paolo Bonolis who co-devised the show. But he’s leaving (apparently in part to help launch the show elsewhere) and the question is can it survive without him?

Well tonight in an unexpected move the show was hosted by the brilliant Gerry Scotti as a sort of preview for when he takes the role on full time from next week (and you can watch it here). Scotti is a bit of an Italian TV legend – used to be a popular singer and in recent years fronted their version of Millionaire, and his style is different – if Bonolis is the class clown, Scotti’s your uncle who puts on great parties and overindulges rather. I was trying to come up with a UK cultural equivalent – if Bonolis is Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush era Chris Evans, Scotti’s a louder fatter take on Terry Wogan. Terry Wogan fused with Brian Blessed. There is probably a better comparison to be made to be honest.

Right now it feels a bit supply teacher, the jokes and characters are basically the same but right now he’s laughing with them rather than actively creating the laughs himself. Luca Laurenti’s still on board but looked a bit uncomfortable without his usual sparring partner although seemed to warm up a bit in the latter half of the show – there was quite a funny shoulder massage chain happening after Mr Bonus came out. The show seems less funny, more jovial. Time will tell if this is a good thing or not but I would hope future writing and characters play up to his strengths.

The big question is how would he handle Il Gioco Finale and the truth is actually really well – if the game was designed to play up Bonolis’ ability to speak fast, Scotti handles the game intelligently – he’s not as fast as Bonolis by a long shot, but he also realises that most people don’t need the full question read out anyway when chasing and leaves a brief but perceptable gap after giving the options almost to give them the nod that they should just answer there and on the basis of tonight’s contestant they do. I like this because that’s what I find myself doing when I’m running a game.  He does stop the clock more frequently after lengthy runs and shouts a bit more but he clearly seems on the player’s side.

The show normally does fantastic demos, it will be interesting to see what the change in direction does for them. By the end I thought the show was in safe hands. Friend of the Bar Stuart Shawcross of 5 Minutes to a Fortune fame tweeted me these this evening:

Amazing. Bonolis returns until the end of the week.