Show Discussion: Walk the Line

By | December 12, 2021
18 Comments

Nightly 12th-17th December, 8pm,
ITV

Simon Cowell’s new musical competition/gameshow thing which seems to suggest someone will be walking away with £500,000 at the end of the week.

To be honest, we’re not quite clear on how the format works other than an apparent exciting bit at the end of each episode where the winner has to decide whether to cash-out or walk down an ACTUAL line and gamble their winnings on the next show. Somehow this ends in a Grand Final on Friday which despite being a pre-record had a vote from a virtual online-watching audience and someone wins half-a-mill.

The judging panel consists of Gary Barlow, Craig David, Alesha Dixon and (surely the only possible contender for Bradley Walsh in the competition of The Nation’s Sweetheart) Dawn French, they’ve all had top three-or-better hits in their careers so you can’t say they lack credibility. Whether you would want to risk prize money on the whims of Craig David remains to be seen. The show’s hosted by previous Next Big Thing Maya Jama, hopefully this will be a bit more successful for her than Cannonball.

It’s certainly got a great opening night slot going into the final of I’m A Celeb, whether it’ll keep up momentum remains to be seen. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Brave New World

By | December 8, 2021
3 Comments

Sometimes we discover things by chance, frankly we’d probably have no idea this existed before stumbling on a Twitter conversation, but one of the great things about running this Bar is that I can signal boost something worthwhile.

And so we come to New World on Netflix, a new Korean variety/reality show. In it, six celebs are transported to a beautiful island of their dreams, everyone gets an abode tailored to what they said they wanted. The island has various landmarks and points of interest – the feeling is actually a bit Zelda-esque.

On Day 1 the contestants meet at the Bistro, which can apparently cook anything in the world, and then told what is happening – basically over the next six days they’ll take part in various adventures around the island, the object being to earn virtual currency, Nyang. Luxury costs, so they’ll need to earn Nyang to get the most of their stay on the island, but anything they’ve got at the end of the stay can be converted into real life cash money. Their phones can also send each other money and message each other.

And so the fun begins. An AI called Holo appears and sends them off on their first adventure. To celebrate the new arrivals, ten “events” have been set up around the island. It transpires that each of these events yields a box for a ‘winner’ – a 100% chance at 10m Nyang, or a 50% chance at 100m Nyang – they stick their phone on one of the two stands and it will tell them if they’ve won or not. They get two hours to find all the boxes, punctuated by performances from a Korean idol band, before returning to the Bistro to see how they done.

One more twist is that the final box is a “Joker” box which is flying around on a drone and will drop at a set location at a certain time. This box offers a guaranteed 100m Nyang, but if it’s used there will be a secret vote and someone will lose 200m. Cue lots of private messaging and dirty looks around the dinner table.

If that was it, that’d be enough fun for most shows, but there’s an excellent twist which I’ll hide under a cut so you can avoid being spoiled. If you take anything away from this post, take away that it’s worth a watch – it’s a bit The Genius (you may in fact recognise one of the contestants), A bit Fantasy Island, a bit Lost.

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I hope Romesh is funny because it’s probably not giving away more than about three grand an episode

By | December 6, 2021
4 Comments

The state of this.

With a £50k top prize, this is likely from towards the end of the game if they’re escalating each round. Still, urgh.

Romesh Ranganathan’s Weakest Link starts Saturday 18th December on BBC1.

Killer Camp S2

By | December 5, 2021
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Thought I’d give this another post as there’s not much else on and I suspect nobody’s watching. Basically it’s great fun although probably could do with Bobby Mair being even more insincere than he currently is. I still don’t think the show has solved its problems with inelegance it had with S1 – I’m up to the first vote off, we don’t yet know what happens if the killer gets voted off and whether we’re going to be treated to another “there were two killers all along!!!” revelation or if they’ve thought about it a bit more this time round. What we do know is that a new contestant has been introduced and they’ve done nothing so far to suggest whether she could plausibly be the Killer or not which seems a bit silly in a game of deduction, intrigue, and Americans describing something as being “hype”.

None of these are the reason it flopped of course given that it was pulled in the US before episode three. I do think it’s one of the funniest reality shows I’ve seen in a while.

Killer Camp continues weeknights at 11pm on ITV2, or you can watch the lot right now on ITV Hub.

#Dealvent

By | December 1, 2021
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Do you want to play a game? Click through for details.

https://twitter.com/danielpeake/status/1466103731913732098

This of course is a very difficult game for me – effectively I’m playing against an amorphous blob of people, with no real money on the line, making especially early offers on an entirely arbitrary basis. ONE of you will come out on top, but will you give me a Banker Spanking?