Gang I’m going to come out and say it: I know it was an unexpected episode, but the results this time round are a bit disappointing. Last time we managed to piss-off a producer. THIS IS THE SORT OF JUICE WE WANT.

Let’s see the best of what you did tell us:

• Race around the world is starting filming in January. With added Covid restriction-jeopardy thrown in.

This might have been good JUICE had I not read it on Twitter about twenty minutes before Taskmaster started so bad luck. I still think this feels a bit hopeful, as much as I’d like it to happen.

• I’ve won £1000 on a gameshow……. But it doesn’t get paid until it airs…………. In the middle of 2022

Actually fairly unusual for a UK production as I understand it, so I understand a level of aggravation.

• Netflix has bought the rights to The Mole for all territories except Belgium, Netherlands and Germany (they were still trying to sell the second season of the remake when the rights were negotiated). Someone from the production company told me. It’s not really news, but it is a more definitive version of our guesses.

Yay! The Mole made for a worldwide audience by Americans basically. That’ll definitely be good *looks to camera*.

• The social media detectives have perhaps found out two of the contestants for taskmaster s13. Chris Ramsey, his podcast lined up with the dates of the studio recordings, and Judi Love, she posted a picture in the same dressing room as Desiree did when they were doing the studio recordings, the picture got taken down

Chris Ramsey wasn’t on a list that was floating about I saw IIRC, would certainly add a bit more star value to the list I DID see (although I know and accept that it’s not always the big names that provide the big laughs). Anyway we’ll hopefully all find out next week after the final.

• True Stories is a show coming up. Four people, all with an unbelievable story, only one telling the truth. All interrogated by criminal interrogators. A fifth player has to guess who is telling the truth to win the cash. Get it wrong and the chosen liar wins.

Think I heard vague rumblings about this, or at least a contestant call-out for something that sounded like it. Not really a new idea, it’s Tell the Truth/Liar/Pants On Fire whatever, but the professional criminal interrogators might be an interesting twist.

• Total speculation, rather than inside info, but there has been so much crossover between the global Taskmaster Cinematic Universe and the Escape This Podcast, er, podcast that I am convinced that Alex Horne and chums are trying to work out a way to pitch something like it commercially. If the success of Outsiders shows there is a market for “Taskmaster but outdoors”, there could just as easily be a market for “Taskmaster but puzzly”.

I’m not sure how successful Outsiders is looking at the numbers (started at 500k, now around 200k. Is that enough? More people watched the last episode on catch-up than same day. I don’t know what would make Dave happy). Comedians doing escape rooms sounds like a winner on paper, but nobody’s really managed to turn the idea into a workable TV show yet. The much missed Race to Escape is probably the best try at it, but even that only did one series. Would an escape room TV show use up too many ideas too quickly? I have to say I hadn’t heard of the Escape This Podcast podcast, but looking it up if I wasn’t currently overwhelmed with podcasts I’d certainly give it a try.

• It’s not very interesting, but I’ve seen large photos of the new Weakest Link set and it’s very shiny. Recorded in Glasgow recently (at the same time as COP, inconveniently).

Yep I’ve seen some as well – looks a bit like the US one but with prettier podiums than the US one. Let’s hope the format is a bit prettier than the US one as well, eh? I actually thought they were going to film this with an audience, but apparently not. Still, though.

There we go, maybe not that bad after all. I think the next big Happening is GamesMaster “dropping” on Youtube on Sunday before a broadcast on E4 on Wednesday, I’ll put up a Show Discussion post for that.

OK this is something to file under “quite interesting, but…”. As you may have gathered, Wetten Dass…? had a highly successful 40th anniversary special hosted by Thomas Gottschalk the other week on German, Austrian and Swiss telly, so successful it sounds like they’re considering a reboot.

But what of the very first episode from 1981, hosted by Franck Elstner? It is… it feels very much like a bit of a work in progress. It’s about an hour before any of the challenges actually happen, the first hour seemingly introducing the people who will be betting on the outcomes, which seem like a mixture of celebs and civilians. Each contestant sits out one bet to play something from The Golden Shot for some reason. The seventh contestant is 1000 viewers playing along live on the phone. The “wettkoenig” is the contestant who guesses the most bets correctly (who wins 6,000DM by the sounds), although all the challenges succeed anyway (the best one is a man who claims he can blow up a hot water bottle with his breath).

When Gottschalk took over the episodic game aspect was dropped of course with each of the guest celebs having a chat then betting on the success of a challenge on pain of a charity forfeit, the evening’s “wettkoenig” being decided by telephone vote on who had the most impressive challenge.

So, we came across this the other night: what seems to be a full version of Chas ‘and’ Dave’s Crackerjack theme tune, apparently about 180bpm, has extra lyrics and bangs quite hard.

https://youtu.be/ob99Capo_Q4

We’re trying to figure out the timeline in the BB Discord. It’s complicated by this video on TV Ark which is the Chas “&” Dave tune, but predating Chas n Dave, except the credits after suggest they did actually write it.

Does anyone know the story here?

Extremely excited to hear Alice in Borderland series two is “dropping” in December on Netflix, apparently. Edit: Thanks to Juner for pointing out – December *next year*. Sorry!

We really enjoyed the first series, and are not especially surprised if it saw an uptick after the success of Squid Game. Here too Arisu must take part in games to stay alive, the games are a bit more involved here.

Some of the games have entertaining Mole-like elements, but none of the “a-ha!” moments are as strong as something in Liar Game, for example (please buy up Liar Game Netflix, thanks). Still if you, like me, are a fan of This Sort Of Thing and you have the stomach for some exploding bodies then it’s well worth a watch.

What I thought of series one.

Seeing as the ending of the first series suggested a second series where the games will be more clever/extreme, I look forward to seeing where it goes.

Might have done a video for this, but there’s really not very much to it.

Well the Lingo app is certainly something, and what that something is is 'a bit grubby'. Works along similar lines as Millionaire/Jeopardy World Tour and so on. Giveusyermoney, basically. Luckily it's really hard to find and you can probably do just as well with an unofficial one

— Brig Bother (@BothersBar) November 9, 2021

For some reason they’ve gone with bingo as a kind of bonus reward system, which seems a bit silly given that’s the part of the format they’ve removed.

How exciting. Hopefully it won’t take me too long to get through my current backlog to get round to it.

https://twitter.com/TVShowPodcast/status/1458088038408630273

In other news, don’t forget to join the BB Discord for EXCLUSIVE formatty chit-chat and currently an extremely fun online board games club, which meets live every other Sunday (warning: liable to get a bit sweary) and plays turn-based stuff in between.

Finally, if you’ve got Call of Duty: Vanguard, why not join the Bother’s Bar clan? We won’t actually do anything, but you do get a lovely Boyard as an emblem. On XBox, press Y in a menu to access your “socials”.

My gaming contacts, if you want to add me:

Steam: Add me on Steam if you want.
XBox: We can be chums on XBox for high score fun if you’re that way inclined, where I am Brig Bother.
Playstation Network: I’m not currently on PSN, but if I come back BrigBother ought to do it, but this handy link should do it as well.
Switch: Code SW-2805-5403-1808