Show Discussion: The Tournament

By | November 7, 2021
41 Comments

Weekdays, 2:15pm,
BBC1

And so the BBC try out a new format in the apparently challenging post-Doctors slot, this one’s a quiz that’s been devised by the people behind QI and fronted by ex-football captain Alex Scott.

Despite its octagonal title card, our eight contestants will not be battling it out in mixed marshal arts, instead they will be taking on each other in quizzing duels based around a tug-of-war element. The last one standing could win a cash prize, but as yet I don’t actually know what that potential prize is. “Journalism!”

We know several people involved in divising it so we can appreciate the pedigree. We’re also digging the super-electronic set.

But is it an entertaining watch? Let us know in the comments.

Show Discussion: Sitting On A Fortune

By | November 6, 2021
14 Comments

Sundays, 7pm,
ITV

Gary Lineker invites contestants to a game of knowledge and strategy in order to win up to £100,000.

Contestants choose where to sit on a row of chairs with the person at the front of the queue facing questions. Getting a question wrong means moving to the red chair at the back of the queue and everyone moving up a place. Periodically the person in the red chair is eliminated. In the final round, the final three vie for the front seat where every question is worth £10,000, but only the person sitting in it after ten questions gets to keep the cash. Edit: Apparently this final round might have changed.

Footballing legend Gary Lineker is untried as role of gameshow host, but he has twenty years of TV experience so hopefully he’ll be as good as Ian Wright. I’m sure the game will be fine (even if it all boils down to “don’t get the last question wrong”). Let’s be clear here: whether it’s going to be successful or not is going to be largely down to whether the chairs move or not, or whether everyone’s going to have to get up and swap seats between wrong answers, and the signs are pointing to “no” here which seems like a missed opportunity.

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

TV Show and Tell podcast

By | November 4, 2021
0 Comment

I know, I know, you want a new podcast where you get THE TRUTH behind all those celebrity stories you may have read about in the “gutter” “media”. Something a bit more interesting for TV nerds is about to launch imminently though, the TV Show and Tell podcast (follow them on Twitter) where TV’s David Bodycombe and format consultant Justin Scroggie chat to the great and the good of the TV world about how TV shows get made.

The first guest in noneother than Bother’s Bar favourite Little Alex Horne.

They’re hoping to launch by the end of the week, so look out for it in your podcast aggregator of choice, but if you’re on the Bother’s Bar Discord David’s posted a short sneak peek of the Alex Horne interview so get on that if you can’t wait.

Abort the Line (Does this work as a pun? Subs please check – Brig)

By | November 1, 2021
0 Comment

Oh.

I can’t believe we’re this close and they’ve still not announced a format point that whether someone wins/loses large amounts of cash depends entirely on the whims of Louis Walsh. There’s still time to turn this around SyCo.

Show Discussion: Moneyball

By | October 29, 2021
29 Comments

Saturday, 6:30pm,
ITV

Well what a story this show has had – a name change from The Money Shot as it’s a bit rude, the mechanism apparently not working on their first set of recordings so it all had to be postponed and reshot more recently… it’s a miracle it seems to have made it at all. But here we are, rewarded with a shoulder peak slot competing against the extremely solid The Hit List rather than Strictly which may or may not work out for it.

In Moneyball, contestants answer questions to load a track with cash, then release a ball and where it lands determines how much they can add to their bank. It’s hosted by football pundit Ian Wright, who was all the rage hosting gameshows about twenty years ago but I think this is probably the first one since The National Lottery Wright Around the World – he was Mr Saturday Night for a bit, I wonder why that stopped?

It feels rather ill-fated but let’s not write write write it off before it lands. Watched it? Let us know what you thought in the comments.

In case of emergency, break glass

By | October 28, 2021
2 Comments

Lots and lots of new shows coming in the next few weeks so don’t you worry.

Right now though, in the calm before the storm, we’ve been alerted to someone uploading all the episodes of American Gladiators to Youtube. AG is meant to be being rebooted soon. This will inevitably be followed by a slightly better UK version, then cancelled after two series.

This post would have been better if there was a Gladiator named Glass, but unfortunately there isn’t, probably because it suggests someone who shatters easily which isn’t a very good attribute for a Gladiator. Still though.