Yes you ARE correct to dig the graphic design.

We completely forgot to watch David Mitchell’s Outsiders that started on Dave last night, basically Taskmaster In Tents by the sounds of it, and opinions have run the gamut from “boring” to “OK” to “much better and funnier than anticipated”, so I look forward to catching up with that in due course.

Anyway for some reason it got me thinking about pretty good outward bound survival show Bare Necessities on BBC2 around the turn of the millennium, hosted by apparent patron saint of Bother’s Bar Ed Hall and Hugh McManners, where two teams of office worker-y types would be set survival/camping challenges and awarded points by survival expert McManners (usually they’d be docked points for self-inflicted wounds i.e. the reason they’re hungry is because they refused to skin a rabbit, that sort of thing), hoping to have a time advantage for a final challenge which would determine if their final night was in a nice hotel or once again in a tent.

Rather nicely, there’s an episode on Youtube look.

Pondering if Metro have broken an embargo as nobody else seems to have reported it yet, but quiz giant (and The Chase question writer) Olav Bjortomt is apparently the new Egghead. It starts on Monday at 6:30pm on Five.

The article suggests it’s in the Radio Times, so perhaps not.

Rather wonderfully, Chris (well worth a Youtube follow for this sort of thing) has uploaded the first ever episode of CBBC’s Get Your Own Back.

A few things of note, thirty years on:

• I always really liked the Brain Box bit – good music, fun physical element, but it really needed to be either a) a bit longer or b) needed some other element as there’s not enough score variance in it really. This is less of an issue when the show stopped being eliminatory.
• Has any other show used the “obvious correct answers beginning with a letter which yours cannot” mechanic, from the Gunk Dunk? I always thought this was a mechanic that’d work pretty well in a more comedy-based quiz and I don’t think I’ve seen it used anywhere.

I also highly recommend Jack’s Throwback Attack’s interview with Dave Benson-Philips.

If you’re on the Bother’s Bar Discord, we’ve a lively and fun boardgaming group (largely played though Board Game Arena) where currently we’ve got several games turn based games on the go (i.e. you can get an e-mail when it’s your turn but there’s otherwise little time pressure), and then currently every other Sunday night (including tomorrow) from about 8pm until 10:30ish people can turn up in the live voice chat and play games live. Those tend to be at the lighter, livelier, bluffier end.

Currently we’ve got a game of King of Tokyo on the go and I’m having a great time. It’s not a new game by any means but it’s the first time I’ve played it – basically roll dice to either score points or hurt other monsters – the monster currently in Tokyo can hurt all the other monsters outside simultaneously and earns points the longer they stay in Tokyo, but they take all the damage from all the other monsters outside Tokyo who don’t otherwise hurt each other. Every time they get damaged, they can yield to the damager. The winner is the first to a point value, or the last one left standing. There’s (only) a little bit more to it than that, but that’s the gist.

This feels like the sort of thing that ought to translate to a game show pretty well, albeit likely with questions rather than dice rolling, contestants vying for a rewarding privileged position whilst also increasing their risk whilst in that position. Has it happened?

Avanti Un Altro sort of has it, there was an 70s/80s US quiz called Jackpot but it wasn’t especially adversarial. Similarly there are shows where people compete to take on the current champion, like Tout Le Monde Veut Prendre Sa Place, but that’s not quite the same thing. Along those lines, here’s an unsold pilot called King Of The Hill.

Sad news.