Sundays, 8pm,
ITV1
I know there was a post for the Xmas Special/Pilot/Whatever but I think taking the show to a series brings with it its own set of challenges – namely as a “one-off” you can do all the nostalgia hits and spend twenty minutes applauding Luke Litter coming on stage and whatever, but a full series has to stand on its own two feet.
For what it’s worth I thought there was clearly an entertaining regular 45-minute show you could probably get from the Xmas Special’s production values – Freddie Flintoff was good, entertaining, believable as host, Little Richard Ashdown is fine in the Tony Green role, but we’ve still got a 60-minute slot to fill out of a 30-minute format and in the middle of primetime as well. And they’re bringing back Luke Littler for the first episode.
Adverts suggest there’s a new round (format development after forty years, you love to see it), and I hope they’ve rebalanced Pounds For Points so it doesn’t feel quite so irrelevant.
They say you can’t beat a bit of Bully on a Sunday, I expect Antiques Roadshow will have something to say about that, but having thought in the recent past that I wish they’d just leave this alone, the Christmas Special suggested there might still be some life left in Bully yet.
Watched it? Let us know what you think in the comments!
I really respect Freddie for getting up there again and presenting such an iconic game show he does a fantastic job at bringing in some of Jim Bowen’s heritage. I like the fact all the old rounds are back bringing some classic nostalgia to our screens on a Sunday evening.
Bringing the charity challenge back is a rather exciting element, Very impressed with Freddie’s dart skills he’s actually rather good clearly been practicing. Just has a go at the round the clock challenge on my dartboard, fun game.
Really not a fan of the new head to head round where they answer a question and hit the number on the dartboard which corresponds to the answer. when you think about it if they keep missing the right number and no one hits the required answer that round could have been going on till the news at 10. I’m not sure why ITV thought they should add this new round and expect it to improve it, the christmas special had massive potential but this round ruins it in my opinion.
Another thing which frustrated me was the shadows after a dart has been thrown. Even Richard Ashdown struggled at times to workout the number they’d hit. Sometimes it looked like they’d hit 20 when in fact it was trebble.
Overall it’s very watchable and will 100% watch the rest of the series but just a few things which annoyed me about the reboot which wasn’t needed.
New round was just a penalty shoot out type (but just 3 questions each). Quizzer had to answer a question with a numerical answer between 1-20 and the darts player had to hit the number the quizzer answered (it wasn’t revealed first whether the answer was right).
Tonight between wrong answers and terrible dart throwing, it went to sudden death after it was 0-0 after 3 questions.
Still doesn’t need to be an hour show.
Well, the questions are insultingly easy and Pounds For Points is somehow even less relevant than it was at Christmas.
And yeah, the shadows are really bad.
Head to head not great, too hard, and the prizes are extremely cheap feeling.
1.9m last night, roughly on the level Beat the Chasers had been getting. Antiques Roadshow did 4.5m against it, so not much of a dent really. A million down on its Xmas Special outing last year.
I just think it’s a bit disappointing really, I think they’ve made choices that feel like a step backwards from the Xmas Special. Low rent, but not in a good way.
The prizes on Bully’s Prize Board are crap – not the deliberately crap ones, which are deliberately crap – but LED face masks? Electronics from B and M? I love B and M but I go there for the crisps and Australian sweets not mini-fridges and irons. They should be aiming a bit higher than stuff they sell on the teleshopping task on The Apprentice – it should be iPhones, Miele fridges, that sort of thing.
Whhhhyyyy have they still not got the grand prize reveal right?
Also, also also also, don’t think that doing the Bully’s Prize Board reveal, not in the old way with Bully popping up in the middle of the board and pointing at each number, but with one animation asset you’ve resized and flipped coming up from either corner has gone unnoticed.
Also also also also also why have you done “let’s check that with Bully” as a long shot? Surely Freddie Flintoff is capable of pointing at imaginary letters.
Come on, you’re doing a series, you can’t coast by on goodwill.
I just felt like I was watching the Christmas special again really, I get that Luke Littler is the biggest person in darts at the moment but surely there’s other people they can get on? Maybe they will for the other editions but I’m not sure I even want to watch them after last night.
The questions were ridiculously easy, I think there were only two wrong answers the whole show?
Don’t like the head to head round, agree with other comments on it. Could’ve gone on for ages, did feel like a drag and not exciting, also it meant the couple who won the most money actually didn’t go through the Bully’s Prize Board which is an odd concept.
Yeah Pounds for Points is completely irrelevant now, I think the couple in the lead by round 1 were £200-£250 ahead of the others? You’d need to be scoring 100+ each round and getting the question right to catch that up.
The standard of the darts playing by the contestants was pretty terrible, I thought the point was one person played it to a decent level on a regular basis.
The biggest annoyance though, is the constant clapping. This was brought up when the Christmas edition aired, do ITV not read social media responses? I don’t know whether I’m just getting old but I don’t get what’s wrong with some silence on a programme occasionally. Why does every second need to be filled with sound? It sounds ridiculous when the audience claps after every question is chosen or score is announced, no matter how good or poor it is.
Good points, I think they got the right people to host it.
I think even Tipping Point contestants would have been offended at how easy those questions were last night
Yeah, to be fair, I don’t like that they’re applauding far too often, even unnecessarily. Freddie is not bad at all as host, but…
Who do you like better? Him, Jim or Dim* Spikey?
Mine is Jim, but a close second would be Spikey.
Brand new Bullseye – weeknights at 10
“Eeeeeeee-xclusively to Challenge.”
*Take 2*
Brand new Bullseye – weeknights at 10
“Exclusivelyyyyyy to you – oh sorry”
*Take 3*
(CHUCKLE)
Brand-
“Eee–”
(LAUGHTER)
*That’s Dave Spikey, just so you know.
Hopefully that will all change. Can this new host do even better or just as well as Jim and Dim – sorry – Dave? There’s just one thing standing in their way… Him. a.k.a. Freddie Flintoff.
A reference to the very first series of The Chase in 2009; it’s got to be here somewhere.
Next year will be twenty years since the Challenge version. TWENTY.
AND it’s longer ago now than my birth was then (I was 18 at the time).
I’m gonna be in a retirement home soon… 🙁
Is it just me, or do Challenge tend to distance themselves from their own version these days? They’ve aired the original run ten billion times by this stage, but seldom do they bring their own version out to play. I wonder how much of this is down to how cheap the whole thing looked compared to the original (and only £150 for hitting the bullseye in the Category Board), despite Dave and Greeny’s best efforts?
Freddie Flintoff is not bad at all as host. I think he’s just as good as Dave Spikey, but still miles away from the late Jim Bowen. Last night’s star prize was £10,000 worth of TUI holiday vouchers – not a speedboat. However, instead of revealing the prize, Freddie explained it first. After that, I noticed that the curtain had already dropped, to reveal… just some screens and lights, in an empty void. There used to be an actual holiday as the star prize. I reckon that would’ve been better than this bullsh**. Why wouldn’t they have an actual holiday on offer? That is certainly not how to get the star prize reveal right. (Insert Bully blanking his eyes in despair here) I didn’t think it would be that bad…
How wrong I was. Anyone want to file a lawsuit?
BONUS ROUND
How easy are the questions on Bullseye?
Now compare that to how easy the questions are in Round 1 of Tipping Point!
Here’s a game for you to play… I found the constant clapping from the audience particularly annoying. Here’s your question:
How many times were the audience clapping unnecessarily in the previous episode? Bet now! COME ON! MOVE!
Correction: At the end of episode 2, there was no curtain after Freddie said ‘Goodbye’ – it had been removed.
The show is flat anyway but it does lack something without the speedboat or even a mystery prize. There would probably be complaints if the prize was “naff”, but so what?
I caught the last ten minutes before I’m a Celeb last night and I cannot believe how badly they’ve botched the ending – it’s the show that bought “let’s have a look at what you could have won” into the lexicon! It’s the bit everyone remembers! It *needs* a wall that can be removed to reveal a giant cutout of a cruise ship with a big £10,000 and the Tui logo on it they can cut to a video package with Flintoff and the music sounding a bit miserable and ending with “…and it could have been yours… for a throw of a dart!”
It actually makes me increasingly angry the more I think about it, no sense of theatre at all. I don’t think we’re getting half as much banter from Flintoff as we did at Xmas either – it’s all procedure – “go to the Throwing Area”, “the 101 Challenge” – I mean *come on*.
A tragedy of almost Shakespearean proportions.
What I think of the show so far: *INSERT BULLY PUTTING THUMBS DOWN HERE* (4/10)
Especially because…
I hate the new prize reveal; why haven’t they got it right STILL???!!! I WAITED FORTY FOUR FLIPPING YEARS FOR THIS???!!! So not on ITV. DO BETTER. OR DIE.
(TO THE TUNE OF DON’T YOU WANT ME BY THE HUMAN LEAGUE)
♪ Ratings have declined.
♪ You think Fred’s way behind.
♪ You’d better file a lawsuit, or then they’ll be sorry! ♪
(THAT’S ENOUGH)
I actually watched the first episode, but by the end of part three, ITVX crashed. It didn’t save my progress up to that point. Now I have to start again from the beginning, and until I get to the end of it, I will never know what the star prize for that episode would have been. (Spoiler: a £10,000 TUI holiday – the same one as seen on episodes 1 and 2! Oh.) The audience were clapping no less than 82 times across episode 1. I can only assume that there may be at least that many on episode 2. New TV please!
Plus, and the 2006 theme can be heard while “Little” Richard Ashdown is explaining the rules for Bully’s Charity Challenge.
Two words for this Bullseye revival: BOWEN UNBEATABLE.
Introduced by
JIM BOWEN
Scorer
TONY GREEN
1981-95: Hiding behind Bully
2006: Hiding behind our dartboard doors
2024-25: What was it? He didn’t say.
Episode 1 has a Thinkbox figure of a soft 2.2m, doesn’t feature in A16-34 Top 50, but can claim 42k in A16-24.
Creator Andrew Wood passed away at the weekend.
How old was he? Hopefully… 180!
He’d have to have a miracle to have been that old in his life…
…which I’m sure he didn’t get.
1934-2025 so 90 or 91. A good three dart average nonetheless.
Oh dear, what a pity. Never mind!