A 1%-er

By | November 11, 2020
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The 1% Club has been commissioned for ITV and I thought this had been knocking about for a while, but a quick search suggests that they filmed a pilot for it at Salford only back at the end of January so not that long in the grand scheme of things. It’s Everybody’s Equal with brainteasers and Lee Mack, basically, but apparently with a convoluted money system only 1% of people will understand that basically boils down to “£100k is split amongst everyone who survives and gets the hardest question right”, unless I’m missing some nuance.

In other news, they’ve changed the logo for Blankety Blank on Applause Store so it looks like 80s Blind Date, and there’s no mention of Bradley Walsh. Have the plans changed?

Hi-score Hijinx

By | November 10, 2020
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Not especially gameshow related (although we note Family Feud will be out on console on Thursday – we will try and do a video for it) but I’m lucky enough to have got an XBox Series X this afternoon, so here’s an occasional post on how you can find me for scoreboard fun if the fancy takes you:

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

And hey! If you’re on XBox why not join Club Bother’s Bar? Sure, nobody’s posted anything in there for about two years, but still.

The Arbitrary Finals – Volume 2

By | November 9, 2020
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To win a Bother’s Bar Game Night, it’s not enough to be best at the Jackbox suite of games played throughout the evening. No, to become ultimate champion you must convert the advantage of moral victory into actual victory in the evening’s Arbitrary Final. A game of my own devising, playable by eight people (usually). Some are pretty bloody good (I reckon everything from Elimination Wipeout onwards is strong (apart from the archery one), with particular mention going to Quizudo and Die Hard), the others are at least quite funny.

Anyway, it’s been ten episodes since volume one, so here’s volume two.

Alex Trebek

By | November 8, 2020
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Extremely sad to hear Alex Trebek lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. He’ll always be best known for his many many years hosting Jeopardy! since 1984, but he has of course fronted a range of shows from the sublime to the ridiculous. My first recollection of him was hosting Classic Concentration which they used to show daily on UK satellite. Everybody else will be using Jeopardy! I suspect, so here’s a random episode of that.

https://youtu.be/Yzhft8WdkCM

Show Discussion: Boyard Land S2

By | November 5, 2020
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Saturday 7th November, 8:05pm(UK)/9:05pm(CET)
France 2

Splash! They’ve recorded six more! But it won’t be going out as a series, as we understand it they’ll be going out as seasonal specials, the first one of which is the Halloween one to celebrate Halloween, er, last week. To be fair, it was probably intended to go out last week but the Six Nations rugby restarted.

We quite enjoyed the first series as a proof of concept, it sounds like they might have beefed it up for series two – we hope they’ve improved its economy so winning a game feels more worthwhile – indeed, the big wheel is now the semi-final and a timed event with loads of Boyards on the line, and there’s a brand new final where the contestants must grab loads of Boyards from a safe and get out in time, apparently modelled on the Scrooge McDuck diving into a load of coins in the intro to Duck Tales. Not to mention new characters and other new events.

We’re extremely interested to note that they filmed these in COVID times but the adverts suggest no obvious social distancing, so we’re intrigued to find out how they’ve got around that, and hopefully they can use whatever they did on Fort Boyard next year which felt like a highly compromised series.

It will be of course overly long at over two hours and that’s where not being a weekly series will probably help it.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Show Discussion: Don’t Unleash The Beast

By | November 1, 2020
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Mondays to Thursdays, 5:00pm,
Repeated the following morning at 11:30am,
CITV

Proving that there’s still more exciting stuff in kids TV than in TV being made for grown-ups, our main interest in Don’t Unleash The Beast is that from the adverts it looks like Jungle Run, but if they had to make it slightly different to avoid breaching copyright.

The good news is Jungle Run was great (eventually). They also stopped making it in 2006 so somebody born when JR finished would be really pushing this show’s target demographic, let alone me as a 39 year-old.

Anyway, a group of kids advised from afar by the comic and magician Pete Firman complete physical and mental challenges in the underground kingdom of Halian to find its mysterious treasure but they must have a care not to unleash the foul and ferocious beast as that would be bad, it says in the press release.

Will it fill that Jungle Run/Crystal Maze hole currently in the schedules, or is it going to be a different beast entirely? Let us know what you think in the comments.