Hearing from our chums Reality TV Warriors that Wie is De Mol? has been to China for its 2020 series, and that the cast list will be out soon.
WIDM has become a bit of an appetizer to Belgian De Mol‘s main course over the last few years, but at its best it’s a like a Michelin starred one. We shall look forward to covering it in the New Year when it goes out.
Weekdays, 3pm,
ITV
“It’s easy to get rich if you survive The Switch!” Thank goodness the words “rich” and “switch” rhyme, because “it’s easy to become moderately well off if you survive Whooping Cough” probably wouldn’t sell in quite the same way.
Comic and actor Sanjeev Bhaskar hosts four contestants trying to win a large amount of money. In each round, each contestant gets 45 seconds to build their bank by answering quickfire questions. However at the end of the round, everyone must face The Switch – three multiple choice questions each with one wrong answer. Pick a wrong ‘un and you get switched out of the game, unless someone else picks a different wrong answer to take your place by the end of the round. In the end, one person gets to play the Final Switch where they can win half of their bank, their bank, or DOUBLE their bank against the clock.
20 episodes to come. Might be fun. Might feel a bit dragged out at 60 minutes. It’s fun to see a new gameshow face though. Let us know what you think in the comments.
Yep, as suspected, off to C4. Six series over three years starting in 2020.
The Switch with Sanjeev Bhaskar starts on Monday.
If you can’t be bothered to read the press release (and you should for some classy #hostholdingaquestioncard and top notch Boring Press Release Quote from Bhaskar), it sounds basically like the Cashbuilder from The Chase, followed by three questions in the style of 101 Ways to Leave A Game Slow, with a final that’s a little bit like Bother’s Bar Alternate Timeline Favourite The Fuse. We’ll have a Show Discussion post ready on Monday morning. Bhaskar seems like a good choice, the sort of name you wouldn’t have really considered but now it’s happening you think “yeah, why not?”
Speaking of Switches, there was a BBC press release a while ago suggesting there was a Nintendo Switch adaption of Pointless coming in November. What happened to that? Might well have been a decent family round the telly Christmas thing.
EDIT: In other news:
We’ve been alerted to the fact that tonight’s ITV Election debate’s set looks rather like the Cash Trapped one. But I’ve also seen it compared to that of High Stakes with Jeremy Kyle. I quite liked the set. I thought Kyle was quite good. I don’t remember liking much else (you can read our comments at the time here).
Thanks to Youtube Celebrity Tom Scott for alerting me to this, a series from Collegehumor (in fact a subscription series, but there are a few “free” episodes up on Youtube) called Game Changers.
It has quite an interesting premise, in that the contestants aren’t aware of the rules (the game is different each week) and have to figure them out themselves (not too difficult, as you’ll note). Amusement comes in when the game gets increasingly more complex, or the game reveals its secrets to the viewer (such as a machine purporting to be a lie detector but actually secretly their real-life partners are pushing buttons from another room).
What I would say, going into it cold, is that you’ll likely find it funnier if you’re previously aware (and like) the people involved, and that for me it takes too long before kicking up a notch, but there are some fun ideas flying about.
In other news, on Wednesday night FOTB Ash The Bash premiered Winning Lines on his Twitch Channel. What I’ll suggest is that if this is the first version, I can’t wait to see what the finished version looks like.
Ash runs a Wednesday night Quiz Night on his Twitch channel every week from 8pm, featuring things like Duel, Only Connect and 1 vs 100. You play along in the Twitch chat. Do check it out.