This looks pretty good…

By | October 2, 2019
23 Comments

…although I’m not in love with the logo. And the screens should be bigger for 2019. Still though, SPANGLY.

Can’t wait to see how they MEGASIZE Take Your Pick, obviously.

Show Discussion: Rupaul’s Drag Race UK

By | October 2, 2019
5 Comments

Thursdays, 8pm,
BBC3 (on iPlayer)

It’s been a long time coming but US cultural phenomenon Rupaul’s Drag Race begins in earnest on BBC3.

Michelle Visage, Graham Norton, Alan Carr and a bevy of guest judges will help determine which of the drag queens has the charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent to rule them all, and it will be quite interesting to see the differences between UK and US drag. Also: will they still “do” Snatch Game even though that title won’t really work on a UK-centric show?

Plenty of questions, and the distribution method certainly raises an eyebrow, although given the show’s UK presence has mainly been built up through Netflix and on-demand, may be quite smart. We’ll see.

New leave year, new you

By | October 1, 2019
2 Comments

Happy New Cambridge University Leave Year!

To celebrate this grand occasion, I wanted to link to a video of 2000 to 1, the BBC quiz where 2000 contestants were whittled down to one person who won a year off work on double salary.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a clip of that. So what about Alan Carr’s I Don’t Like Mondays, offering much the same thing but on 1x salary? Nah-dah.

Well OK, what about 1000 to 1, the Dale Winton fronted sequel to illustrate the original idea? Nope.

So I’m afraid we’re left with 99-1 starring Leslie Grantham as hardest man in Britain Mick Raynor. Sorry.

Rylan persued by a Bear

By | September 28, 2019
4 Comments

Rylan being chased by Ratings Bear is the stuff dreams are made of.

– David Bodycombe

Unfortunately Rylan isn’t into bears. This particular bear is into him though. Here they are going wild in the aisles, will Rylan be able to get to the checkout (episode 20 of Supermarket Sweep) without running into the massive stack of beans (slot average) whilst being persued by Bother’s Bar Mascot Ratings Bear, fresh from hibernation?

Thanks Windows 7 Paint!

It’s not looking good! Here are a few caveats though:

  • We don’t have much data for week two. This sort of thing is much harder to come by these days and we thank our suppliers for the numbers we do have.
  • If you ignore the number for the first night the trend graph will likely be a bit flatter, so might just escape.
  • ITV will likely be more interested in the numbers for the 16-34 demo (the point of ITV2) than the raw overnights, the figures for those we don’t have much of, but it feels like about 20% of the audience is In The Demo going by the numbers we *do* have. That would suggest 50-60k nightly at the moment which doesn’t sound great, but we don’t know.
  • It might add 10 million in 28 day officials. It won’t, but it might.

My position hasn’t changed since week one – it’s a decent show with some easily fixable issues that shouldn’t have been scheduled the way it has, and if it was shoulder peak weekend on ITV1 would probably do OK. We have discussed the show here.

Zombieland

By | September 27, 2019
1 Comment

It was piloted with Justin Lee Collins over a decade ago. It was more recently piloted with Lee Mack. There was an unsuccessful Italian version. But now, NOW is the time…

https://twitter.com/bbcpress/status/1177357709273968642

Clever logo, to be fair.