That’s right, it’s celebs pitching for your votes on Twitter season, and this year there’s a specific quiz show category, so everyone can get over the injustice of The Chase losing out to This Morning in the daytime category every year. Catchphrase, Pointless, 8/10CDC and A League of Their Own will fight it out for runners-up spot. Vote here if you want.
Although to be honest it just looks like the NTAs are copying the UKGameshows.com/Bother’s Bar Poll of the Year but let’s be honest industry people, what would you really want, a million quid and adulation of a wide audience or a Palme d’Or? I know, right?
You can vote here and lines close on Friday night so get a move on. Results will be slightly later than normal because I’ve just discovered I’m not free this weekend. It’s the waiting that makes it tense.
We were alerted to this the other day, it looks like there’s a film coming out early Feb called Escape Room, where people must solve puzzles to escape a room or DIE. Obviously we are all over it.
Here’s the trailer. Be warned that it contains scenes of peril.
Also out at the end of Jan, Dave Made a Maze is coming out in the UK which looks excellent, and we briefly talked about it here.
This started on NBC last night, a new show hosted and produced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson where everyday athletes battle it out in order to become… Titans.
Basically it’s American Gladiators writ large, and without the Gladiators. Events are really impressive in terms of staging and sheer physicality – there’s been some money spent on this and it shows. I don’t know how many games there are in total, not including Mount Olympus six games were shown off last night, four games played once and two played twice. Each testing a slightly different muscle set. Some wouldn’t look out of place on something like World’s Strongest Man (something like Heavy Metal – drag a yoke across the shoulders with heavy chains on each end up hill getting heavier the higher you go, use the yoke as a crank to lift a concrete block when you get to the top, or Hammering Ram – use a sledgehammer to knock a pin in to release a 350lb battering ram, then bash a large wooden door in) albeit with an added agility requirement.
Contestants are paired off and each compete in just one event, the winner faces somebody else in the awe-inspiring Mount Olympus, the winners of which (of which there will be eight male and eight female) get declared Titans and get to come back at the end of the series for one last Titanic struggle to become ultimate champion. It seems to be a “double episode” every week, so they go through the process twice.
It’s a shame then that it feels like so much of it feels like it’s given over to each contestant’s “inspiring” backstory, over the course of the two hours you’ll see up to 16 video pieces (for whatever reason, one game was just a highlights package in the second of last night’s tournaments). If you add to that the 20% of the show given over to Dwayne Johnson being just a great guy, that means we have a frustrating situation where the key centrepieces, the events, begin to feel a bit like unwelcome guests at their own party. If you’d consider that American Glads used to get through 12-14 played games in an hour show, this struggles to six in. One of them last night took just 22 seconds, for a build up of several minutes.
If you’re bored, why not go and see Blockbusters with Dara O Briain being recorded? They’re doing it at BBC Elstree in about a fortnight. “Once in a lifetime prizes are up for grabs.”
In other news, David Bodycombe has been learning Adobe. If that’s not worth you putting the time in to vote in the Poll of the Year I don’t know what is.
What’s that coming over the hill is it a monster? Is it a monster? No it’s the Poll of the Year 2018, featuring NEW things, and it’s open right now. Get voting!
In other news a new run of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? with Jeremy Clarkson begins on ITV tonight at 9pm.
