From August’s Stool Pigeon:

Well, we have it on good authority they were doing New Year’s Day links at the Celeb Glads recording from someone who was there, and now The Traitors has been officially announced for New Years Day. Your move ITV.

Incidentally, I listened to this week’s The Rest is Entertainment on the way to work this morning, I think ROsman is wrong about quiz’s streaming future. I will put my thoughts down this afternoon.

Well French Gladiators coming to TF1 next year is looking pretty good, looks like they have some events we don’t have (clearly a clip of Suspension Bridge, seems crazy we don’t have it in our rotation seeing as we have a set-up for Collision anyway), looks like they’ve retitled The Edge to Vertigo (annoying, but I suppose it’s no different to us renaming Joust Duel and then having a separate event called Joust). There are at least three Glads I’d be quite excited to feel the power of, ahem.

It will be really interesting to see how this does for them, there wasn’t a French version of Gladiators in the 90s so the nostalgia factor won’t be going for them, although doubtless elements of the original American Gladiators will feel familiar through osmosis, and Fort Boyard et al “borrowing” some of the ideas.

It was filmed at Aren’Ice in Cergy-Pontoise (even if it looks like Sheffield!).

Edit: Apparently the embedded link isn’t working so here’s a direct one. The trailer doesn’t seem to be on Youtube yet, which is a shame.

It’s that time of year again: advent (next week) which means that regular Fun Quizzy Sort-Of Advent Calendars will be starting up.

First the one I’m heavily involved with, Dealvent is back, and you have until Thursday to determine which box you’re collectively playing for. Here is the website. I also highly recommend joining the Dealvent Discord as that’s where the game will be playing out live. There are links on the bottom of the Dealvent page.

Then we have Wallvent, Jack Yeo’s incredible advent interpretation of The Wall, of which I am reigning champion. Here is Jack’s Twitter, I do not know if Jack is hosting it elsewhere.

Last but certainly not least Gameshow Herodotus Daniel Hurst is hosting his Advent Calendar of Games, based on House of Games. Some prelim has gone into this already, but you can just rock up on December 1st and playalong. Here is his Twitter, I do not know if he’s duplicating elsewhere.

There may be others! But I’d certainly suggest giving these a go between now and Christmas.

This launched on Max in the US yesterday and it actually looks… quite fun? Kind of a bit like Funhouse but for adults but for a family audience. I don’t know how much staying power it has, how many different games can there be? But it looks like they’ve properly gone for it.

If you like the idea of hamsters doing what they do best in their natural habitat, which is obstacle courses in elaborate sets, we found ourselves watching Major Hamster getting recommended into our Youtube feed quite a lot a little while back.

Likely of interest, David J Bodycombe’s 2003 magnum opus How to Devise a Gameshow is now available on a pay-what-you-like-to-charity basis as an ebook. “Although showing its age in places, it still contains a detailed analysis of game show development that can’t be found anywhere else.”

Oh this is interesting, Deadline are reporting that the third series of The Floor with Rob Lowe will launch directly on FOX after Superbowl LIX on Feb 9th. That’s a huge seal of approval and launchpad for what is probably the world’s most successful new quiz right now, and whose second series is currently airing so you wouldn’t have long to wait to see the third.

Now that it sounds like In With a Shout won’t be returning, is there now room for The Floor UK, or does Alan Carr’s Picture Slam still take up too much space in the “recognising things” genre? We were on board really early.

Edit: You Bet! down for Saturday 7th December at 8:15pm. The suggestion is that it’s a 60 minute slot, although the press release suggested 75 minutes, so who knows what’s going on there. Edit Edit: John Williams has changed the tweet, it’s 75 minutes now.

Edit edit edit: And now we’re getting FOUR new episodes of The 1% Club 9-12th December. This feels a bit mad, I’m not sure what they’re expecting stripping it across weeknights, I don’t think it’ll be half as successful as it is at the weekend (which the rest of the series will be). We’ll see.