There’s a three-hour clip show on Five tonight from 9pm about when gameshows have ended in disaster. I expect it won’t be for the squeamish. I hope we’re not going to get that time a contestant ended up paralysed trying to jump over a car on Wetten Dass? in super slo-mo, at any rate.
Mel and Sue’s Gen Game?
File this under “speculation” but The Sun reporting this morning that Mel and Sue are being lined up as hosts of a Generation Game reboot.
This would be quite interesting. Bake Off is the only vehicle in recent times that’s been a success for Mel and Sue. However what is The Great British Bake Off if not The Generation Game in long form?
Musical Chairs
Don’t forget it’s the Codebreaker final this evening! Follow them on Twitter and/or check out their Youtube for details.
Anyway here’s a fun thing that popped up on Youtube in the last few days, a quite fun (if unsuccessful) US show from 1975 called Musical Chairs, where people basically had to race to lock in the correct answer to multiple choice “what line comes next” style questions from songs sung by established and upcoming acts (Irene Cara! Amazing.) I think the game format is fun (each question pays out to fewer people and the stakes grow throughout the show leading to a fairly clever elimination round), the show’s got a good vibe, and they seem to have borrowed the moving chair method of eliminating contestants from Remote Control over ten years later.
It’s Eurovision Week!
Semi 1: Tuesday, 8pm
BBC4
(The UK can vote in this one)
Semi 2: Thursday, 8pm
BBC4
Final: Saturday, 8pm
BBC1
IT’S TIME! Everyone’s travelling to Kiev in the Ukraine for the 62nd edition of the Eurovish where we will be celebrating diversity with 42 songs, most of which power ballads sung in English, a language that’s losing its importance in Europe. As we are well aware this is a song contest and as we’re always told through various thinkpieces throughout the media politics just doesn’t come into it and this year is looking more apolitical than ever. We cannot wait!
The UK entry is Lucie Jones. We’ve not actually heard the song anywhere since it was picked as a winner so I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest it probably won’t win.
Annual FAQ:
- “Why are Australia in it? They’re not even IN Europe!” They are associate members of the European Broadcasting Union and have been invited.
- “Why are Israel in it? They’re not even IN Europe!” They are members of the European Broadcasting Union.
- “Why are the UK in it? They’re not even IN Europe!” They are members of the European Broadcasting Union.
- “What happens if Australia wins?” They’ll probably hold the next one in Germany as a co-production with SBS.
- “Why is the BBC wasting the licence fee on an event we have no chance of winning?” Even so it actually works out as a rather good value per hour proposition for effectively 7.5 hrs of primetime telly, which would otherwise have to be filled with something. It’s not like we’re staging it.
We’re basically going into the week completely blind this year. We can’t wait for everyone on Twitter to go “this is rubbish OH BLOODY HELL THIS IS SO EXCITING” with the voting like last year. And this year there are special Twitter emojis for #12points, #eurovision, #esc2017 and #celebratediversity.
It’s Lena vs Lena on Schlag den Star May 20th
That’s right! Our next competitors on Schlag den Star are none other than Eurovision winner Lena Meyer-Landrut and model and host Lena Gercke.
We’ll be commentating live as ever and hopefully won’t have to spend the first 90 minutes looking for a stream, and then panic towards the end when Pro7 have scheduled a film they can’t broadcast online but SdS has run considerably over.
In the meantime here’s a thematic video:
No What Where When? this weekend I’m afraid as most of the cast are DASHing. And then next week is Eurovision. And the week after is SdS. But hopefully it will be back!
The Sound of the Cloud
Great post from long time FOTB Little Timmy the other day pointing out that Babushka (and Trapped!) music supremo (and we say that unironically, the show might have issues but the music isn’t one of them) Dobs Vye has loads of stuff on Soundcloud. It’s really interesting actually, his playlists suggest an idea for something frequently ends up being used for something else.
It is often said that the music is considered one of the least important bits of gameshow production. And yet we’ll always be more willing to forgive a show’s faults with a great score behind it. With this in mind who else on Soundcloud is worth following?
- Nick Foster – Deffo one of our fave tune merchants, there’s stuff on here ranging from 5 Minutes to a Fortune (if you’re reading Nick please put up the money countdown music thanks) to The Cube (Hyper Intense! Mega Intense! Unbearably Intense!) and also Reflex.
- Liam Tate – Go 8 Bit stuff.
- Paul Farrer – Big fan of a lot of his work, although he’s not updated this for a number of years and seems to favour Youtube these days where you can listen to the entire and amazing 1000 Heartbeats Suite.
- Nicolas Caligi – A bit niche but somebody who creates Fort Boyard soundalikes that are so near the originals I can’t tell the difference between his work and the actual tunes.
There are probably loads of great people we’re missing. Do you know any?