Show Discussion: Wild Things Series 2

By | April 10, 2016
26 Comments

wildthingss2Sundays, 7pm,
Sky One AND SKY ONE HD

Well since the first series it won Best Entertainment Show at the Rose D’ors and has since sold to Denmark, Belgium, Argentina, Sweden, Russia and China (Gary Monaghan suggests those last two feature a bear and a panda). Bother’s Bar once again backing the unlikely winners.

And so we’re back at the danger-filled Wild Wood once again with Kate Humble and Jason Byrne as new teams, one who can see but aren’t protected to the dangers and one in a giant animal costume who is well padded but can’t see anything, vie to enter and escape with the treasure which if it’s the same as last year is £10,000 although we don’t know yet.

It’s blindfold It’s a Knockout meets the box task from Big Brother 6 but with more mystery and arguing and prog rock. And if it’s as good as last year it’ll be hugely entertaining.

If you want a sneak preview they’ve recorded two celebrity games to feature in an end of series compilation and one of them is up on Digital Spy right now.

Schlag den Star 9/4/16 – #bbsds

By | April 8, 2016
3 Comments

eltonsdsSaturday,
7:15pm UK/8:15pm Germany,
Pro Sieben or naughty internet streaming

Tweet us! #bbsds

Well we all assumed it was over – without Stefan Raab, surely, surely there’s no show.

How wrong we were. We’re back!

Schlag den Star has been running as a Summer series for a few years now, with Raab involved in either host or “joker” capacity. It’s featured members of the public competing against German celebs, and more recently it featured two celebs battling it out against each other. These were all pre-recorded and rather than feature new games with the occasional exception they were games used in the previous year’s SdR.

But they’ve deciding to have a go at giving it the full on proper Schlag den Raab treatment. Two celebs will battle it out over fifteen games LIVE for €100,000, and our new host (ably assisted by Frank Buschmann on commentary) is the people’s favourite Elton! We’re hoping for lots of new game ideas that have made SdR worth tuning in for in the past. Whatsmore we have musical guests, tonight Fleur East off of The X Factor and winner of The Voice of Germany and Germany’s Eurovision contender Jamie Lee Kriewitz!

Who are the two gladiators competing tonight? It’s being billed as the Battle of the Giants, Olympic champion weightlifter Matthias Steiner takes on German acting legend Henning Baum. And we’ll hopefully be there every step of the way with commentary, gossip and whatever takes our fancy over the 4-5 hours of the broadcast. Do join us!

Here is the link to our Youtube Livestream.
This stream is commentary only. You will need to have a naughty stream running at the same time for the visuals. We are likely to be about 15-20 seconds behind the visual stream (and about a full minute behind if you’re watching an actual satellite feed), sorry.

This is the stream we will be watching. 

Back up stream.

Follow us on Twitter for immediate news if something goes wrong. Or because we’re fun guys!!!!

@bothersbar, @danielpeake, @davidjbodycombe @ogbajoj

The bar has been up and down all afternoon, I’ll stick a holding page up if it falls over again this evening.

Tschüß!

Unexpected

By | April 7, 2016
0 Comment

Here’s something unexpected and possibly interesting, Channel 4 are doing a non-televised pilot of travelling contemporary theatre thing The Money. If you’re free this Saturday and can make it to Essex, here are the details.

I saw it at the Cambridge Guildhall in February and here’s a review. Apparently it’s something that has been looked at for television in the past.

The Almost Impossible Gameshow returns tonight

By | April 6, 2016
18 Comments

From 9pm on ITV2. It took us a while to warm to the first series although when we got where The Rubberbandits were coming from it all kind of clicked and I quite enjoyed it. We discussed series one here. This is a bit more like series 1.5 I think, it was originally meant to go out in January so was almost certainly filmed the same time as series one, but new games (and lots of returnees) are promised. Nobody really watched the first series, on the other hand it looks like it costs 10p to make so who knows what lies in the future.

Speaking of ITV2, has Release the Hounds been commissioned for series three? It’s about this sort of time a contestant call would be ending for preparing to film in the Summer, but nothing as far as I know. It did win a Royal Television Society award recently.

And finally! What an exciting weekend, we’ll be “doing” Schlag den Star on Saturday night here from 7:15pm (do join us) and on Sunday Wild Things returns to Sky 1! Hurrah.

Show Discussion: Drive

By | April 5, 2016
13 Comments

drivelogoTuesdays, 9pm,
ITV1

I reckon that a semi-serious celebrity motor racing show might have some mileage (as it were), after all everyone likes the Star In A Reasonably Priced Car bit from Top Gear (and of course Star Makes A Reasonably Priced Omelette from Saturday Kitchen), and driving’s the sort of thing you could get quite good celebrities for as like ballroom dancing it’s considered a “fun” skill.

So with this in mind current newsmaker Vernon Kay challenges eight celebs to compete in various races and driving tasks, beginning with banger racing this evening. From ITV:

Taking to the tracks are rapper Professor Green, singer Ella Eyre, impresario Louis Walsh, comedian Johnny Vegas, Olympic athlete Colin Jackson, TV presenter Mariella Frostrup, weather expert Laura Tobin and actor and broadcaster Angus Deayton.

It’s certainly a good line-up filled with people who don’t really need to do this sort of thing, the big question is will they have the action balance right and have they overformatted it? The fear is it’s Eternal Glory But In Cars and might be better served as a straight celebrity racing league.

Still we’re hopeful and the 9pm slot suggests some confidence from ITV, even if it’s in the Tuesday deadzone. Still, the only way out is to try and grow things, will this be the success?

It’s Schlag den Star on Saturday!

By | April 4, 2016
10 Comments

And we (should!) be back commentating from 7:15pm UK time.

It’s the first of the new style Schlag den Stars – live and hosted by Elton (with Frank Buschmann commentating), so we’re likely to be bluffing our way through initially, but it sounds like it’s basically the exact same format as Schlag den Raab except with two celebs battling it out over 15 games for €100,000. This week the battle of the giants as Olympic weightlifter (and strongest man in the world, it says here) Matthais Steiner takes on actor Henning Baum. No idea if there are musical guests.

Join us!

Great news for fans of lousy quiz setting! The Link is being repeated on Challenge from tonight at 7pm.

We’re having a chat about Das Spiel Beginnt in the comments here.