Making a Mount Midoriyama out of a molehill

By | December 22, 2014
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Exciting news this afternoon, Michael Kelpie from Potato (the ITV studio who make The Chase) announced on Twitter that they will be making a proper local version of Ninja Warrior. Potentially this is quite exciting, the Japanese one built up a cult following on Challenge over the years (although it had to be redubbed after the Stuart Hall allegations) and it’s been a number of years since we had an obstacle course show in the form of Total Wipeout. I just hope it’s a bit more impressive than American Ninja Warrior which I caught once and appeared to be mainly people running up and down a beach. Edit: If you want apply you can through this link.

You’re Back In The Room, a hypnotism game show with Phillip Schofield where people have to do physical and mental challenges despite having been comically hypnotised by Keith Barry beforehand films at ITV Towers 19th-21st January, tickets at Lost in TV.

Meanwhile if you want to join Emma Willis in an air-hanger in Farnborough in Saturdays in February for Prized Apart, you can do that through SRO. Still not sure on the logistics of that, the suggestion was it was going to be live, but Willis will also be hosting The Voice going out on Saturday nights. So who knows?

In other news, there was so much good quizzy extraneous stuff in the Schlag den Raab commentary broadcast on Saturday that as an experiment I’m looking into editing it down to just that (so you can see what you’re missing) and uploading it for Christmas. Fingers crossed tomorrow night or Xmas Eve morning.

Schlag den Raab 50 20/12 #bbsdr

By | December 18, 2014
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schlagdenraab

Saturday 20th December,
7:15pm UK (8:15 on the continent),
ProSieben and naughty internet streaming

Competition closed!

48…49…50! Yes! It’s time for Stefan Raab to take on his fiftieth kandatdate. Fifty contestants. €25m in prizemoney. 131 cars given away (I think). At least one screen punched. Several injuries. What an eventful eight years of quality live television.

And again we will be providing sort-of-live commentary, which doesn’t really work as live commentary because of all sorts of delays. HOWEVER it will likely be fun to listen to, and will likely feature all sorts of fun and games along the way. So why not come and join us? David J Bodycombe, Daniel Peake, Lewis Murphy and myself should all be along.

We have lots of extra-curricular things prepared for you this time round for the ad breaks, and you, YES YOU LISTENER could win some money – at least £25, possibly, very possibly as much as £100! Honestly you will NOT want to miss what we’ve got in store.

The musical turns this episode are CRO, ZAZ and The Voice of Germany 2014 Charley Ann Schmutzler!

Here are the deets.

Here are all the links you need:

Here is the link to our commentary (will open in a new window). 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, sorry.

This is the primary stream we will be watching live and basing our commentary on.

That stream will probably go down at some point during the evening, here’s our first back-up one. If it all goes down, once we’ve finished panicking, we’ll put up links to streams we can find on here and on Twitter.

Follow us on Twitter for immediate news if something goes wrong. Or because we’re fun guys!!!! @bothersbar, @danielpeake, @ogbajoj, @davidjbodycombe.

 

This Week (feat. the Perfection app)

By | December 17, 2014
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We’re all about social Christmas dinners this week, so here are some things to look forward to that we may or may not return to in the future:

  • There’s a perfectionPerfection app out on iOS (tested) and Android. £1.49 (1000+ questions, in-app purchases for more questions) and initial playthroughs suggest it’s a really slick app that stays very true to the beat of the show. ‘Prize fund’ determined by everyone playing the app at the time. Pass and Play option not tested yet, but if you like the show I would find it fairly easy to recommend at this point. Also features extensive use of Nick Knowles’ face, so great news for fans of Nick Knowles’ face.
  • It’s the Release the Hounds celebrity Christmas special feat. Diversity on Thursday, 9pm on ITV2.
  • It’s Schlag den Raab 50 this Saturday! To celebrate I’ll be offering a viewer competition. The prize will be somewhere between £25 (most likely) and £100 (less likely), depending on how well fellow co-commentators do on a quiz. More details closer to Saturday!

Apps Upside Your Head: Blockbusters

By | December 14, 2014
6 Comments

iOS (tested)

I can’t find references to an Android version yet. (Edit: It’s on Amazon App Store)

Blockbusters has been revived (and failed) so many times that we have a running gag that it’s “about time someone did a revivial of Blockbusters” just minutes after the previous series has ended. And now we have a new revival, an APP based revival.

It looks the part – they’ve gone for the traditional 80s stylings (the recreation of the titles and set is quite neat although the theme arrangement feels a little lacking in oomph, and it’s lacking a definitive final note), Bob Holness and everything. In a nice touch you select a mascot in lieu of an avatar. The feel of the thing is pretty good (a couple of things are off – like the scoring and the desks, but not enough that the man on the street is going to get upset about).

blockbusters

Can YOU spot the rather large flaw with this question?

You can play one player against the computer or two players (using your iThing as buzzers – GOOD DESIGN CHOICE, with Bluetooth or over GameCenter (untested)). Unfortunately it doesn’t play a great game – all the questions are multiple choice, but when they aren’t riddled with spelling mistakes or mistakes generally, 9/10 of them are a bit easy with the answer choices given. If you play against the computer you play vertically to the computer playing horizontally, but the computer doesn’t put up much of a fight. If you’re playing against a human opponent they’ve done the decent thing and expanded it to a 5×5 board for fairness. This looks a little odd at first.

For your 99p at time of writing you get access to a general knowledge question pack (and a special Xmas pack at time of writing), there are currently 10 more question packs available with different categories at 69p a pop, or you can buy the lot for a value-tastic £1.99.

Winning gets you through to the Gold Run where you get 90 seconds to get from gold to gold, you need to type your answers out. This feels rather more successful than the main game – I’m not sure I’d call it hard (I’ve won it every time), but it feels rather more aggravating and exciting when you can’t come up with an answer – it also only seems to allow you one attempt at each one, and there seems to be little room for spelling error. I was also getting question repeats on my third go.

On the whole a nice looking but difficult to recommend app, but not without some positive elements – a Gold Run mode might be a nice addition, and if you’ve not bought a TV quiz app for a while, well not many have been released recently.

Prized Apart then

By | December 11, 2014
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So this has been on our radar for a while (as Very Much The Sort Of Thing We Like) and the BBC have put out a press release for it announcing Emma Willis and Reggie Yates as the hosts (Yates does the on-location adventure stuff, Willis the quiz element back in the studio). It’s due Saturday nights in Spring 2015, which I guess is shorthand for “whenever The Voice finishes” as Willis will be hosting that as well. Speaking of The Voice, that’s been a bit quiet hasn’t it? The spinny chairs and knockouts have been recorded and they’ve barely registered.

Prized Apart is a show where couples are split up – one of them performs difficult adventure challenges somewhere in the world, the worst performers are flown back where their partner must compete in a quiz to keep them in the game, with a big prize going to the last couple left.

It was originally meant to be happening in January if I recall correctly and will now likely be up against Britain’s Got Talent, so best of luck everyone.