Of note: The studio entertainment category is an embarrassment of riches this year, there are about six shows on the shortlist which feel like they’d be good winners. Right now I back Stealing the Show as it’s smart and funny (even if it is, if we’re being honest, basically Richard Osman’s House of Games with a budget for set pieces) but really, despite the death of entertainment on television, it’s the first year in ages there doesn’t feel like an obvious winner.
Lateral With Tom Scott
That’s right, in a legally different format to Tom Scott’s Lateral, Lateral With Tom Scott sees (and hears) international Youtube sensation Scott and his Pleasant Youtube Chums answer Who What Where-style questions, only this time in podcast form (from your usual podcast outlets) and as a weekly Youtube video.
Episodes are out every Friday, beginning this coming Friday.
A good book
Completely unexpectedly the Gamesmaster: An Oral History book turned up at my house on Friday – I don’t think I Kickstarted it, but I got on board with the second round of pre-backing I think. I can’t remember now.
Spent all of yesterday afternoon devouring it – it’s absolutely unputdownable, even if you could basically reduce it to “look, I was in my twenties, I had an extremely successful TV show, yes I was a bit of a nob.” It has the skinny on everything – the red jacket, Dexter Fletcher (who contributes, gamely), that episode from series six, it’s not disappointing. There are also tales of high debauchery.
A couple of fun take homes for me – that Atlantis is set in the same church they set Hell in, and that series seven wasn’t meant to happen, they only discovered they were commissioned a few weeks before broadcast because everybody forgot to tell C4 at the end of S6 they weren’t going to make it anymore and most execs at C4 didn’t bother watching the show to pick up on the cues.
It’s quite expensive, but it’s a properly bound hardback. You can buy it from booksellers if you want, or Amazon.
It strikes me that there is probably good Oral History potential for quite a lot of Hewland International’s output, actually.
It’s The Mole on Netflix on Friday!
Well it was nice to have about a decade before the Americans decided they wanted another go and everyone blindly copies them. Anyway don’t bother commenting about it here, there’s a dedicated #netflixmolememorialthread on the Bother’s Bar Discord.
Show Discussion: Unbreakable
Thursdays, 8pm,
BBC1
Sorry, it completely slipped my mind that this was on which is why it hasn’t appeared until after the first show has gone out, Rob Beckett puts the bonds of six celebrity couples to the ultimate test, presumably one couple gets eliminated weekly and so on and so on.
I’m trying not to prejudge, although the fact I forgot it was on isn’t a good sign. Nonetheless, did you watch it? Let us know what you think in the comments!
John de Mol reinvents Box Clever for the 21st Century
The Netherlands’ most talented used car salesman John De Mol has a new format up his sleeve, and it involves a giant floor-based grid. It’s called… The Floor.
Basically 100 contestants stand on 100 squares, each one with a different category on it. Across ten episodes one person will have taken over the entire floor in quiz based combat, that person will win a million dollars.
It’s being described as “Risk-based” which suggests a level of strategy and that territory will become important. This is presumably the secret sauce that will make it work, otherwise it sounds like a 1 v 1 buzzer question repeated 99 times across 10 episodes.
When was the last time claiming territory mattered in a game show? We say it’s ABOUT TIME someone reversioned Box Clever with Emelyn Hughes.