Some things that have been on recently

By | February 27, 2019

That frankly aren’t really worth their own show discussion posts.

  • Test Drive (BBC Scotland) – Wrestler/comic Grado commentates and officiates as three pairs drive to a destination in Scotland being asked questions along the way by their Sat Nav. Right answers mean the direct route, wrong answers lead to a three mile diversion. During the drive each team faces a “pit stop”, 10 quickfire questions, each one knocking a mile off the total (the winners, you see, are determined on mileage rather than time. Effectively the game boils down to -3pts for a wrong answer on the road, +1pt for each Pit Stop question answered correctly. Prize is £500.). Meanwhile Grado makes brief visits to local places. All in all it’s pleasant but not very compelling, like a combination of The Getaway Car and Antiques Road Trip, minus both The Stig and antiques. I had no idea who Grado was, until Wrestling Twitter went OMG when I mentioned it, presumably he’s Scotland’s answer to The Rock. Made by Bandicoot, of Chase the Case fame.
  • The Hangover Games (E4) – young adults get drunk under the pretense of a show called Britain’s Best Night Out, except the next morning they discover they’re there for The Hangover Games, which is basically a combination of mildly humiliating dares (can you drink this yard of blended kebab? Who can deal with having their hair shaved off?) and questions based on what happened the previous night (can you remember the name of the girl you snogged, that sort of thing). Top prize £1,000 (between six). Hosted by Matt Richardson (the one who isn’t Matt Edmondson) and Pointless Friend Ken Cheung, who doesn’t really add anything. I will politely suggest I’m out of E4’s demographic these days and that in rehashing the milder bits of The Word from 25 years ago describes itself as “fresh”.
  • Project Z (CITV) – starts 5pm on CITV today. English version of S4C’s Prosiect Z, kids try to escape their school which has been overrun by zombies by solving puzzles. I Survived The Zombie Apocalypse in miniature, and hopefully the 30 minute running time means it can make the most of the premise rather than being surprisingly boring.

14 thoughts on “Some things that have been on recently

  1. David B

    All these new regional-only commissions all feels very retro. We just need Now You See It, Crosswits and Under Offer to return now.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      It’s been suggested but no official word or anything. No contestant call either, but it’s quite possible they’ll go all-celeb.

      Edited to add: I suspect if we’re going to hear anything, it’ll probably be around the time the new London Maze opens next month.

      Reply
    2. Chris M. Dickson

      The auction closes at 8:09pm tonight, give or take 15 seconds. The high bid is an extremely reasonable £103 as I type, though I would imagine that it would shoot right up at the very end. Heck, I’d have thought that people would pay more than that for an authentic crystal, which comes included as a souvenir. We might yet be able to establish an exchange rate between crystals and Pointless Trophies…

      I do hope that the eventual winner comes from these parts and that we eventually get to hear about it.

      Reply
      1. Chris M. Dickson

        Five and a bit minutes to go. BID! BID NOW! BIDDING TIME!

        I have bid as high as I felt comfortable going and didn’t get it, so I do hope that one of you does.

        Reply
        1. Chris M. Dickson

          BIDDING ENDS!

          It went for £195, which is not a vast sum, but too rich for my blood. For comparison the most recent Pointless Trophy on eBay went for £112.45. I do hope one of you won and that you tell us all about it afterwards.

          Reply
  2. Chris M. Dickson

    I get the impression that Grado comes more from the Big Daddy / Dusty Rhodes tradition of wrestlers popular by virtue of compensating for their purported lack of skills and brains with bulk.

    Most people will have seen it on Twitter, but in case there are people who read this site but not the (re)Tweets, the Scottycombe Massive rolls into action once more tomorrow with three experimental quizzes and game shows over three Thursdays. I can’t think of anything online that I’ve been looking forward to more all year, without exaggeration. The first looks like the reinterpretation (and improvement) of See It Saw It we didn’t know we were all crying out for.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      There will definitely be a Game Garage post tomorrow.

      Of the three formats, this was probably the one least interesting for me, so intrigued to see how it edits.

      Reply
  3. John R

    ITV just released an “interesting” trailer for the upcoming week of Milliionaire…

    Reply
  4. Dan

    After watching Project Z I am now of the opinion that whoever the creative team is behind these low budget CITY gameshows, spy school and project z, should have a go at creating gameshows for the main ITV channels. Would be more entertaining that small fortune that’s for sure.

    Project z was good. It felt tense and I felt myself worrying about whether they would make it out which is quite an accomplishment seeing as I’m what you would call an “adult”

    The clues are quite good, they set up future things in a way that is not too obvious but not too hard.
    The humour in the show is great, it’s got some jokes that would fly over kids heads including a old school doctor who reference which i found myself laughing at, plus the little news headlines are a source (no pun intended) of great humour.

    As for the hangover games, well it’s an candidate for hall of shame. Matt, as a host was quite dull, the co-host is just there. I’ve forgotten his name and can’t be bothered to look it up. That says something, they seem to be trying to have a Greg and Alex Taskmaster hosts vibe but it isn’t working. In fact the whole show just seems like they’ve heard the elevator pitch for Taskmaster, made a few tweaks, used regular people instead of celebrities and they didn’t watch an ep of taskmaster. It’s so boring, the shaving the head round just seems to be extreme for the sake of being extreme and i felt bad after watching it.

    I’m in the target audience for the hangover games yet i enjoyed project Z much more.

    I hope for more CITY gameshows soon as i think ofcom wants the major channels that aren’t BBC (ITV, channel 4 and channel 5) to create more children’s content. If the ITV stuff ends up being as good as spy school and project Z then i’m all for it and they should be good shows.

    Reply
  5. Matthew Clemson

    Project Z was repeated this morning on ITV proper; since I only get CITV in SD, that was a chance to watch it in HD. I’ll probably do that in future.

    Reply

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