To celebrate the return of The Circle last night (tl;dr – they’ve Big Brothered up the presentation, it did 1.3m from the Bake Off lead in, it all feels a bit like the next Rising Star, if you enjoyed it last year no reason to assume you won’t this year, I expect I will follow it but not bother tuning in) I wanted to do a “joke” with a video where all the contestants sit in a circle.
Except I couldn’t think of a show that does that (other than various foreign forms of The Inheritance). Shows with contestants in a semi-circle are ten a penny. Can anyone think of a circular show?
Le Cible with its rotating camera in the middle did this. Russian Roulette and Who’s Still Standing also did in some versions.
Good answers. Particularly Russian Roulette as there was a terrible UK one.
The Question Jury almost had a complete circle didn’t it?
Ooh, good answer, good answer.
Given there’s four contestants it’s rather more a square, but 19 Keys fits the spirit of what you’re intending.
Mmm!
Can’t find any footage but they sat in a circle on ‘Traitor’
http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Traitor
Good answer! I’ve tried looking for footage for that in the past for something else. Sort it out Youtube uploaders.
Would “I’ll Get This” count? A bit more chatty of a show of course. Five on a round table.
I’d say that very much counts. Thanks!
Million Dollar Mind Game.
Yep!
One off-hand Circle thought.
This series is very much going for the ‘live episodes’ moreso, and more viewer interaction.
Presumably still in development is the 3 international version for Netflix, which uh, can’t be ‘live’ in the same way. Could still be daily, but not live. So presumably the UK one is going to vary more in format points – or are any live/viewer twists mostly fun diversions? We’ll see when they actually hit those moments I guess – if they’re just designed to draw you back in rather than meaningful impact.
Which is a shame as most countries should have ‘Richard Madeley’ as a key format point.
The American one was filmed just before the UK one, the Brazilian and French ones will follow the UK one (don’t know in which order). There wasn’t that much interactivity in series 1 was there? Presumably it will be more like that.
Interesting – didn’t realise the US one was already filmed.
But yeah, UK one wasn’t very interactive. But it was also made up on the hoof – the games room being scrapped day 1, the viewer prize being added late to try and give a satisfying winner, how they do twists etc. When they’re not playing off viewer reaction, and have to plan things (or play off what they guess reactions will be?), I wonder which things they’ll keep, how it’ll change compared to UK S1 and UK S2. And of course – if knowing the winner before they start changes how the show is edited.
…or fuck it they go full US TV and throw in confessionals, despite the entire format effectively being confessionals but in the present tense rather than filmed after
the Bit of a Wasted Journey Pointer from Fluke?
The dreadful Give ‘n Take over here, probably scared American producers off circles for decades
Oooh! Dicing With Debt!
BBC2’s Traitor immediately jumps to mind.
Sounds like an excuse to link to the Pandemonium pilot to me.
I can’t remember for sure, but would 2000 to 1 fit the description?
How about the Netherlands version of Trivial Pursuit?
https://youtu.be/DnYqFfc7q-Y
I didn’t watch much of series 1 so don’t know how having hour long episodes felt then but watching last night’s Circle it really felt like it would benefit from being a half hour nightly show. Having them pull an apple apart in the first highlights show was super-lame. I found there were bits that were pretty gripping but there was so much padding that it ended up being an unsatisfying hour. I know half hours aren’t a done thing anymore, and the show’s probably way too expensive to justify it, but with so little human interaction it feels like the whole thing could be tightened up with a shorter running length.
Sophie Willen is not the right commentator for this at all, really surprised they brought her back.
We discussed S1 here, if anyone wants to read:
https://www.bothersbar.co.uk/?p=11096
“It’s well produced, well cast and I don’t give a toss about it, I certainly can’t see broken conversations sustaining for 60 minutes a night across three weeks.
Will start high then drop quite quickly I reckon.”
Episode two got 602k, which for all the hype makes even The Crystal Maze look good. This is, to be fair, up on last year. Still, though.
I love Sophie but yeah, tonally she doesn’t mesh at all.
Good timing, L’eredità / The Inheritance restarted yesterday in Italy!
The Canale5 rip-off is scheduled for November or something.
We’ve had one “circular” show that predated The Inheritance: the 2001 flop “Il Gladiatore” with Carlo Conti.
It begins as a WWTBAM clone but when the contestant wants to walk out he’s pitted against THE ARENA (the studio audience).
20 questions (of the AUA! 50/50 kind) are asked. If you get it right, you keep control. If you miss it, the other side (the contestant or THE ARENA) gets control. The side that answers correctly the 20th question wins the money.
RE: the Canale 5 ripoff, are you talking about this?
https://www.drymedia.it/contoallarovescia/
Exactly.
Oh, just now I remembered that Gerry Scotti already tried to copy L’Eredità with a circular setup of his own with La Stangata (2009). This time contestants are sitting around a five-sided table.
https://www.cinetivu.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/La-stangata1.jpg
One of my favourite shows ever to come out of Quebec – Paquet Voleur:
https://youtu.be/WdafE9MQr5s
Lasted six series (including a daytime spinoff). Would love for it to come back.
Having never watched the first series I watched the launch show, it was ‘OK’ but then found myself utterly bored about 15 minutes into the second episode so I’ve just skipped straight to the Friday live show and found out I’ve missed…erm not a lot!
And I’ve easily skipped through the live show, Moffatt as a guest and Richard Madeley in a VR dance suit thing isn’t really must watch TV to be honest!
Not wishing to be ageist, I really don’t understand the casting of RM on this. There will be 18-year-olds watching The Circle who are not old enough to remember him on This Morning. What demo are they going for?
I think I’ve figured out why they cast him,it’s starting to make sense now.
His age means he won’t get most of the slang and references the 27 year old he’s pretending to be would get, so works quite well for comic effect.
If/when it’s revealed who he is, the reaction from the younger contestants will be “who? Am I meant to know who he is or something?”
It was quite telling in the show last night how they dropped the major clue in by having a ‘famous (won’t put the word otherwise my comment may get the auto block treatment)’ round and only one contestant put the Judy link together although I suppose they wouldn’t expect to ever be sharing the apartment with a celebrity…won’t work for Series 3 though if that ever happens!
The ‘make all contestants hate Judy’ twist is a bit poor really as they’re all far too nice to each other so it sticks out like a sore thumb
Effectively he probably has to be ‘blocked’ even if he doesn’t get blocked naturally as presumably they only managed to book him in for a certain number of days
I wonder if Richard gets to meet one of the other contestants on the way out like the others get to do
WOW
I’m really getting into this now, some clever little challenges with birthday cards and paintings have really kicked the game into action this week!
Shame there has to be a live show tomorrow with several people trying to catfish as ‘celebrities’ joining Emma to waffle for an hour though