Sundays, 5:30pm,
Five
This has all the makings of something that might be quite fun, extremely dire or anything in between really. Channel Five will be showing two live NFL games on Sunday nights over the next six months (or however long the season is), and wrapped around the first one will be a gameshow/entertainment show/whatever. Basically it’s a way to fill in the moments where the US goes to its many ad breaks they won’t be able to do in the UK. It’s all live – the game element will depend on what’s just happened in the sports action – teams compete to win trips to the USA.
Will this work? Will this pique the interest of casual viewers? Will it annoy the sorts of people who would happily tune into an NFL match? Will there still be room for analysis of the game itself? At the very least Dermot O’ Leary is probably one of the best hosts they can have for what could be an extremely messy live format. Sam Quek and Osi Umenyiora are on hand as well as a celebrity guest, and comic Troy Hawke will be acting as some kind of US correspondent.
Certainly there’s enough people intrigued by the prospect of this that the first one might be quite an appealing four-hour watch, but it will be really interesting to see how long they keep up the formatted aspect for, and how much it changes across the run. It’s certainly a big swing and I kind of love it for that, but it could also end up being quite a long six months for everyone involved. Five will be showing two games a night, the first one starts at 6pm and a second one on 5ACTION from 9pm but without the light entertainment surrounding it, although Big Game Night isn’t due to finish until half nine so no idea how that will work out.
Let us know what you think in the comments!
The NFL regular season only runs for four months, five if you count the play-offs (but I doubt Channel 5 will have rights to two of those games every Sunday).
In addition to a pathetically short season, the players wear armour too! Bunch of pansies. Can’t believe TayTay is marrying one of them.
Also, is “win a holiday to a fascist country” really that much of an attractive prize?
Bluesky can be found at bsky.app, thanks.
The first half hour is the easy bit, but so far it’s a bit like old skool Big Brother’s Little Brother.
Teams earn balls to go in the big Super Ball lottery machine. First game Let’s Get Ready to Fumble basically Double or Drop from Crackerjack.
So two teams of fans compete in a mix of short NFL-themed silly minigames to win coloured footballs to put into a big lottery machine, with occasional commentary bits and VTs. They then pull a ball from the machine to choose a winning team and they get a 50/50 question to win a US holiday which they answer (by throwing a football at the answer).
They’ve done a good job with the production to turn something that could be amateurish and naff into something quite slick, effortless and entertaining. It’s a nice big bright shiny studio, everything worked technically without any missing links or camera shots, the whole thing seems pretty well thought out, and Dermot brings all his experience to keep it all running smoothly. No, it’s not Saturday Night Takeaway but it’s well made for what it is.
It reminds me, of all things, The Big Breakfast. It has that sort of 90s/early 2000s energy and tone.
Will it succeed? Not sure but it holds some novelty for 2025 where this sort of thing is increasingly uncommon. It’s also far from the worst NFL presentation I’ve seen – it doesn’t suck all the energy out the room like some of them. I’d watch it again.
Negatives? It finished in the middle of the 3rd quarter – I assume the NFL game had more early breaks than usual. It really needed some sort of token consolation prize. The guest, Joel Dommett, had literally nothing to do for long periods. But it does far more right than wrong so credit where credit is due.
As a TV head I sort of loved what it tried to do, and in the main it did quite a good job of getting in, explaining the games, playing the games and getting out within about two minutes each time, only one game that had to be split across two gaps in the end, but I loved the *feel* of it initially, so the way it just sort of ended with a damp squib about five past eight, with another hour of football to go was a bit weird – and no notable studio bits in that last hour either. I understand much of that seemed to do with Sam and Osi doing some “proper” punditry for the second game of the evening on 5Action (also with Apollo off of Gladiators tonight), but the lack of studio action felt noticable for someone like me with little interest in American football generally.
The person with the easiest job tonight was Joel Dommett, turn up, do the Star In A Reasonably Priced Bowling Alley, pick a ball from a machine, collect the cheque. I think I was expecting a bit more punditry, I wondered what the sort of balance was going to be, about a minute at halftime was about it – I can well believe it’s challenging to follow the game properly whilst setting up all the links which could go live at any time.
I’m not really sure who it’s for really – I’d watch an hour package of the live links absolutely even if the games were basically a bit naff, but I’m not sure I’m prepared to watch an American Football game to pad it out for four hours. If you were an NFL fan, would you prefer discussion and explanation of the game over some break filler? I don’t know, you tell me. There wasn’t much explanation of the game for people who have only a very passing interest, except for Osi explaining why they’ve called some of the minigames what they were.
What I will say is that it could have been extremely messy and it wasn’t – adverts for Fox stuff not relevant here notwithstanding. It’s probably the first time I’ve ever watched four consecutive hours of Channel 5. I’m not sure I see this doing well myself but we’ll see – last Sunday Channel 5 were variously between 350 and 470k between half five and half nine overnight. I would also *expect* more useful demos than they’d normally get on a Sunday night.
Watched parts of this in between the cooking with the stars final and Beat The Chasers. NFL was yawn yawn yawn in my opinion had absolutely zero interest because I am not a sport fan of any kind. The actual studio set for the parts in between was actually quite decent the game show bit drew me in to check it out.
Maybe they should have kept the NFL game separate for anyone who wanted to watch it and use the studio for chat and games for a show straight after the match.
I would actually watch the gameshow part but the sport ruins it for me and prevents it from being enjoyable. Not for me i’m afraid
Looks like a swing and a miss (unconverted field goal?), 166k avg across the four hours. Looks like it’s not just the football that’s going to have a lengthy feeling fourth quarter. Perhaps it did really really good demos though, you’d have to hope Five knew what they were doing when they got the rights.
Not great. Still, we don’t know the revenue model – I doubt Channel 5 is paying much (if anything) and they may have got it because of their willingness to give it a Sunday primetime slot. The NFL cares more about growing the audience than short-term revenue.
Ouch!!! That must feel painful for Frow!
130k for episode two, although around 200k around 9pm, but pretty consistently around 130k pre- and post- that bit.
On par with Morgan’s recycled YouTube highlights show.
The good news for both Dermot and last night’s guest Katherine Ryan is that whilst Silence is Golden exists, it won’t be the lowest rated thing they’re associated with.