What an fun choice! You can give Rob Brydon any old rubbish and people will still go “oh, but that Rob Brydon’s good isn’t he?” Are there enough characters for a Gavin and Stacey round?
Trying to figure out the last thing Brydon did for ITV – there’s Director’s Commentary and Annually Retentive, but those were years ago. Actually I’ve just remembered it’s voiceovering that Noelumentary, so perhaps this isn’t the big poaching of BBC talent it initially looks like.
Bit surprised by this. I’ve always had Brydon down as more of a light, chatty, jokey host whereas my understanding of the The Floor is that it’s quite self-serious with hosts that play it straight to give the otherwise simplistic, silly game some gravitas. Feels like a sportsperson/serious actor/news presenter-type would be a more natural fit.
Struggling to come up with someone better, though – and you probably could have said the exact same thing about Tarrant in the most successful gameshow of all time!
I don’t think there’s an guidebook for how serious the host of The Floor needs to be, it can be as light or heavy as the production wants – they just need to marshall the show along, they’re going to have 81 people to talk to and 80 to say goodbye to, they’re not involved in the duels at all.
I’d suggest most of the hosts I’ve seen are in the sort of middlebrow Ben Shephard sort of mould – and I don’t think Brydon will play this greatly different from that but will probably come across a bit more congenially.