Saturdays, 8pm,
ITV1
Watch out Dommett’s About! Hidden camera prank show where Joel Dommett, Judi Love, GK Chesterton Barry (thanks Jack), Sam Thompson and a number of guest stars undertake tasks in secret based around sabotaging the efforts of a group of people who believe they’re on a real TV show, earning cash for those civilians as long as they don’t get caught. It’s Big Brother secret tasks meets The Mole and Beadle’s About, basically.
Not suuuure how appealing that sounds, not a massive fan of hidden camera shows myself but have always enjoyed the set-ups on Michael McIntyre’s Big Show which at least have a certain warmth and silliness to them. Also it’s been on the shelf ages – it was originally down to go out last year – although this isn’t necessarily a sign of a lack of confidence, they are sandwiching it between Britain’s Got Talent and The 1% Club, ITV’s two biggest entertainment shows of the week, so you can’t say they aren’t giving it a chance. I thought it had 6:30 written all over it.
Anyway we’ll keep an open mind, at the very least you’ve got six new formats to watch across the next six weeks that are all being sabotaged. Let us know what you think in the comments.
On a slightly different point, I see this Sunday is the last Millionaire before dramas are on so I was wondering maybe they should’ve put the rest of Millionaire on after BGT around 9pm and sabotage around 6:45 to 7:45 and BGT 7:45 to 9pm
That can’t happen because The Box is supposed to be moved into the post BGT slot at some stage in April hence why The 1% Club is repeats at the moment until that begins although they have loads of new shows still to air so bit of a waste of prime-time slot at this stage would have been sensible to keep airing new The 1% Club considering it’s a ratings winner. I don’t really get why Celebrity Sabotage is at 8pm because BGT has five audition shows left whereas celebrity sabotage has 6 episodes meaning there is a block in the schedule by the time you get to the final week of CS because of the 2hr BGT live shows, I honestly can’t see CS being moved to 9pm seems late. I thought they might have launched CS at 8pm then moved the rest too 6pm
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is officially the final episode of the series tomorrow at 8pm these episodes being shown at the moment are leftovers from last year filmed in 2024. There is still another full series been recorded featuring of 18 new episodes the 19th was the Christmas Special shown in 2025, After Grace has finished by the end of April they will likely return with new Millionaire like last year, maybe the Celeb run will be played out before the world cup starts.
Didn’t think this was actually that bad.
Format wise the spoof show was The Applicant with Sara Davies (who is in on it). Basically the sabotuers have a number of challenges which earn money for the targets if they remain undiscovered. Up to £30k to be won between six people – surprisingly high budget given shows like The Floor gets £50k across 10 episodes.
Tonally this is a bit of a weird show, moments of genuine tension but it’s not really all that funny despite the playfulness of some of it’s set-ups. Celebs pointing out they’re winning money for them every two minutes quite irritating. Sara Davies being in the know probably the funniest bit – in fact the formatting meta is probably why I’m probably going to watch each week although whether that’s appealing to the public I don’t know. It takes too long to get going – five minutes in and nothing’s happened really.
1.8m for ep 1 overnight which means it both held up better than anticipated and hurt some of ITVs numbers for the rest of the evening.
This was fairly good, Sara felt a bit mis-placed at times while the attention was mainly on the contestants they just cut to shots of her reacting, she introduced the activities and that was about it. Some of the pranks was funny and tense but it didn’t make me laugh out loud like I thought it would for example with Ant and Dec when they did pranks on celebs and the public on Saturday Night Takeaway them was done well and was genuinely hilarious.
I like the idea of banking contestants money that they don’t know about that’s the heart of the program and the big reveal at the end was quite clever seeing the shocked reactions on their faces watching the footage back finding out it was all the celebs.
The idea is there and is solid but the execution could have been better.
It NEEDS to be moved to 6pm before BGT not because it’s a bad program just because I feel it would land a better audience and also would lead into BGT nicely. I kind of get launching it at 8pm for the first week but beyond that it should be pre-BGT. Next week it’s also on at 8pm but I hope they change it the following weeks. They changed You Bet On Tour from 8pm – 6pm mid series so they could surely do the same again to keep the schedule flowing better.
Understandably it has to move to pre-BGT eventually due to the overlap between celebrity sabotage and the start of the BGT semi-finals.
Brig, Please do you have the overnight rating for the first episode ?
IMHO this really should have just stuck to the Beadle/Ant & Dec/McIntyre mould with a studio audience and cutting back and forth to the prank, but maybe they weren’t confident enough that it would have big laughs.
I just do not see the point of having a guest celeb each week AS WELL AS the format hosts being different; it only needs one of these, especially as they also have to introduce new contribs each time so it’s so many minutes lost to housekeeping.
Would have just had the four saboteurs in studio, then you get the contribs in the studio to react to what happened and find out how much they won there and then rather than at the house. You wouldn’t even necessarily have to have the guest host(s) in the studio part.
Just not sure that I would go out of my way to watch it again. Agree with the consensenus that it felt 6pm – maybe later as summer schedule filler.
Also, not sure if it was just my TV being weird – I don’t think it was – but I watched it live and the colours looked really flat, but all the social media clips looked normal, so I was wondering if they somehow broadcast an incomplete cut for some reason?