Ok, occasionally I find stuff, occasionally I get sent stuff. This weekend I got sent some stuff – this will explain why you’re likely to get some posts getting excited about new shows this week. One of the things I love doing at the Bar is introducing shows you might not have been aware of, and I’m going to do that again now.
Basically it’s a show called One Man Army and it’s on the Discovery channel in America. In it, four people from the armed forces, law enforcement, that sort of thing compete against each other in challenges designed to discover which of them is a “one man army”, and they get to take home $10,000. They do this by taking part in three challenges – a speed challenge, a strength challenge and an intelligence challenge, the worst person in each challenge falling by the wayside.
It is quite the most properly macho thing I’ve seen in television for quite a while no doubt helped by the host, former Green Beret and survivalist Mykel Hawke, who absolutely has the authority and crucially the voice to do the thing justice. The challenges aren’t really anything you haven’t seen before on other adventure-based shows, but there’s some thought put into them here and Mykel is good at explaining the correct tactics for smashing through walls, for example.
It’s highly enjoyable, but it’s also the sort of thing that feels right on US television that sadly I don’t think would work in quite the same way over here.
Fun fact: Mykel Hawke is married to ex-Channel 5 newsreader and Jailbreak co-host Ruth England, and they’ve done survival shows together on Discovery. Who knew?
Ha ha, I’ve seen a repeat of a challenge in the the next episode, the strength test called The Breach where the contestants haveto breach through closed doors and walls with the tools provided.
The breaches in the other episode are slightly different, in fact one door isn’t locked at all, ‘because you should always just check!’
I wonder how often he works out cos Myke Hawke is huge!
*Fnar fnar!*
It had occured to me what quite a good gag name Myke Hawke would be, chortle.
He was in Dirty Sanchez: The Movie, teaching the guys survival skills in the Mexican desert.
He ended with “As a reward, you have ten seconds to fire off all the ‘Myke Hawke’ jokes you can think of.”
The intelligence tests on this are great actually – getting a key hanging up 9ft away from a locked cell is pretty standard Mole territory, but the other ones I’ve seen involve remembering light codes whilst underwater and cracking safes whilst being suspended upside down.
I like this. I like this a lot.
I don’t see why a UK version wouldn’t translate. If it was done grittier and with less of the “computerised” presentation that this has, maybe it’d work.
This isn’t normally my sort of thing, if I’m honest, but I really enjoyed watching all of the first episode.
Jeff is possibly the most brilliantly-cast contestant I’ve seen on any game show in years.
New episodes of this are on Fridays at 10pm in the US, by the way.
What I quite like about this is that it could be tediously jingoistic, but it really isn’t. It’s just some extraordinary men putting their skills to the test and everyone gets treated with respect even if they don’t do very well.
Also, although technically it’s a speed challenge, a strength challenge and an intelligence challenge, the reality is there tends to be a layer of strategy involved in all of them.
I don’t know if anyone remotely cares but US Millionaire went HD this season. Here’s the first look at the upgraded set/lighting/graphics. Also for whatever it’s worth I found out that 2waytraffic officially calls the US format “Super Mix” and is now shopping it around after it worked out OK during the first season.
Re: Wild West Showdown- it actually was made by the same production company as American Gladiators- one of the outlaws was the overall winner of the first season of AG…
Yep, noticed the production company in the credits. Surprisingly fun and imaginative show, even if the production still somehow manages to feel a bit cheap, despite the set.
Yeah- never got real traction here, halfway into the season they edited in a play-by-play announcer because it seemed very slow. Had lousy timeslots as well for a syndicated show- IIRC it aired after Saturday Night Live in my area…
707k for OC for the w/e 11th Sep. Blimey-o-flip.
And Pointless and The Chase are about level. It’s all just too exciting!
Adding in +1 and HD is harsh on the BBC, tho. I bet those figures change when iPlayer is added in.
Well the BBC’s figures include HD, so not harsh to include those. Chase got 175,000 on +1 – so about 2.15m without.
Also, as I mentioned on the twitter, The Chase was ahead from 17:15 until 17:45 even without the +1 audience. Pointless’ rating then shot up from 2.3m to 3.0m for the last quarter of an hour. I don’t have a five minute breakdown, but I’m guessing at least *some* of this is down to the news afterwards.
Anyway, think it’s fair to say that it’s pretty close between them.
I’m largely a neutral observer, by the way. I quite like Pointless. I don’t like The Chase that much, but it’s alright I suppose.
And well done on Only Connect.
Agree re: news, but also it’s probably a natural time when dads and kids get in from work/school. Well, it used to be in our household at least.
I like the Chase a lot better since they’ve found the trick of negative offers. Still irks me when weaker players piggy-back off other peoples’ work, though.
Who’d have thought there would be an audience for a quiz that just asks lots of questions without half an hour of answer deliberation?
I still worry for Celebrity The Chase though, if nothing else than because it’s going to look like the Chasers will attempt to be denying money for charity, which never tends to go down well. My gut says no more than 3.5m in primetime.
Perhaps if the Chasers win, the money would go to a charity of their choice instead?
Mmm, maybe. Although presumably all the celebs will be guaranteed a grand anyway, because that is what happens in this sort of thing.
So lets hope they don’t all get knocked out in their games, otherwise they’d be playing for money they’d already be winning anyway.
Who was playing on The Chase yesterday? I wonder if the ratings go up depending on the popularity of each Chaser
I think it’s becoming word of mouth that The Chase are now airing new episodes. They had little advertising compared to last two series. Mark was on yesterday BUT one guy beat him in the main game to take £45,000 to the final chase and scored 23 (joint highest score). However, Mark caught him.
and before you ask later on. Paul was on today and won his third game.
Thanks. I like the Beast, he was great banter.
It was Mark Labett.
The final was one on one affair with £45,000 at stake, and the beast took him down getting to the 22 question target with 0.02 to spare. He was only knocked back two steps, but answered 7 wrong.
And a first (that I’ve seen anyway), Mark appologised to him for winning when getting to the target over the victory sting.
I’ll be interested to see how the charity chase works. I notice Lostintv are doing the tickets for it. Given that the dubbing mixer does a reasonable job with the ‘imaginary studio audience’ I wonder why ITV feel the need for a real one?
I agree with Brig that having the team go away with £0 for charadee if the chasers win it won’t look good. So I suspect some form of £xx per correct answer in the final chase as a consolation may be brought into play.
They’ll probably do what Family Fortunes does to the losing family and multiply their losing score by 10 to create a figure.
I guess it will be £100 per correct answer (including headstart). ITV Studios will know what to do.