Hello kids, sorry, slow updates this week (it’s basically Christmas party season, you know how it is I’m sure), although fingers crossed we’re getting a report on the Play Your Cards Right pilot on Friday. Anyway, a few things that have been bought up that probably require wider recognition:
- The Exit List is premiering in the ITV Tuesday night flopzone on January 10th. This is a shame, I thought it was alright from the game I saw being filmed. I do not know how it is being edited and I largely suspect there are not many winners, is my initial impression given this news, but I do think it is a lot better than the rubbish High Stakes.
- However the The Exit List press release people ought to learn how to count, the maze was 24 rooms in the pilot, but it’s 26 rooms in the actual broadcast show – that second row of five has become a second row of seven. It is never a good sign when your press releases aren’t accurate, is it?
- Fear Factor IS BACK! and it’s done very well, two episodes last night averaging a 3.4 rating in the demo between them (and picking up on the second episode). The show hasn’t changed much, although I’m not entirely convinced it’s more extreme than before – a couple of set pieces are combined, and the explosions are bigger, but the claims feel like more mouth than trousers. It is still plenty entertaining if you like that sort of thing (and it is very much the sort of thing we quite like) and it’s nice to see Joe Rogan is still basically being a hilarious twat.
- Meanwhile You Deserve It (shall we take to calling it Clue or No Clue?) scored a 0.9 rating at the same time. Proof, if proof were needed, that watching people eat scorpions is scientifically about four times more entertaining than charity.
I caught the beginning of Fear Factor and watched part of the first stunt. I couldn’t help but feel that they were pasting several miniature stunts together with chewed bubblegum. Why did they need to be helicoptered to the starting point (and don’t say it was so they could be similarly helicoptered out at the end)? Why did they have to open a box to pull a lever? Making the entire thing timed seemed like a really shoddy way to break inevitable ties, especially when you consider that all they’re really being timed on is their ability to open the box. The truck travel should theoretically take the same amount of time for everyone, right?
tl;dr: I agree that it doesn’t seem more extreme. At certain points, I’d even call it silly.
Yes, and the final stunt of episode two felt a bit like a medley also.
Good point on there possibly not being many winners.
High Stakes didn’t even have everyone getting to £25k even when they played for it, and nobody who played for six figures got even close apart from one who clued to £25k and then quite possibly (note: this is me saying this, I sometimes call false positives with this sort of thing) got talked out of taking it.
I suspect for Exit List: one six-figure win and a whole bunch of teams who saw that recorded, tried to emulate it, and left with nothing. And possibly a few wins in the low five figure range. In an age where Channel 4 can give away fifteen grand an hour at 4pm, ITV primetime shows really do need to give away a lot of money to not look cheap – although it’s clearly not enough to be big-budget (look at Red or Black? for evidence, and PokerFace didn’t exactly do amazingly considering it gave away over £1.2m in each six-episode run – double the £100k an hour budget implicit in peak-era Millionaire and explicit on The Vault, both airing at a time where £2k cash prizes on Weakest Link were almost exciting).
I think as a show it’s going to be quite difficult to win, there will usually be one or two answers they’ll forget. Perhaps they should have a penalty to skip a room – lose half your cash, for instance. That might lead to some interesting deal results.
There’s a Christmas special of ‘Odd One In’ this Sunday at 6.15pm.