Board of Excitement 3rd-9th Jan 2010

That’s right – it’s back!

The plan is every Sunday to go through the following week’s competitive TV and pick out the things we’re actually going to make the effort to actually watch. There are a lot of gameshows and reality shows, but we only have time to do and watch so much, so think of this as our highlights of the week.

• Celebrity Big Brother Launch (Sunday C4 9pm) – As I’ve done with BB for the last few years, I’ll probably watch the launch and then not bother to watch the rest. You never know though.
• Only Connect (Monday BBC4 8:30pm) – Tough but fun quiz returns for a third series, and a full-length one this time around as well. Tonight’s opener features the Archers Admirers vs Music Lovers.
• The World’s Strongest Man 2009 (Monday Bravo 9pm) – Not only do Bravo mess with tradition by not showing it all betwixt Christmas and New Year (yes I know Five showed it a bit later, shh), they seem to be showing it on a weekly basis the year after the event itself! Many years on, there remains nothing sniggerworthy about Phil Pfister.
• The Krypton Factor (Tuesday ITV 7:30pm) – A change of day for the return of last year’s hugely enjoyable remake. This time round there’s a much improved assault course, but bafflingly a lack of the ever-popular intelligence test. To me this seems rather short sighted, so expect Observation to be dropped next year (ho ho!).

This week we may also watch Raven (Tuesday and Thursday CBBC 4pm), although we still don’t love the direction the show has taken recently, and as this series was filmed back to back with the last one probably won’t offer an awful lot by way of surprise. That being said, Raven at its least good is still better than a lot of shows at their peak. We might also dip into Deal or No Deal (C4 Sunday 5pm, weekdays 4:10pm), not something we watch religiously these days but I caught a load over Christmas and still manages to be hugely entertaining over four years on. Now with leatherette graphics!