Deeeerrrr-der-der-DERR-derrr, der-de-dellernerner der-der etc.
Well the gameshow world is very boring at the moment so it’s time to introduce a new irregular feature to the Bar where we look at shows of yesterday and try and work out how we would modernize them for today’s audiences. These do not necessarily have to be UK ones, although some exposure to the UK is nice.
The Show: Tic Tac Dough
What is it?
TTD is a quiz based around noughts and crosses. Players alternately picked squares with randomly determined question categories on. Correct answers owned the square and added money to a pot. The first person to get a straight line won everything in the pot (which rolled over in the case of tied games which happened frequently because of the low level difficulty of many of the questions), played a luck based bonus game (Beat the Dragon) for a prize package and could keep on playing. Unlike other shows of the era (and in this era we’re referring to the classic Wink Martindale fronted episodes of the late seventies and early eighties), there was no upper limit on how many times you could win.
Was this ever on in the UK?
It certainly was. We had a popular domestic version in the 60s called Criss Cross Quiz. Whatsmore, the Martindale version of the show was shown on sattelite channel Lifestyle in the early 90s. You know, the one with David Hamilton.
How would I make it work in 2012?
Well it’s certainly quite a fun format, but there are definitely a few things I would change. First of all, given that the whole thing is about money, I’d be sure to set it in a bank. Maybe even a bank vault. Then instead of screens, why don’t we change the game board elements for safety deposit boxes? I think that would work. I’m also thinking about ditching the categories and maybe just going for plain numbers, and to make it more strategic and exciting how about increasing the size of the game to five by five and having four players tussle it out? I think it would be very important to emphasise the inherent strategy of the game by having lengthy, increasingly INTERMINABLE GAPS AFTER EACH SODDING BIT, AND AT THE END OF THE SERIES YOU COULD GET PEOPLE WHO HAVE ALREADY WON LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY AND MAKE THEM DO THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA FOR NOT MUCH MORE MONEY AND BUILD IT UP LIKE IT’S UNIQUE AND EXCITING AND FOR EXAMPLE NOT JUST FUCKING TRITE AND THE ENTIRE ENTERPRISE JUST FEELS IMMENSELY LAZY AND OH GOD, OH GOD HELP ME AAAARGH
Next time we’ll be looking at The Joker’s Wild.
Somewhere, a television executive is smiling and he has no idea why.
And exactly how long did it take when writing this, did it take you to head off into a most welcome ‘The Bank Job’ Mark Kermode style rant?
I’ll go for 2 or 3 seconds.
All of which is a rather long around way of also pointing/reminding out of another quiz show which used the O’s and the X’s as part of the format – and that was BBC’s Beat The Teacher.
Which I really liked. Despite it being hosted by ‘Radio 1’s Trevor (Bruno) Brookes’ and spend most of the time when not asking the questions I seems to remember he spent reclined in his seat, but at least he was holding the questions cards, and not wandering around at the back of the contestants with a I=pad, and asking for the clock to be reset at least once every round and lighting is bad, and the accoustics are rubbish, and..and..and.
Ha ha, it was always going to be the punchline.
Beat the Teacher was completely brilliant, of course. There were a few episodes up in various places a while ago, and in the grand final ‘we’re doubling ALL the points to make it EVEN MORE exciting!’ so if you want to know where part time BB catchphrase about doubling points to make it even more exciting comes from, then there you go.
Random memory of a Beat the Teacher question.
“My brother knows the score of every football match, before it’s even kicked off. How does he do it?”
In true Beat the Teacher tradition, I’ll tell you tomorrow.
Before it’s kicked off, the score of every match is 0-0.
Ingenious.
Mr. Bodycombe is correct, and gets to make three moves on the board.
Incidentally, there was a sane reason for doubling up the points in the grand final – the school won a pound for every point their pupil or teacher earned, so this made every line in the final worth £20.
I got to the 2012 bit and actually laughed out loud. Didn’t actually see that coming.
Fantastic.
You fackin’ tell ’em, Bother.
So, so funny. Love it!
Million Pound Drop back week after Bank Job celebrity specials.
Well, Saturday 24th March to be exact as Sport Relief is on Friday 23rd and Channel 4 airs films/repeats when Comic/Sport Relief is on. Also Davina will probably be presenting at BBC TVC.
I could go and find The Bank Job thread, but I’m in a rush so..
Can someone explain how, even with the most cavalier of development teams, a show which finds itself slap bang in the middle of peaktime (and I assume the format of which will be hawked around the format sales coventions soon) allows an appaling flaw that happened last night.
Contestant A and B left in the vault. A has taken £1,000 out and is in his case. B gets a question wrong, but, answered the tie break correct and leaves and goes through to the next round with £0 in the case. Utter shambles.
And another thing. It’s not being explained how this version of Trash or Cash is going to be played out. Series 1 was very clear cut. All the money from all the winners over the week was never guaranteed until the last game.
However, the way Mr L has been talking, the amount the winner of each show in this series is safe, and has been won.
So, what exactly are they playing for tonight? The same amount again, or all the prize money won throughout the series actually hasn’t really been won until one final game?
In which case then it’s very, very harsh on Scott (who deserves to win – if only for another gratiuious gawp at some of his nice female friends he brings along)if he has took out £190,000 by playing the game the way it should be played over the last 5 shows, and he only gets that amount by the hoping the planets bump into each other when the prisoner dilemma is played out at about 10.20 tonight.
One off head to head game with a possible £50,000 pot – no problem.
All the money supposedly won over the past 4 weeks now put back into the vault ready for another envitable steal/steal situation – totally unnecessary.
Regarding your first point, you can’t really allow have situations where tie-breaks are sorted out by players having the most cash. That would often leave people little incentive to leave at the proper time. The point is that they’ve both failed to get out, and the tiebreak is purely a bandage around the format to ensure that you can still play the next round as intended.
Is it the case that if you win a tiebreaker with money in your case, the money doesn’t go through with you to the end?
Why not actually eliminate everyone remaining in the vault when time has expired, and deal with the resulting varying lengths of games by straddling?
The basic lack of narrative in this show underpins all its other grave faults. In what kind of real “bank job” scenario do would-be thieves walk in and out of a vault three times? You go in once and get out. If you leave a bank vault armed with a briefcase full of cash, logic dictates that it’s yours to keep – I’m pretty sure nobody ever lost out in a real instance of organised theft just because their fellow thieves all left with more. And then STEAL? BANKRUPT? How does that have anything to do with anything other than actively reducing the idea to a messy version of Les Dennis’ In the Grid?
Basically, this format should go back to the title and work back again from there.
I’m not going to defend everything they’ve done in this format, but there are some basic things that this gets right:
Straddling basically sucks. Shows work narratively much better without it, and ratings definitely improve towards the end of a non-straddled programme. It also affects your cost base quite a bit because you don’t know how many contestants you’re going to need. This affects travel arrangements, hotel bookings, people getting time off work, not to mention increasing the number of runners and contestant researchers you need… all kinds of expenses that occur ‘off-screen’ and therefore contribute nothing to how good the show looks.
The answer to your other point, in short, is: It’s just a bloody game show. Yes, they could have run with the theme a bit more to make the rules work better, but essentially it’s just a loose theme for a quiz show. It’s not a real place, and it’s not a real robbery. In fact, you probably don’t want to go too far into heist territory because that’s a morally tricky area.
I broadly agree with Mr. B: straddling is bad, but padding out games (or chopping bits out) to fit the slot is at least as bad. For , straddling would actually be wrong – unless there’s a complete technical disaster, the show will come out in a one-hour slot, it will give away roughly £50,000 in prizes per episode, the rest of the budget can be worked out.
To use the three-part model Mr. Brassey proposed a while back, has a wonderful concept, reasonable formatting, and spotty presentation, which it feels like we’ve discussed all year because we have discussed it all year.
On the specific points, the tie-break is a format hole, and I think the bankrupts have ruined more rounds than they’ve improved. Steal works, even in the original analogy: one jobber quietly pilfers something from someone else’s case while they’re not looking.
I wasn’t saying straddling would fix it – it wouldn’t. What it would fix is what you correctly describe as a hasty ‘bandage’ around the rather all too frequent scenario where too many people are locked in and they have to make up rules on the spot to keep the broadcast on course. And whilst I accept that a live show could not afford the expense of organising straddling for the game’s sake, therein lies most of the problem: it’s a very rigid game which depends on losing one contestant per round to meet its timeslot, when both the narrative theme and the game mechanics as they stand really have a lot more potential to be whipped up into several different combinations of interesting outcomes.
Yes I take your point that it is a “loose theme”, very loose indeed. What really grates is the fact the press release suggested it might be something a little more adventurous than that, maybe something a little bit special. The introductory sequence in s01e01 even led me to believe it would be. To be then presented with just another quiz-cum-picking-boxes is a bit of a gip to say the least.
No, during a tiebreaker the cases are shut to signify that no more money will be added, but the money in the cases of people who eventually leave will go through to the final if they make it.
In the interests of debate, David
I can’t see your point that it’s fair – It’s a deep flaw.
If contestant A and B had £0 in their cases, or conversley both had the £1,000 each – then, yes I can’t think of a better way to settle the round with a one question death or glory shoot out to go through to round 2.
But, somewhere there should have been a overiding rule that said, if player A has any amount of notes already in the case (which came from answering correctly and finding an amount in the vault wall – rather than stealing) and player B answers the question wrong when the time up bleep/drone is heard, the player who has taken the larger amount from the vault, and therefore makes them technically the better player of the remaining two still in live play – goes through.
The issue that both players ran out of time is a distraction. Money in the case. Who has the most – survives. Pure, simple and fair.
I’m not sure I can agree with this, the entire *point* is to make sure you’ve left within the timeframe – if you get the crystal on the Crystal Maze but don’t escape the cell, the end result is the same as someone who didn’t complete the game and didn’t escape the cell – you get locked in. You might have more money but you’ve made a tactical error. The punishment for not escaping is sudden death elimination. This seems completely reasonable.