Alright, back to work everyone. But for those who won’t/don’t/can’t/have a TiVo, television is all new this week. NEW! Pointless. NEW! Only Connect. But more dramatically on ITV NEW! Judge Rinder, NEW! Tipping Point (with NEW! multiplier counter feature, if our understanding is correct), and NEW! The Chase. Also NEW! and nestled rather unfortunately between Tipping Point and The Chase is Fat Pets which will likely do quite badly (if it looks like filler it will rate like filler), does Tipping Point a disservice by moving it back to 3pm and hurting The Chase as likely a poor lead-in (it is ratings fact that it performs better with Tipping Point previous). Nice one.
It has been pointed out that this indeed is a filler before Mel and Sue’s new chatshow fills the slot. Ten-fifteen years ago, if you had said that Mel and Sue would be fronting the highest rated show on television people would have said you were mad, and yet with The Great British Bakeoff precisely that has happened, so you can see why ITV have jumped at the chance at Light Lunch redux. Watch the numbers for that very closely, popular chat shows are quite difficult to pull off and being sandwiched between two quizzes might not be the best place for it. We will see!
Also thanks to CeletheRef for linking to the Chilean version of Avanti un Altro the other day. Who could have predicted that of all the international versions of the show we’ve seen, it’s the formatting powerhouse of Chile that seems to have adapted it the best? We will always really like the Italian show with its heavy emphasis on being aggressively entertaining and stand by the idea that a UK version could still be very big. However we would like to think that a daytime adaptation based on the lower-key Chilean model could still go down quite well:
- It features more rounds of questions and fewer “minimondo” segments. Admittedly it looks like the questions seem to be on the easier side, although we don’t know how big quiz is in Chile.
- It has lifted the best running gags from the Italian show, like the audience running on stage to mob Mr Bonus when he comes on, and the host beating them away with an inflatable club.
- It’s still silly. Host Leo Caprile is really good – there’s still lots of audience interaction (the audience is a super important part of the show which a lot of international versions don’t really get), and instead of having a Luca Laurenti style sidekick he’ll wander off set and have a chat with the crew, especially if a contestant gets an easy question wrong.
- If someone gets a “duel” with nobody to duel, they get to pick again for free.
- They show the questions on screen for the end game, which is a nice touch. The freeze doesn’t seem to come on until the last 30 seconds (300,000 Chilean pesos, or around
£1.60£320). - The mobster character seems to take the contestant out back to ‘get shot’ if they get his question wrong, those edgy South Americans!
Anyway, take a look if you want. It’s 1 hour 30 mins with ads (1:15 without) which feels a bit long but there we are.
For those of us who might be interested in watching the final of the proper darts but don’t have Sky, Challenge happen to be scheduling Olde School Bullseye against it. I wonder if there were any darts players on the teams who went on to be celebrated pros a decade or two later?
Thanks for the tip about Chilean Avanti; I watched it, which was probably only the second or third episode of any Avanti I’d seen in my life. EES CORRECTO! I have this horrible feeling that ITV would say “This is a job for Harry Hill”.
The only one I can think of at the moment is Alan Warriner-Little.
Check out the November 28th episode…I don’t think that’s ever been done in Italy..
http://youtu.be/U7rN78SXHts?list=PLwZiyt9mRNKEtfTQGvyuD74sBRyGnq01C
What are you referring to, the contestant being kicked out of the queue? Not that I know of, in fact Bonolis rarely interacts with the queue.
The questions really are ridiculously easy in the main – ‘which of these superheroes famously has no superpowers – Batman or Superman?’
I’m enjoying Senor Metrosexual as a funny recurring category.
Edit: oh he’s mysteriously back in the queue.
I mean the winning contestant gets 21QW won on the first try- didn’t even use half the 150 seconds…
Ooh I haven’t got that far yet.
No I don’t think so. Are the questions all easy? I note this is some sort of charity special.
Ooh, it looks like the mobster regularly appears as the last question and offers a mystery envelope if the question is right. Not sure I love that, it feels a bit cheap if it ends up being a Duel most days.
They’ve finally added a multiplier to Tipping Point? Yay, might be time to start watching again!
the Doctress is back on AUA! after a maternity leave
she’s at 11:44
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2e0rf3_avanti-un-altro-4-gennaio-2015_fun
Two Chasers are preparing for a Laser Quest battle and all I can think is, you know, we clean forgot to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the last ever episode of Interceptor. It must have been 25 years, 4 days and, what, 9 or 10 hours ago now? #ilikeit #imissit
I’m sorta surprised this is the first time Victoria got the giggles over a question….so she’s what, about 999 behind Bradley?
I’m Chilean so if you have questions concerning the local AuA or need translations just give me a shout.
About the contestant getting all questions right in less than a minute, that one was a telethon special. It obviously was fixed–she got the highest scroll doubled my the Bonus, she banked and got all questions right at 21QW.
The mobster is a parody of drugdealer Pablo Escobar. His biographic TV series is popular these days.
Yes, questions are freaking easy. It’s the gameplay what makes it so hard.
Ooh and guess what the next one country is. Paraguay. Here a pic: http://bit.ly/1LBK9RI
Here a video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=gjVs86Bi8us It’s weekly. They used a low budget set based on the Spanish version of AuA yet the gameplay is a ripoff of the Chilean version. They seem to put new minimondo characters every week. There aren’t full episode videos, but they post pics on their Twitter account @AvantiParaguay and videos on http://bit.ly/1TUGWiC everyday.