Just a “thing” that the pages on The Genius and Fort Boyard S26 linked in the menu bar will be moved to the Specials Board this weekend. you will still be able to comment on them.
If you’ve been watching Hunted (and here’s the discussion post) you might be interested in the first episode of Wanted that’s on Youtube. Lots of flashing machines in the background! This was 19 years ago incredibly.
While you’re there, episode two is up too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVaTteKwFUA
Worth it just to see Littlejohn fluff up the end of the show!
“Hi Richard (crackle..static) Can you hear me?”
Ahh. Nothing like the harsh light of 19 odd years to reform your ideas about a show is there?
So I watched this episode (to which we must thank one of the contestants for uploading, because before then we only had ‘The Ray Cokes light entertainment years’ phase of the format in 10 min chunks) with a slightly open mind, and actually – with a serious production team brainstorm to blunt some of the rough edges and tune up the engine it ‘could’ just fly again.
Ok – so you’d have to come up with a better live show element than forcing contestants to stop still for an hour, with the tracker – who at the start of the day could be hundreds of miles away – but then at the start of the show be within striking distance of them.
But, the actual idea of doing a challenge each day, keeping on the move, and not get caught was very sound (although even today I’m still dubious about the tracker just ‘filming’ them to loose that days £1,000 – it should have been that, and making themselves known (before then giving the team 30 mins to ‘make good their escape’)to really rub it in.
Back in the day, phone and email was the only way to say which phonebox they were in, and I’m sure if you tried a variation on the phonebox mechanic for a live show element today along with a text number and @C4Wanted, not getting caught in the live show would be almost impossible.
Still think the dark studio served the show better than the oranges of series 2, and I still preferred Littlejohn (who did improve after the first couple of weeks – (Question – was he the first choice for host for series? The bumbling presentation of show one seems to indicate he may have had other plans for that night upto a couple of days before the first show).
But the KGB spy was a plain bad idea. I can see what they were trying to do, but his Russian accent made him look and sound like an actor for a screentest for a cold war spy movie had walked on set and sat down.
Would also love to know where the ‘Wanted HQ’/studio was for this (yes, it has been a very minor obsession finding out since October 1996!)
Littlejohn mentioned that they were “In West London”, but around that time, apart from BBC Television Centre (where the acoustics tell you it wasn’t) it was either the studios where the boardroom for The Apprentice on the Westway next to Park Royal tube is, or somewhere convenient for the communications links needed to run the live show – and not a proper tv studio at all.
Right, I’m off to find a phonebox to hide in for the next hour…
I have consulted my box o’ game show ephemera from the mid-’90s and have tickets for 27/11/96 and 11/12/96 tapings at a BBC Outside Broadcast Unit at Kendal Avenue, London W3 0RP, which I think fits the bill as to what you’re referring to about the Apprentice.
I can’t remember whether I went to see both series being taped or not but I have a vague recollection of going to some other studios (can’t remember where… possibly more central?) for a taping as well, though possibly only for the non-broadcast series two pilot.
(anorak fully zipped up, and…)
Chris – many many thanks!
I think around that time, full ‘free for all’ use of the BBC studios by anyone wasn’t fully implemented, however as BBC Resources (BBC OB’s) had slightly more commercial freedom, I remember reading (may have been Broadcast) that they sent a couple of the OB’s up to the northern base at BBC Manchester, and converted a garage in Acton into open go rentable studio space – and crewed the studio by plugging it into one of the OB trucks.
Using that studio for Wanted all makes senses. As it was the highly likely that the BBC specialist camera unit who would have the techie knowhow to get 3 sets of minicams into phoneboxes, the rest of the show piggybacked off that infrastructure.
A whole series of Big Break during it’s dying mass produced years were recorded in that studio. The last show I remember being done from there was a World Cup review show (think Fantasy Football League but with none of the budget) for UK Gold G2, just before it was rebadged as ‘Dave’)
As BBC OB’s were sold around 8-ish years ago, the buyer SIS Live moved everything to their existing base at Langley (you could occasionally see an OB parked up out the back of the lot on the left just after the train zipped through Langley station) and knocked down Kendal Avenue to sell the land.
The Apprentice boardroom internals are recorded at Dukes Island Studios – it is the studios on the left just before Park Royal tube station as you head out of London on the A40 as the road flattens towards Hangar Lane gyratory.
(unzips anorak and wanders off contented)
I preferred the Ray Cokes era of Wanted.
Does anyone at the Bar know how a German version of this show was called? Maybe I’m mistaking, but I remember a show back when I was in primary school (2000 – 2004) where a team of three tried not to be found and fulfill tasks each day (similiar to Wanted). For every task they got “credit cards” or vouchers if you will worth a certain amount of money (something between 500 and 1000 DM or €). Whenever they were caught by the public they had to give at least one card to the person that found them (instead of just losing the money from the task). The tasks were always about giving away information of where you were thus the team didn’t make much money to not give away too much information. I know there have been live shows, but I am not sure, if they had to stay in phoneboxes (I think by that time most phone boxes weren’t actual boxes in Germany anymore so it seems unlikely in my memory). The show must have been on Prosieben or Kabel Eins, although RTL II is also possible. I think it was hosted by someone like Steven Gätjen.
So it sounds like an adaptation of Wanted but I can’t find anything about it. Though I definitely remember this weird voucher mechanic which has always been a problem when they were trying to bribe the public not to film them and send that to the producers (because they had to give away more money if evidence of their location was sent in) since they couldn’t give away any amount but had to calculate with those voucher values.
It might have been something similar that Swedish company Strix produced around that sort of time which is a similar but different concept, although I can’t remember what it was called.