This has taken me by surprise a bit – the line-up for series two is already well known but we were aware they were filming two series at once, although we didn’t think they’d shoot the studio stuff at the same time as series two (I thought there were a lot of recording sessions).
@BothersBar don’t know if s3 lineup is news? pic.twitter.com/vaAHZPNTvK
— Tom Flynn (@whattheflynn) April 15, 2016
Good line-up, probably the most Dave-friendly of the three. Series two is set to go out in the Summer, I would presume series three won’t go out immediately afterwards but you probably won’t have to wait until next Summer either.
Yay! I’ve thought for a while Sarah Pascoe would be a good pick. Bit disappointed there seems to be a consistent 4:1 gender split, mainly as I am willing Sue Perkins to be on the next series.
Looking forward to more Taskmaster, anyway!
Today a remake of My Man Can airs on Sat 1 in Germany. The studio has been changed a lot, the format changed very little. There is now poker theme anymore.
And tomorrow the first try to have a Raab-like celebrity sports show without Raab: Das große deutsche Promi-Völkerballturnier (The great German celebrity dodgeball-tournament). It has been heavily promoted all across their channels (especially Prosieben’s celebrity magazine Taff and Sat.1’s breakfast television) with some teams being completed by drawing players for each one in a big lottery-like studio. I’m really looking forward it and am surprised they chose to do this although the small dodgeball trend has been over for a few years now.
Ah, they were advertising this a lot during SdStar last week. Is Raab’s company still making it or is it a completely different company?
Unfortunately his company is not producing any of the celebrity sports shows Prosieben will show in the next couple of months. When Raab was leaving, they had fired 60 or so people and were hoping that others who were working in Raab shows were able to work on other prime time shows, but they haven’t been able to establish a successful format. They even tried to bring back Popstars on RTL2, but it was put into a saturday afternoon slot after two episodes. Since then they only produced shows for niche channels (Nightwash, a comedy show in a laundry) and Schlag den Star and a comedy personality show on Sat.1 with little success (Luke – die Woche und ich). The company has a successful website with old tv shows (myspass.de) and manages comedy talents, but the TV part is shrinking.
Don’t know if anyone caught this, but a little info on the Robot Wars reboot:
http://realscreen.com/2016/04/05/miptv-16-inside-the-bbcs-robot-wars-reboot/
(I’m wondering how each ep will be structured so they can go from 8 robots to one in a 60-minute slot; 4 one on ones then the winners go to a 4-bot brawl perhaps?)
I saw that pic of someone who turns out to be called Chris Brogden and thought “blimey, Dara O’Briain got old quickly”.
Hoping for a return to series three’s route one single-elimination format for seven one-on-one matches, but “the update is that we just focused a little bit more on the stories of the people – the builders and the roboteers” (SIGH) so your suggestion sadly seems far more plausible.
Here’s a bit of a find- three episodes of the 2nd season of Timekeepers- including the series final (over three videos- it’s split a little weird)- There’s been eps of the 1st season up, but not the 2nd. Here’s the 1st:
https://youtu.be/EqaKMWbdR20?t=2m58s
That series 3 line up is much stronger than the series 2 line up in my opinion
Heyo, just got back from watching a recording of Taskmaster, so I’ll deposit some remarks on you.
The biggest news is they only recorded one episode, suggesting they’re doing 2x3episode series (or there are more filming dates to come maybe?). They were referring to it as “series 3” rather than “series 2b” but they also suggested beforehand series 2 was in the can (and I know they only did 3 recordings for that).
Warm up was dond man Mark Olver, first time I’d seen him so that was fun.
The show is pretty unchanged. I think they might have done a remix of the theme music, it sounded a bit different (less horns-y) from how I remember. The prize round is now themed round an object (“clocks”) rather than a generic concept. Alex seemed to be more involved in the chatter (although that might just be a studio/edit thing).
They seem to have realised (more) that the best tasks are those that provoke a bit of discourse in the studio. I don’t want to spoil any details but all of them had some sort of judgement call, usually one which totally affected the result. (I mean I had a sample size of 3 so pinch of salt.) There was also one incredible bit of cheating from Gorman. There was a bit of a issue with the live task just being a load of chaos with everyone doing it at the same time and no footage playback so no opportunity to mock/quibble. (Which now I think about it has always been a bit of a problem I reckon.)
Obviously the main thing is the cast. In the order they were sat:
-Sara Pascoe was really surprisingly fun. She was totally into it and took a very sporty/physical approach to the tasks, which was quite different to anyone else from her show or S1.
-Rob Beckett was also a surprise. I had low expectations because I don’t really like him on MTW, etc., but he was really really creative and totally sparked with the surreality. I’d actually compare him a bit to Key from S1.
-Paul Cowdhry was a bit flat. I think he was a bit unlucky with how the tasks worked out, but he didn’t seem to stick up for himself like the others would. Sadly the weak point of the lineup for me.
-Dave Gorman was pretty much how I expected, although he tended to take the ‘keep it simple’ approach on the tasks, he was probably the most fun in the studio.
-Al Murray was also mostly what you would expect. I would add that he seemed to be a big fan of the show and having a great time and was giggling for about 75% of the recording.
Overall, I thought the cast was strong, very funny, but maybe not quite as unpredictable as the series 1 cast. There seemed to be more times than normal where lots of them had gone for the ‘most obvious’ thing; paticularly Gorman and Murray actually.
Great stuff, thanks Tom.