More Things! Shiny things! More! More!

• Actually before the new things, an old thing you mind find interesting – the entirety of American Gladiators, the original 90s stuff and the Hulk Hogan one is now up on Amazon Prime. Big points!
• Also Happy One Question Series Two day! We thought it would never happen, but here we are. You can read the original Show Discussion post from 2022, if you want.
• Channel 4 have signed up to The Hunt, which sounds basically like Non-Celebrity Non-Bear Hunt! Actually it reminds us a bit more of a show from 2013 in the US called Capture, which had a Hunger Games vibe. Contestants hunt or are hunted in the woods, doing tasks to build a prize pot of up to £100,000, but with roles switching after getting caught. As Tantusar on my Discord suggested, “its just fuckin tag in the woods innit,” and really how could I possibly argue?
• Channel 4 are also signing up to The Inheritance from the makers of C4 non-hit Rise and Fall Studio Lambert (and also The Traitors). 12 people get set tasks by The Deceased from videos “beyond the grave” to add money to a pot which they’ll have to decide between themselves who can be trusted with it. The Deceased set to be played by “a British icon” – sounds as if they’re going to go high camp for this, my money’s on a Joan Collins/Judi Dench type.
• Alan Carr and Susie Dent – together at last! for a show also on Channel 4 attempting to find Britain’s Secret Genius which from the TV Zone description sounds a bit like The Piano, but for people who can do sudokus.

Lots and lots of New Things coming to light in the last 24 hours, let’s round them up.

• TV Zone reporting that Puzzling on Channel 5 has been unaxed, great news for fans of counting bricks in igloos and poor ADR. No idea whether Lucy Worsley will be hosting again, although surely the fact she’s done some well regarded documentaries recently suggests that is the draw. Apparently Potato are behind it now 12 Yard are no more.
• Apparently it’s International One Question week, as the nation quivers in anticipation for the second series starting on Channel 4 on Friday after an almost three year wait, the format has just sold to Quebec. But that’s not all! Also revealed today by Sony is 100 Choices, where a team have one question but this time 100 possible multiple choices (making it FIVE TIMES as good as One Question, evidently) but in an exciting twist, they have to do physical challenges to knock out possible wrong answers. It actually sounds a bit like how I envisioned One Question was going to be before discovering that answers were a bit cleverer and more Jeopardy-like in nature.
• ITV have bought the rights to Norwegian hit The Box and are putting them out to tender. In it, 12 celebs are put in bright yellow boxes and transported somewhere. The boxes open, they have to work out what the challenge is, which could be anything, and get it done quickly to stay in the game. I’ve seen a taster tape, it is Very Much The Sort Of Thing We Like – more action-adventure than anticipated, plenty of outdoorsy stuff, abseiling off off buildings, jumping into water, exploring warehouses, finding yourselves in an ice rink to a packed crowd… also does quite a good job of getting across the tension of the celebs in each box knowing they’re about to do something, but not what or when. Also lots of bright yellow boxes lined up on a hill or wherever is good visual. Fingers crossed it makes a good series.
• Finally great news for fans of FAST PACED and HIGH OCTANE quizzes, there’s a new one looking for contestants and it sounds basically like Quizzy Ant and Dec’s Push the Button. And that might be quite fun! You can click on it to take you to the application page if you want, which is just as well because if you mistype it slightly you might end up applying for gay porn instead I have just discovered. Which might be even better, who knows.

This has just popped up on ITV’s contestant callouts, The Neighbourhood, evidently with Graham Norton (unless this particular neighbourhood just has a giant cardboard cutout of Graham Norton in it).

In The Neighbourhood, it’s not about keeping up with the Joneses – it’s about beating them!

Unlike anything you’ve seen before, households from all walks of life will move in side by side. They’ll live as neighbours but compete as rivals. Whether facing off in street-sized games or gossiping over the garden fence, in the ultimate reality showdown.

ITV are looking for dynamic families and housemates to take part in this new ground breaking programme where one household will win a life changing cash prize!

Sounds a little bit like The Button Survivor meets Neighbours. Doesn’t feel like a very Graham Norton thing, although evidently he’s branching out a bit more these days. We’ll see.

Extremely excited about this! Mister Doc who has been hitting it out of the park with his archive Youtube channel recently is going to put up two episodes of Trick or Treat, the first one Monday at 6pm.

So for the uninitiated this was LWT’s take on Let’s Make a Deal, albeit through the prism of the IBA’s games of skill and prize limit rules which went out on Saturday evenings in 1989. It was hosted by Mike Smith and, in one of his earliest regular TV gigs, Julian Clary as The Joan Collins Fan Club – would expect this to have been quite a brave decision for ITV in 1989.

I distinctly used to remember the endgames where all the show’s winners came back to win the star (or not so star prize) which usually involved picking one of several keys, Julian going off to lie down in a darkened room, one player trying a key and getting eliminated and Julian then “finding” another key off-stage, too late for the eliminated player – I wonder if you could get away with that wheeze now.

The eight-year-old me remembers really enjoying this so it will be interesting to see how well it stands up 35 years later.

If you didn’t see this a few days ago, Wink Martindale’s Youtube channel posted a full episode of the 1991 HTV West local adaptation of Press Your Luck, something lots of people have been itching to see for a while (what’s left? A 1984 edition of Jeopardy with Derek Hobson is probably the current Holy Grail).

So lots of things to remark on here, let’s do a list.

• Enjoyed Rick Turk’s reinterpretation of the theme tune, very much in the Australian mould of “basically the same but just different enough to not have to pay for the licence for it” Aussie composers are wont to do. Very Grundy.
• Two HUNDRED Pounds!
• Paul Coia shouting “Whaaaaammm-mmmyyyy!” every few seconds.
• The quiz rounds go on a bit. How much of that is to fill the extra minutes a UK half-hour show is, how much to satisfy the IBA “game of skill” regulation of the time I don’t know. The second half definitely doesn’t need that many questions.
• In lieu of a spinning stage, those turning desk displays are quite fun.
• No Whammy animations. in fact they seemed to have redesigned it a little bit.
• The board calibrated so a choice space could be between a Whammy and some points, or some points and a different amount of points so not really a choice at all.
• It looks like those Whammy pop-ups are on some flimsy pieces of card.
• There are so many spins in play it’s little wonder the show ends the way it does, really.
• UKGameshows suggests this got not one but TWO series, a second one in 1992, so I wonder if they made any improvements to it.