We’re going to go a bit arty and This American Life on you viewers, I’m Ira Glass. We all know of the story of how Michael Larson managed to break Press Your Luck in the 1980s and won over $100,000 in doing so, but what about the more minor shows where there isn’t large amounts of cash on the line? Friend of the Bar the Internet Celebrity @shoutsatcows reports:

Blockbusters.  An early student TV favourite, its early 90s Bob Holness heyday led to ill-advised resurrections hosted by Aspell, Liza “nepotism” Tarbuck and, in today’s episodes, radio’s Simon Mayo.  Once you get over the inherent weirdness of seeing a radio personality talking, it’s actually a reasonable attempt at a reboot.  While the graphics have been updated, there’s a nice sense of the familiar, from the hexagonal board, via the gold runs, to the knowing hilarity (not hilarity) of asking for a “p” please.

Today’s solo team is a ginger Yorkshire lad called Ryan.  Ryan, it turns out, is quite good at the main Blockbusters game, easily dispatching his opponents, despite some wacky answers (“Fonichiwa?”), and them having an extra team member.

What happens next to Ryan? Find out under the cut, when our programme continues.

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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.

Hurrah! The world’s favourite Italian quiz is back this evening. I don’t know if Paolo Bonolis will be job sharing again this year.

If you don’t know what it is you can read about it here, and fingers crossed you can watch it ungeoblocked on Mediaset catch-up here if you are that way inclined.

CeletheRef has a list of all currently known changes.

Edit: If you’re not following TV Cream spin-off Why Don’t Youtube on Twitter this week you probably ought to as they’re going through interesting gameshow clips.

I’ve drawn Brazil in the sweepstakes, so I fancy my chances!

In other news, I put “rugby gameshow” in Youtube and this is the first thing that showed up, an episode of the US show Jackpot with the poster’s high school rugby coach in:

This is quite an interesting story and although it’s been reported by the Mirror it doesn’t seem to have picked up much traction. Basically Tim Wonnacott’s been suspended from Bargain Hunt after an apparent argument with a producer on Friday – details unknown, an investigation is taking place.

Bargain Hunt is an absolute daytime monster and has been for about twenty years, usually the biggest show in daytime outside the big 5pm quizzes and regularly getting 30%+ shares (which makes it basically the biggest show on television outside of soaps and Strictly/X Factor. If only schedulers would put it on at 9pm, it would *literally* get 8m viewers nightly). This would not be the first time the show’s iconic host has parted ways, the series shot to fame under the stewardship of David “cheap as chips” Dickinson and became even more popular under Wonnacott. Both very much personality hosts.

Guest hosts (the regular antiques experts, presumably) will be covering the rest of the recording of this series, much like when Wonnacott was training for Strictly Come Dancing. Who’d be the next permanant host? I reckon with a bit of sharpening up Anita Manning is just eccentric enough and seems to have a large enough persona to carry it off full time. We’ll see though.

We don’t know the reasons for the suspension, but we will look forward to Wonnacott’s Win A Cot on Amazon Prime in due course. The other question is what will happen to the other shows on the BBC where he acts in an expert or voiceover capacity?

In the meantime we wait for ratings for Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris, but the reviews are mixed at best. On the one hand shows are made for viewers not critics, on the other this sort of thing just doesn’t seem to go down well in the US (see Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, My Kinda Town etc.)