It’s Eurovision week!

By | May 17, 2021
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Semi 1: Tuesday 8pm, BBC4
Semi 2: Thursday 8pm, BBC 4 (UK votes in this one)
Grand Final: Saturday 8pm, BBC1

It’s Eurovision week! It’s in Rotterdam! Hopefully Iceland won’t being everybody down! Or the Middle East.

Not sure what to add really, it’s more fun discussing it live on Twitter or whatever. Perhaps we should have a sweepstake as to how long the grand final interval is going to be (we’re not having a sweepstake as to how long the grand final interval is going to be).

That’s certainly how I’ll be watching the semi-finals, I’m fortunate enough with the unlocking to have a small group of people to watch the final with. If you miss that experience, Dan Peake is offering up commentary with guests on his Twitch channel for the semi-finals.

The UK entry is called Embers, it’s by James Newman, we’re not expecting it to win, although I’m going in pretty much blind so I’ve no idea what the other songs are like.

Things to do tonight and this week

By | May 15, 2021
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TONIGHT! Join us in the Bother’s Bar Discord from around 7:15 UK as we watch the second of ProSieben’s now annual Free European Song Contests.

The first one last year was good fun, especially given how quickly it was thrown together by Stefan Raab after the actual Eurovision decided to cancel. Conchita Wurst and Steven Gatjen preside as 16 acts who basically live in Germany but have backgrounds elsewhere in Europe compete in a Eurovision-style competition.

This is a casual watchalong, it won’t be streamed to Youtube, and you won’t need to be able to access Pro7 yourselves.

And next week! This is a thing that’s happening daily!

Show Discussion: Tom Allen’s Quizness

By | May 13, 2021
22 Comments

Fridays, 8pm,
Channel 4

Rapidly becoming TV’s hardest working man Tom Allen invites contestants to show off their knowledge in a bid to win £25,000.

BUT, it’s not just knowledge that’s needed but an element of mental agility too as they must usually do something to the answers to make it sound a bit silly, whether that be substituting words that begin with certain letters with different ones, or forming a chain of answers that builds up to a punchline.

A bit Big Money Richard Osman’s House Of Games? Maybe. I can say, having done some of the early runthroughs, that there’s a subset of people who are likely to absolutely dig it, and probably a subset of people it’s likely to leave a bit cold. Lots of Bother’s Bar sorts working behind the scenes on this, so I’m hoping it’s a good end result.

But what do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Show Discussion: The Answer Trap

By | May 9, 2021
40 Comments

Weekdays, 3pm,
Channel 4

Anita Rani invites contestants to play Dis or Dat whilst avoiding D’other for a potential £10,000.

Teams must try and sort lists into categories, but resident fiends Bobby Seagull and local boy Frank Paul have snuck in answers that don’t belong in either list – answer traps, which our contestants must try to avoid.

This looks like great fun from the trailers – it’s certainly got a great look and front of camera talent. I hope there’s some sort of competition between Seagull and Paul in getting people to fall for their answers. If it’s good I hope it doesn’t get lost in the daytime shuffle – Channel 4 not really the sort of place people go for this sort of thing in the afternoons. It’s being produced by Ben Shephard’s OMG Entertainment, who have done pretty well with Lingo and The Cube. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Show Discussion: Unbeatable

By | May 9, 2021
41 Comments

Weekdays, 2:15pm,
BBC1

We’ve had Pointless answers, Impossible answers, Tenable answers and now we have a potential Only Connect question as Jason Manford invites contestants to find Unbeatable answers.

Contestants see a board of six rankable answers to a question and must try and pick the best one for big cash prizes. The blurb suggests a hold ’em or fold ’em poker element, we’ll see if that transpires.

The set certainly looks colourful and this ought to be the sort of thing Manford should be quite good at. The BBC are backing it with 50 episodes. The last time Possessed and 12 Yard collaborated we got Catchpoint which is pretty good. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Schlag den Star Watchalong 8th May 2021

By | May 7, 2021
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Saturday, 7:15pm (UK) 8:15 (CET),
Pro Sieben and naughty internet streaming

Yo, what are you doing this evening? Not much these days I bet! So why not join us as two celebs battle it out for €100,000 in an empty studio across fifteen mystery games, one of which will be Blamieren oder Kassieren, live on German television?

As ever we will have our Discord open for live chat and quizzing and gossip and stuff. Remember it’s a privilege not a right so behave yourselves. To avoid cutting out, we advise turning Auto-sensitivity off and setting it to -85dB or so in your settings.

THIS EPISODE! The frühlingspause is over and tonight actresses and instagrammers Claudia Effenberg takes on Claudia Geiss for Elton’s briefcase with music set to come from Wincent Weiss and Alice Merton!

The link to the Youtube commentary stream will be live here from 7:15pm until end of broadcast.

This stream is commentary only. You will need to have a naughty stream running at the same time for the visuals. We are likely to be about 15-20 seconds behind the visual stream (and about a full minute behind if you’re watching an actual satellite feed), sorry.

The Opera VPN has apparently stopped being useful for SdS. Bother’s Bar recommends shelling out for a proper VPN service. Bother’s Bar uses ExpressVPN, other VPN services are available. Matt Clemson recommends Windscribe as a free alternative. We cannot take responsibility for anything you do to your system, so be careful and use some common sense.

To watch it would be useful to sign up for ProSieben’s catch-up service – it’s pretty simple to work out, don’t click the box if you don’t want e-mail messages. You will need to put in a proper e-mail because it will send you a confirmation. 

If anyone knows of any relatively safe livestreams, do feel free to share.