Don’t worry about the new Tier restrictions, this bar will stay open for the forseeable. This post is going to be pinned to the top – a signpost of sorts, so you can jump to relevant things that will be going up over the next week or so. You should use this post for general comments for the period. And don’t forget we have a Discord!

• Celebrity The Celebrity Wall Versus Celebrities Thursday 6:55 BBC1 – Probably not worth its own post, but there’s the link to the original Show Discussion post.
• Epic Gameshow: The Price is Right Christmas Special – Thursday at 8:15 on ITV. No point starting a separate post for this, use the linked Epic Gameshow Show Discussion one.
• One Night In Hamleys – Thursday C4 9pm. Likely to be of interest even if not specifically a competitive format.
• Miranda’s Game With Showbiz Names – Thursday, BBC1, 9:45pm. Kevin Hart’s Celebrity Game Face comes to the UK, and now it has Miranda.
• Boyard Land – France 2 have basically given up on this, burning three eps this week in the afternoons on Xmas Day, Boxing Day and the 27th, and further episodes next weekend. Pity, quality of life improvements abound for series two but it’s just not taken off.
• The Celebrity Wheel With Celebrities – Friday (Xmas Day) 6pm, BBC1 Not sure how different this will feel with celebs in the middle as well! Show Discussion post linked.
• Blankety Blank – Friday, 7pm, BBC1 – Filling a space in the Christmas Day schedule.
• The Story of SM:tv Live – Saturday, ITV, 9:25am – Note the am here! Likely to be of interest. Hopefully lots of Dec shouting at kids. Note this is repeated the following day at 8PM for those who can’t be bothered to set their alarms!
• The Masked Singer S2 – Saturday, ITV, 7pm – Not sure this is going to be worth a Show Discussion post – we know what the format is and it’s unlikely to be greatly different, it’s more fun playing along on Twitter or whatever anyway. Here’s the link to the original Show Discussion.
• Big Fat Quiz Of The Year – Saturday, 9:05pm, C4 – usually an entertaining enough watch.

What else is likely of interest across the next week? We’ll open up the Wie Is De Mol? 2021 page in due course, and The Poll of The Year will open January 2nd.

Edit: WIDM page is open!

Seismic news, although if you read the Stool Pigeon the other day there was certainly a hint that it may have been coming.

Great to see Pointless and House of Games will Still Be Things, intrigued to see what’s going to happen to shows he’s been producing like Cats Does Countdown, Would I Lie to You? and the like.

In other news, I had no idea Bradley Walsh’s How To Win At Gameshows was on last night on ITV, we answered a few questions during the initial planning stages of the doc when they were trying to work out what it was, I hope it was useful.

Something that ‘dropped’ on Netflix this last week that might be of interest to punters, Alice in Borderland, an eight episode Japanese mystery drama based on a popular manga. It’s a little bit like Cube, a little bit like 3% and little bit like Lost (the mysterious island TV show rather than the reality show). It’s also *quite* violent, it’s rated 15 but I reckon it’s on the cusp of an 18 really.

Loser Arisu and his loser friends are larking about and hide from the police in a toilet stall. Suddenly all the lights go out, and when they come back they discover that (almost) everyone in Shibuya has suddenly disappeared, the streets are deserted, all they see is a screen light up telling them in which direction the Game Arena is located. Without spoiling too much, everyone in this world is forced to play cruel and unusual games – winning a game earns days on a “visa” where they don’t have to play, but not playing means laser death from above and losing games mean death by other means. What are they prepared to do to stay alive, and how will this affect them? And what IS going on?

Some of the games have entertaining Mole-like elements, but none of the “a-ha!” moments are as strong as something in Liar Game, for example (please buy up Liar Game Netflix, thanks). Still if you, like me, are a fan of This Sort Of Thing and you have the stomach for some exploding bodies then it’s well worth a watch.

I need to get round to watching the second series of Kakegurui at some point as well, which is something else you might enjoy.

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! It’s Sonja Zietlow vs Jurgen Milski! With musical support from Bosses and Sarah Connor!

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.

After so many people confidently predicted they wouldn’t release the Taskmaster S11 line-up after the finale last night, they released the Taskmaster S11 line-up after the finale last night.

Off the top of my head, really excited Lee Mack’s doing it, even if he’s crap at the tasks he ought to be good at the studio chat. Most of the others are a bit of a mystery – Jamali Maddix’s beard has been an up and coming Dave Celebrity for a little while and is likable enough. Mike Wozniak did a podcast called Mr Gameshow with Diane Morgan a few years ago which was quite amusing, it’s been pointed out to me that he also plays a character on Greg Davies sitcom Man Down. I’m afraid I had to look up the women – Charlotte Ritchie is an actress and singer-songwriter who was in Fresh Meat and Call the Midwife, Sarah Kendall is an Australian comic. So there we are. Edit: Thanks Steve in the comments, Wozniak won the original Edinburgh Taskmaster over ten years ago.

There’s a Champion of Champions happening as well with the winners of series 6-10 being invited back. It almost feels like Too Much Taskmaster, even if it’s no different schedule wise to being on Dave really (except the New Year thing).

As Depeche Mode once sang, “is there something to do?” Well yes Dave, this weekend there is.

• This Saturday it’s the final Schlag den Star of the year, Sonia Zietlow vs last-minute stand-in Jürgen Milski. We will have our usual Watchalong from 7:15 UK.
• Voting is still open for the Bother’s Bar Game Night Award Ceremony Special! Lines will close early in the New Year.
• And speaking of award ceremonies, it’s just over two weeks until Poll of the Year. Is there anything missing on the UKGameshows list that ought to be there?
• Finally, hot on the heels of that Noel’s House Party compilation thing, the Youtube Channel fortboyard1990de will be launching a three hour fan made documentary based on the German 1990 Fort Boyard series, which I’ve got a big soft spot for, featuring interviews with cast and crew, and the whole thing is produced by Daniel Logemann who of course you all recognise from German industrial band Massiv in Mensch. That will go out on Sunday at 7pm GMT (8pm GMT), 30 years to the minute of the first episode going out. Edit: here’s a direct link.