The Free European Song Contest

By | May 14, 2020
10 Comments

If Eurovision: Europe Shine A Light! sounds too unbearably naff to watch on Saturday night, there is a (more difficult to watch) alternative!

Stefan Raab is putting on the Free European Song Contest on Pro 7 hosted by Stephen Gatjen and Conchita Wurst, where fifteen countries will battle it out in a live song contest using Eurovision rules but with a socially distant twist. The UK is being represented by Call Me Home hitmaker Kelvin Jones and Mel C will be the person awarding the UK’s scores. Ireland are being represented by Sion Hill, a few countries’ acts haven’t been announced yet (it sounds very much like “who’s local who we can get?”). Raab has form here, having produced the Bundesvision Song Contest for many years.

I have no idea how it will all work out – there’s going to be live voting but it’s not being shown outside of Pro7 on Germany, Austria and Switzerland as far as I can tell, but if you want an alternative to several hour interval act the EBU are putting out on Saturday, you can use the Dark Arts and tune into Pro7 from 7:15pm UK.

Incredible Games

By | May 11, 2020
15 Comments

We’ve hit the motherlode, if you missed this last week this Youtube channel has uploaded loads of episodes of series two of Incredible Games. The one with Gary Parker as SAM, the lift.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9NyouWp9cY

The games are really pretty good (although really there needs to be more of them, or at least a better rotation), it’s surprising that there’s little explanation of how levels translate to the time penalty for the Penthouse in most of the episodes (it’s three minutes minus five seconds for every ten levels they’re short of 200).

I was always a big fan of the show’s aesthetic. Series two is much less silly without David Walliams at the helm, possibly to the show’s detriment, possibly not, this shows up in the types of games that survived the cut from series one – The Dark Knight and Alphabet Soup is in, Planet Susan (which I quite liked), that sound effects game and the quickie games played on the monitor are out.

It’s finally here! Schlag den Brig 3! #sdb3

By | May 9, 2020
12 Comments

Saturday, 8pm – 11:30-ish (UK),
Here and on Youtube

Hashtags: #sdb3, #imbackingbrig, #teamdan

We wanted to this years ago but real life got in the way (i.e. David and Dan were getting regular TV production gigs) and all it has taken was a worldwide pandemic to bring the internet together for our very own low-budget (but surprisingly high-budget and high-concept for a webshow one-off) take on legendary German show Schlag den Raab/Star. Daniel Peake and myself will take each other on over fifteen mystery games of knowledge, wit, strategy and dexterity devised by television’s very own David Bodycombe. Each game is worth an increasing amount of points – 1 for game one, two the game two, all the way to fifteen for game 15. 120 points on offer, so the first one to 61 points wins.

All we know is that viewer interactivity for some games has been promised, and we’ve each got a mystery box of items.

Here is Nick Gates (i.e. Brig Bother) pretending to be a bookie and talking in the third person on who is likely to do best on what tasks:

  • Quiz: You see it’s interesting – Dan is a proper quiz writer and master whereas Nick is just some guy who writes about formats. You can never rule him out though, some of his biggest wins in the previous episodes have been in the quiz arena and it’s occasionally surprising what he can pull out at short notice.
  • Wit: Dan is undoubtably better at puzzle solving and wordplay. Nick is funnier though, I think we can all agree.
  • Strategy: Surprisingly (to him), Nick has come out on top on many of the pure strategy events in the past – he’s a bit route one, but he picks up a game very quickly. Dan was quite good at Duck Duck Goose or whatever the bloody hell it was called.
  • Dexterity: Pretty even I think, Nick may surprise but just easily might just blame blaming having a weak eye for the more 3D events. He hopes there isn’t much crafting.
  • Six years have passed: And Nick has been on blood pressure tablets and has put on weight since the last one so there’s likely to be a worsening of his skills he’s happy to blame on being almost 39 now. Dan is the same age Nick was when he won, which may or may not be an advantage I don’t know.
  • Who is going to win? Nick will win the first eleven games for a 66-0 victory.

Schlag den Brig is based on Brainpool’s Beat Your Host format and is been produced and hosted by David Bodycombe and Scott Rux. Daniel and Nick’s Twitter’s can also be found.

You can watch the first two here:

Schlag den Brig. Tomorrow. 8pm. #imbackingbrig

By | May 8, 2020
2 Comments

A message from David:

Hi all,

We’re hoping as many of you as possible can lend your support to Schlag den Brig on Saturday night. Some SIX YEARS in the making, we’ve had the bright idea of staying at home and playing some quizzes over the internet. Original, yes? So, have I been able to come up with some decent games in all that time?

I think so. Many of the games are playalongable, and some even require your input. Unlike the usual follow-along broadcasts, Nick and Dan will have various MYSTERY PROPS which they’ll have to use as part of the fun. I can’t reveal what any of the games are, but I can hint that they will involve:

– A 10p coin!
– A ping-pong ball!
– Acrylic paint!
– A shoe bag!
– Electrician’s tape!

If that’s not a Saturday night extravaganza, I don’t know what is. Seriously, the whole thing has taken tens of hours and not insignificant financial outlay from the team, and we’ve even built our OWN APP for this. So, we’d really appreciate it if you could join us “as it happens” and cheer us on. 

YouTube chat will be enabled, and #sdb3 is the official Twitter handle (as well as #teamdan and #imbackingbrig, if you must). The whole thing will likely take over 3 hours, so do join us when you can. Wir sehen uns dort!

Oh God.

Wer ist The Mole?

By | May 6, 2020
51 Comments

Just a heads up, the German reboot of The Mole starts tonight on Sat 1 at 7:15pm (UK)/8:15pm (Germany). Hosted by some cowboys and set in Argentina.

We’re not going to give it its own page as this first series is effectively a “best of” Belgian and Dutch Mole challenges by the looks of things, and it’s been made with help from the Belgian production company which should be a sign of quality. But apparently the runtime is two hours an episode which feels a bit unneccesary and gives me horrible flashbacks to the Australian one that was on several times a week. We’ll see.