It’s time for the Annual Bother’s Bar Gameshow Category Rose D’or Predictathon

By | July 12, 2018

Can I make it five on the trot? I find it much harder to get excited by the genre these days so I’m increasingly unconfident. BUT. I’m certainly not too scared to put my money where my mouth is, so here is my prediction.

The full list of nominees can be found here.

  • What Would Your Child Do? I’m going to admit something: I never got to watch this. And it’s just basically Bet On Your Baby in slightly different wrapping. Can’t see it personally. 5% chance.
  • Big Bounce Battle – For all everyone was getting excited by physical games recently, the hype (and viewers) seems to have died down around them rather, certainly in Europe. Are trampolines too limiting? Also Bigheads won last year and I can’t see them picking two physical shows in a row. 10% chance.
  • Sorry About That (Sorry Voor Alles) – comedy hidden camera gameshow that’s been a hit in Belgium, and, most interestingly, has won lots of awards in the last year. People are filmed having weird stuff happen to them across 30 days and then discover they’re in a quiz and have to answer questions on things that happened. Hidden camera stuff hasn’t traditionally done brilliantly in this category (you have to go back all the way back to My New Best Friend in 2004, maybe Relentless in 2009) and it’s not like this sort of thing hasn’t been done before (Oblivious, Make My Day) and the Rose D’or judges tend to go for innovation. 30% chance.
  • 5 Gold Rings – not a perfect format by any means (although I think series two coming in October corrects many of the issues of the first one) but the visi-quiz did genuinely bring something new and interesting to the table, as well as pointless app playalong (when going by Philip Schofield’s Twitter, everyone was more than happy to just point at the screen). On the basis that nobody had really done Spot the Ball on TV before and that Rose d’Or judges don’t tend to worry if a show wasn’t that successful, my prediction is Possessed might be getting a second award here. 55% chance.

Christ, pressure. Results revealed in September.

Party like it’s your birthday

By | July 9, 2018

That’s right, it’s July 9th which means it’s my birthday! And one step even further away from the desired demographic. Hold your applause. To celebrate here’s a video of someone winning the birthday jackpot on Quiz Call about ten years ago. Which seems to be squashed for no discernable reason.

!mpossible gets promoted for the Summer

By | July 5, 2018

Thanks to James for spotting this, according to the Radio Times Bother’s Bar favourite !mpossible is getting a shot at the big time, taking over the coveted Pointless 5:15pm slot from July 16th. Presumably as a launchpad for !mpossible Celebrities, presumably coming to Saturday evenings soon.

Congrats to Rick Edwards, Hugh Rycroft and team. People had been suggesting this was a good idea, we will see if the internet is correct. I don’t know how long it will be running there for, it looks like the last 10 episodes of the 30 episode session recorded earlier this year. After that who knows? It probably could get away with repeating from the beginning, there will have been an awful lot of people who wouldn’t have seen it early afternoon.

It’s the Taskmaster Final tonight

By | July 4, 2018

I said I reckoned Liza Tarbuck would win it before the series started, it looks like that bet is coming good now.

Presumably we’ll be very close to an official S7 cast announcement as you can now get tickets to that set of recordings, recording 19th to 25th July at Pinewood.

Edit:

Series 7 line-up revealed!

  • James Acaster
  • Jessica Knappett
  • Phil Wang
  • Kerry A Godliman
  • Rhod Gilbert

Acaster and Gilbert the only names I’m familiar with (although I’ve heard of Wang), I look forward to finding out about the others in due course.