The Gabster Gabby Logan is the new host of surprise second series of test-your-strength bowling quiz The Edge.
We are aware of minor changes but not the broader picture, it has been intimated that The Edge is a bit bigger on the larger lanes, for example, but hopefully it will have corrected some of the more obvious things you’d think they’d have picked up in playtesting but evidently didn’t, namely the quiz bit manages to be really boring and goes on too long and the danger zones were completely pointless and added zero to the proceedings.
Great news for fans of mid three-figure prizes and rubbish jeopardy in the guise of strategy, the surprise second series of The Edge starts Monday now fronted by The Gabster herself Gabby Logan. Format tweaks are promised (thank goodness) and it looks like there are new arrows on the set background. A Show Discussion post will go up for it on Monday, you can read the thread for series one here if you want.
The following Monday (that’s the 19th) Pick Me! begins on ITV at 3pm, upcoming talent Stephen Mulhern fronts a game of hard questions, comedy costumes and comedy bluffing. Will this be a bit too in your face for an audience used to Tipping Point? We shall see.
In other news Challenge have bought the rights to The Million Pound Drop series 1-3 – that’s probably going to require quite a bit of editing to get rid of all the ‘look how live we are stuff’ like the clock and references to people playing along with the app. Still, you can thrill at how slow the first series felt all over again, and at that bit where a couple get to the final question with over half a million.
There are two shows on SRO Audiences looking for contestants that have pretty much exactly the same blurb: For What It’s Worth with Fern Britton and Masterpiece with Alan Titchmarsh. One’s BBC, one’s ITV. It’s uncanny. If you like antiques and collectables (it sounds like the BBC one has a general knowledge element as well) why not try and get on both?
Finally an episode of Celebrity Squares from 1977 has turned up on Youtube look:
The deal will see ITVSGE take two of CJ E&M’s Korean formats to UK broadcasters, while CJ E&M will look at two of ITVSGE’s formats for its family of channels. The companies will also work together to develop the formats for interested broadcasters.
Meanwhile, ITVSGE will acquire From Start to Clear and The Genius Game from CJ E&M’s catalogue. CJ E&M’s longest-running entertainment show, From Start to Clear sees a celebrity host and his guests play a computer game – but the twist is they can’t stop until they finish the game.
The company will also take The Genius Game, which sees 13 players from different backgrounds, from poker champions to CEOs and politicians, compete in a battle of wits by playing 12 strategic games.
Korea is getting The Secret Life of Students and Come Date With Me out of the deal.
Look I know nobody actually calls it The Genius Game but AAAAARRRRGGHHH I AM SO SO EXCITED! But let us be clear here, this doesn’t mean that it’s definitely definitely happening and if it does happen there’s no guarantee it will translate correctly. It’s probably a bit more ITV2 than 1 but that’s alright because according to Kyunghoon in an interview he did recently that’s the age range that’s given it it’s massive Korean ratings anyway.
The Genius is the greatest reality game since The Mole. Contestants take part in games of strategy, logic and game theory to try and outwit each other to the top all to an amazing soundtrack and editing techniques. We first looked at it in 2013 and liked what we saw and have been avid viewers since.
Edit: David B makes the very good point in the comments that this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to an ITV channel.
New reality sporting competition in a bid to lure people (hopefully advertiser friendly males, by intention) away from the Champions League which has now vacated ITV.
Richard Bacon hosts as eight sporting stars battle it out in various challenges testing all sorts of physical and mental prowess and their will to win. Each episode the two worst performers face a Night Challenge to stay in the competition, the loser goes home. It’s a bit like Superstars but with challenges rather than sports, basically.
It’s actually not a bad idea for a show and the original Belgian show we wrote about a while ago showed a certain promise but felt ultra cheap, although had some interesting ideas – I quite liked that (in the first series at least) the Night Challenge didn’t necessarily send someone home, for example.
As to the chances of this show’s success – it’s a big shame that few of the celebs competing are really relevant these days – Gail Emms is good value on Fighting Talk when she appears, and Matt Le Tissier is currently tearing up Countdown in the afternoons, we’re not backing Fatima Whitbread to win (although best of luck obv.). It all feels rather low key.
This being said though we’re of the belief that a reality competition is probably the best way for ITV to grow out of it’s Tuesday night flop zone – if it fails then it’s no surprise, but if it catches on then you’ve got what increasingly becomes a hit on what is usually a dead night. I’m not sure this is the show that will do it, but I suspect it will be solidly entertaining for anyone who does tune in.
OK so something quite interesting was revealed this morning and that’s the final line-up for the sequel to Bother’s Bar party favourite The Jackbox Party PackThe Jackbox Party Pack 2. The line-up includes Fibbage 2 and Quiplash XL and new game Bomb Corp (puzzle game where you work as a team to diffuse bombs and shout at each other), Earwax (impress the judge by selecting the sound effects that best fit a given theme), but the one I want to talk about is a new game called Bidiot, the sequel to Drawful.
And the reason you will want to know about it is that it would fit into Bother’s Bar favourite The Genius nigh-on perfectly.
You’re each given the titles of some pictures you have to draw and are then handed $3,000. Before each lot you sent secret information as to what each picture is worth selling it to art buyers after the auction, just by the titles. The lots come up and everyone bids. When a lot goes the money is removed from your account and the person who drew it gets half the money and you find out what it will go for later at the end. You can bid up your own pieces to try and force someone else to pay over the odds and getting you more money, risking that you’re top bidder and doing yourself out of half your bid money. If you know a piece is worthless you can try bidding up to try and make other people believe there’s massive profit to be made. Halfway through you’re each given a screw to FORCE other people to make a bid. Finally if you’re low on cash you can get credit from a loan shark, although you have to pay it back by the end.
I love it. But I also have reservations – I think you have to draw in good faith, mainly because that’s the funny bit but also because with 12 blank canvasses it’d be a complete crapshoot (they have already inbuilt a certain element of this with several titles that are different but on the same theme, you’ll only get the titles on your phone). The bigger caveat is that Drawful was a complete everyman sort of game – everyone gets it pretty much immediately (draw the thing then try and guess what everyone else was drawing). I’m a bit scared of trying to explain this game to my non-gamey chums who enjoyed Drawful. Although I suppose we could always just play Drawful.
But we will see. The Jackbox Party Pack 2 is out on October 13th on all sorts of different devices and that’s worldwide for $24.99, so probably £15-20 here in the UK.
Ten contestants given fifty lives each to complete five very difficult challenges, whilst “hilarious commentary from Irish comedy duo The Rubberbandits” is promised.
It looks like a very lo-fi take on the slapstick physical comedy game, and we do have something to compare it to – we wrote a thing about the German show Crash Games here which is the same show but with a slightly different pairs-based format. I quite liked its sense of the absurd.
We’ve had it suggested to us that the commentary is quite similar to Come Dine With Me. Will it work? We shall see.
Edit: An official source clarifies the show’s origins:
We made the pilot of Almost Impossible in August 2013, for Comedy Central. While they were deciding whether to commission it or not, the pilot was shown to the whole international Endemol group. Endemol Germany were very keen on the idea, but couldn’t pitch it until we had the option back from Comedy Central. So rather than wait, they created an idea ‘inspired’ by it…
So similar DNA but actually a different show. Thanks!
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