Two Tribes is back Monday

By | February 10, 2015

Solid 7/10 evening quiz and 2014 Hall of Fame CHAMPION Two Tribes is back for another series starting Monday (BBC2, 6pm), which comes a bit of a surprise. This time round the winner faces the rolling jackpot endgame (contestant must split seven people or things into two groups based on a category). I’ve heard how large it can get, it’s a shame they’ve not hilariously forcing them to take it in either book tokens or DIY vouchers.

In stunt news, Australia will officially be competing in the Eurovision Song Contest this year despite NOT EVEN BEING in Europe. If Australia win SBS will host it in conjunction with the broadcaster of the nation they decide to do it in, to pre-empt your question. It sounds like the idea of guest nations might become a regular thing.

Single Trouble

By | February 9, 2015

So someone at Channel 4 is getting sacked or it’s an intriguing way to try and wrestle some viewers from Tipping Point, but it sounds like someone’s put the wrong tape in and what was meant to be start of the much hyped Double Trouble week on Deal or No Deal, for Valentine’s, has been apparently replaced by a normal episode.

Amazing scenes.

tpointMEANWHILE! Hat Tip to David in the comments, this Christmas we’ve got the Tipping Point board game to look forward to! Just look at it!

And finally tonight, here’s a show you probably weren’t watching because you were probably watching Gladiators or something.

CRANK UP YOUR GRANNY! It’s Happy Families!

Eternal Glory

By | February 5, 2015

OK so here’s fun, you might have seen the story recently that ITV were looking into a few shows that skew male (because traditionally we’re difficult to reach, and hence advertisers will pay a large premium if they know young men are watching). The terribly titled but might be OK upcoming Mission Survive with Bear Grylls has this in mind, and it looks like they’ve asked TwoFour (currently making waves with the ABC1s on The Jump) to do a version of Belgian format Eternal Glory, broadcast locally as Eeuwige Roem.

In it, sportspeople (both men and women) compete in tests to see who is the ultimate sportsperson across disciplines like perserverance, stress, team building, power, that sort of thing. There are three tests each week, and the people at the bottom of the weekly leaderboard have to do a difficult Night Test to stay in the game. So far so Celebrity Born to Win with Dermot O’ Leary.

However there are a couple of things that make it a little bit more interesting, namely it’s a format from The New Belgian Primitives who sound like a 90s indie act but in fact are the guys behind Bother’s Bar favourites The Mole and De Slimste Mens ter Wereld amongst other things.

And look! Happily here’s the very first episode from the very first series on Vimeo with English subtitles so you can have a look for yourselves:

Eternal Glory Engl. Subt.- Perseverance from TV4Mats by HH107 on Vimeo.

The challenges are quite fun (albeit, and you’ll notice this, hugely cheap) but there would certainly need to be some presentational changes if it wants to work in the UK, fewer empty shots, more focus on the challenges which will likely need to feel a bit bigger in scale if not be a bit bigger in scale. We’d probably drop the panel of sportspeople talking about things bit. I like the idea of the elimination challenge not necessarily ending with an elimination (Although I gather that in later series this isn’t the case, it becomes a duel).

The show had three series in Belgium and one in the Netherlands and sounds like it’s gone down well in Scandinavia (where being hardy is the regional sport). Could it work over here? It’ll likely depend on the names being lined up for it I suspect, it’ll likely suffer from the modern Superstars problem that anyone currently relevant will probably stay away, which is a shame.

That episode is from 2008 so it will be interesting to see what can be done with seven year’s difference.

Engage… BOTHER’S BAR BATTLE MODE – Mario Kart 8 (racing) – Sat 7th Feb

By | February 3, 2015

bbbattlemodeVroom vroom! Got a Wii U? Got Mario Kart 8? Free Saturday evening? Then come and race with us in the latest edition of BB’sBM!

It’s open to everyone who meets that criteria.

Game: Mario Kart 8 on Wii U.
Time and Date: Saturday 7th Feb, 2030-2200 GMT.

Name: BB Battle Mode Feb

Search by entry code (which you will need): 0296-9564-7823

You will require the DLC, make sure you’ve bought and downloaded it before playing. And to be clear, Battle Mode is the name of the umbrella strand, we will indeed be racing.

Great stuff, this was great fun last time and we had about 14 people across the time. You can come in and drop out as you see fit. I hope we can beat that number this time round.

I have put group switching on, so every fourth race you’ll be reassigned a race group – not ideal but last time we played we had a few people stuck out on their own which isn’t much fun and at least this way you shouldn’t be playing in a small group for long. If you don’t like your race group assignment you’re free to quit out and join again in the hope to get in sync with most other people. We’re playing from 8:30pm GMT, you will need to work out what time that is locally if you’re playing from abroad.

There’s no prize (except GLORY), but it’ll be fun. So join us!

Going Dutch: The Big Picture

By | February 2, 2015

bigpictureSo a new show from our good friends at Talpa debuted on RTL4 in The Netherlands yesterday evening, based on an Israeli format by production company A Capella. The Big Picture is essentially Picture Who Wants to be a Millionaire, hosted by the same guy who hosts Weekend Millionair usually in the slot, Robert ten Brink.

The show’s big USP is that sponsored by the Bankgiro Loterij you can play along at home on the app and win some money yourselves. The show is prerecorded so they put your face and name up using whizzy live post-production.

One person is selected from the audience (photos of everyone up on the walls which spin round until one stops on the big main screen) to play. They are 12 questions away from winning €1m. Each question is based on a picture displayed on the large screen, which might be as simple as just identifying who it is of but might also be a bit more general knowledge, using who or what is in the picture as a theme. Each question has four multiple choice answers. If they are wrong they will leave with nothing. If they don’t know they can use one of their three “escapes” to swap the question but it might force them to share a quarter of their winnings with a Bankgiro Loterij player (also each time this happens one of the live app players is selected to win €5,000). If they get it right they can opt to climb the ladder (€100, €500, €1, 2, 5,000, €10, 20, 50,000, €100, 200, 500,000, €1m) (they do not get to look at the next question before making this gamble, which I dislike as a thing because exciting television requires contestants to be encouraged to take risks and asking people to gamble blind encourages conservative play with the numbers involved, although when they get past €10,000 they can at least look at the picture before deciding to take the question) or get out.

bp2When they choose to get out they see one more picture before deciding if they want to take a question. If they decide to walk away then the money is split with the Escape Loterij players, no harm, no foul. However if they opt to take the question and they get it correct then they get to keep their entire bank and the home players leave with nothing. If he gets it wrong, they split the entire bank between them.

It’s OK. If you stopped watching Millionaire before then there’s no real reason here you’ll go back to something like this, on the other hand if ITV wanted to fill a Millionaire shaped hole in the schedule there are worse things they could use. It debuted to decent viewers last night on RTL4, over a million which everyone seems happy with.

Don’t just take my word for it though, if you can get round the geoblocking you can watch it for yourself.