…how on earth it takes 3-4 hours to film an episode of The Chase? What unique challenges face it as a production? Because from where I’m sitting it’s just some people answering questions, requiring little in the way of movement and no more than about 4 different shots.
I’ve heard many war stories from people who have participated and watched the show, but no specifics.
Rather brilliantly, someone has put up the very first episode of UK The Price is Right from 1984 up on Youtube. Between the ages of about four and seven, this was my favourite thing ever.
It is fair to say I loved everything about this when growing up and watching this back I still sort of do, for me it remains William G Stewart’s best thing he was involved with. I love the glamourous looking set (which no other version has quite captured). I love the non-ironic excitement (there must be £10k+ worth of prizes here which obviously is *huge* for 1984, and doubtless caused regulatory problems along with the skill-less wheel). And I love Leslie Crowther playing host in a rather theatrically avuncular way, in control but giving the impression he’s just trying to stay in control when anything could happen.
The showcase is a bit weird though – each package has a “highlight prize” and to win it you have to be within 10% of the price, so it feels like you’ve lost even if you won. No wonder they changed it.
Of course what I most remember about Crowther’s Price is Right was how genuinely terrified I was by the game Cliffhangers. It is, of course, a classic, where a cardboard man makes his way up a hill TO HIS DOOM and then if the contestant is too far off with their guess, PLUMMETS TO HIS DEATH WITH A BLOOD-CURDLING SCREAM. Terrifying as a five year old, hilarious in retrospect.
If you go, we are, of course, interested in what you think.
Weekdays 8pm
Challenge TV
Well it’s been what THE NATION has been crying out for, a return to good old classic quizzes based around letters of the alphabet that’s already been bought back twice previously. I can’t say I’m that excited to be honest, although we like Simon Mayo so you never know.
I don’t know what sort of numbers it’s going to attract and how much it’s going to need to be a decent term viable proposition although they’ve advertised the hell out of it which is likely to help. 40 episodes have been filmed originally intended to go as two runs of twenty, although despite being originally informed as being an hour long look in fact to be a much more sensible half an hour. Maybe they’ve got two episodes out of each one with the magic of the edit suite. It will definitely be interesting to see how the numbers trend throughout the first week.
Hello, sorry I’ve been doing a work thing the last few days.
The Million Pound Drop won best gameshow at the Rose d’Or last night, beating off The Cube and Still Standing. The Jack Whitehall episode, by the sounds of it. So well done them.
And now a tangentally related thing, I’ve been on XBox Live for a couple of years now, and absolutely one of the best things on it was their Inside XBox stuff fronted by Dan Maher and Andy Farrant. They might have silly haircuts, but they developed shows which were inventive and funny on a budget of 12p, and now as part of a Microsoft repositioning thing they’ve been sacked.
What I am basically suggesting that if anyone from telly is reading, you could do a lot worse then give these a guys a chance.