First! Outlast, a show where teams of people have to survive in a jungle for a million dollar prize, and sounds like it very quickly turns into Lord of the Flies.

Next! Law of the Jungle which drops today and intriguingly is actually in Spanish with English subs. Contestants must choose to work for their tribe or to sabotage to earn money for themselves.

Finally and not jungle related at all but likely of interest, Ariyoshi Assists. Hiroiki Ariyoshi, who normally hosts Japanese variety shows, now plays assistant in all kinds of formats which normally involve Japanese comics causing themselves mild discomfort for laughs. The first one is sets of comics vying to become the next generation of a popular boyband, episode two is based around a cooking show and looking ahead there’s wrestling and rap battles and all sorts.

This might be worth keeping an eye on, a new webseries “inspired” by The Genius and starring noneother than Ben Justice off of behind the scenes of gameshows and that.

Saturday night on Pointless Celebs, the introduction of an idea I heard was happening a while ago, sounded absolutely awful then, is absolutely awful in reality… it’s the £500 Triple Pointless Final bonus!

I get why they want to shy away from doubling or tripling the jackpot if you give two or three Pointless answers in the final – if the jackpot goes into five figures, you’re on the hook for £30, £40, £50k every episode until it gets won which doesn’t *sound* like a lot of money, but actually that’s how much it would cost to make two episodes – it’s actually not small beer in BBC daytime terms. But £500 for a triple Pointless is not only anticlimactic (you’ve won a four figure sum! Let’s see if you’ve won FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS more!), it is actively insulting for the object achieved, and the amount it has happened, so much so in fact that it’s less insulting to not offer it as has been the case for over a decade now.

You want to make the Triple Pointless something people might talk about? Offer a telephone box sized Pointless Trophy. Maybe one the size of a bollard for a Double Jackpot.

Spotted this on SRO Audiences just now:

Lucky 13 is a brand new high-stakes primetime quiz format from the team who introduced the world to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. 

13 contestants will be hoping luck is on their side as they battle for a place on the hotspot. They must answer 13 true or false questions for the chance to win a jackpot prize. To win big, they won’t even need to answer all of the questions correctly. To win anything, however, they’ll need to guess how many questions they’ve answered correctly. 

The show records on Sunday 2nd & Monday 3rd April 2023 at Dock10, MediaCity, Manchester.

If you would like to join us for an evening of fun and excitement, then apply now via this listing!

We are also taping an episode of this show in german on Tuesday 4th April. If you would like to apply for that episode, then please apply via the listing below.

Sounds a liiiiittle bit like a reversioning of international Millionaire spin-off non-hit 50:50, or the endgame of that anyway. Anyway if you go, tell us what it’s like.

Some dates:

• March 11th – it’s Schlag den Star! It’s Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten star Jeanette Biedermann against TV presenter Janin Ullmann battling it out for Elton’s €100,000 briefcase. We’ll be watching it on the Discord from 7:15pm UK.
• March 18th – Challenge Anneka‘s BACK! On Five, from 8:50pm.
• March 19th – DE MOL.
• March 19th – Rise and Fall on Channel 4, starts at 9pm and then 10pm most nights for the following three weeks, which feels brave. A power struggle where Grafters live in the basement and earn prizemoney and try to replace the Rulers living a luxury life in the penthouse. Greg James hosts.
• March 20th – Eggheads is BACK! with new episodes on Five.
• March 22nd – The long-awaited return of Race Across The World, on a Wednesday which is going to be weird! Also on BBC1. And they’re basically travelling across Canada.