Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ Noooo!

By | November 29, 2010
13 Comments

Thanks to Kylie to alerting us to this – Endemol looking for teams of three for a new physical and mental challenge show for Saturday nights. Oh God. OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD (look for the 9th September).

Meanwhile in happier news, Peter Davey off of The Mole is working with Penn and Teller and Jonathan Ross on a new magic competition format. It’s practically a dream team.

Magic seems to be very ‘in’ at the moment, there’s another show currently in production called The Magicians fronted by Lenny Henry involving celebrities and magic for the BBC.

Board of Excitement 28th November – 4th December 2010

By | November 28, 2010
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Come Dine With Me app review just coming (Edit: Whoomph there it is, as US rap combo Tag Team once sang) , in the meantime:

  • Drop Zone – The seven remaining teams are dropped off in Austria, where the weather is awful and they need to milk a cow. This starting fifteen minutes later this week, by the sixth and final week it’ll be primetime at this rate. (3:50pm, Sunday, BBC1)
  • All Star Family Fortunes – Not exciting per se, but now it’s in The Cube‘s slot it will be interesting to see what sort of ratings it gets. If you like that kind of thing. (7:15pm, Sunday, ITV1)
  • The X Factor – With the double elimination this evening I guess this week we’ll find out if Wagner is towards the top three or in fact just avoiding elimination Jedward style, if the two rival voting leaks are anything to go by. (8pm, Sunday, ITV1)
  • Only Connect – final quarter final: In-laws vs the Alesmen. Needless to say, disappointed by the lack of beards from the Alesmen, they probably aren’t proper CAMRA members. (8:30pm, Monday, BBC4)
  • A Question of Sport – Normally we wouldn’t bill this, but we’re intrigued by its new late night timeslot and the fact that celebrities will be regular panelists (Frank Skinner and Peter Jones are on this first ep). It’s sort of been going in a light-entertainment direction for a while, is it now going to go a bit crude? It’s also the first episode of series forty, so congratuations to them for that. New set as well. (10:35pm, Monday, BBC1 – 23:05 in NI and Wales, 23:45 in Scotland)
  • Premier League Poker – Match two, second half. Good old Phil Helmuth. (00:45, Monday night, C4)
  • The Apprentice – appears to be a bit of a scavenger hunt this week, except with buying things. I gather this is a regular task, but this is my first time watching the show properly, which I am enjoying very much. (9pm, Wednesday, BBC1)
  • The Challenge: Cutthroat – Sorry, I billed this last week but it wasn’t actually on because of being Thanksgiving Eve, presumably. (Wednesday, MTV US)

Ultimate Fweedom

By | November 26, 2010
21 Comments

Did anyone watch Daybreak this morning? Of course you didn’t. However (according to a friend of mine who DID watch it), apparently there was some rather intriguing news few have picked up on – Jonathan Ross (who has recently been associated with Endemol) is apparently working on a UK version of The Golden Cage for the BBC.

We’ve mentioned TGC a few times at the bar already as it’s a bit of a curio, but if you’re new: The Golden Cage is originally a Dutch show (in fact it’s the idea that begat Big Brother but didn’t get turned into its own show until John de Mol launched his own TV channel a few years ago) where a number of people live the life of luxury in a villa. When you’ve had enough you leave. Last person standing wins the villa and a significant cash prize – “how much freedom are you willing to give up for ultimate freedom?” The show was meant to last indefinitely, but poor ratings and a change of channel (after de Mol’s Tien network shut down) led to them modifying the format to find a winner and end the show. The show made the news for inter-contestant bullying, but despite the fact the show did fairly well amongst the Dutch youth it was never really captured the nation’s imagination in the way Big Brother did.

It will be interesting to see how they adapt it for the UK audience. I suspect they won’t ask for a €10,000 deposit to dissaude people walking before six months or was it two years? I forget), and will they make it indefinite, or will it just be Big Brother under a different title?

Is there anything left to do a comedy panel show on?

By | November 25, 2010
7 Comments

Even The History Channel is getting in on the act, with Histerical with Marcus Brigstocke which looks like its filming a pilot next week. It’s like Annually Retentive never happened.

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in when Famous and Fearless is happening, you can get tickets for shows beginning 3rd January. I’m a little bit surprised Claire Balding’s co-hosting this with Chris Evans.

I’m so annoyed there have been so few new shows to go and see recently, I’m booking to go and see Pointless being filmed at the end of January. So you can have an EXCLUSIVE GLIMPSE of how they’ve watered down the premise for series four. Only joking, Pointless is brillopants, obviously.

Dah-dah-dah dah-dah dah

By | November 24, 2010
22 Comments

According to reports (i.e. someone posting on a forum) on Digital Spy, the next run of The Million Pound Drop – Live will be from  Wednesday 15th December to Saturday 18th at the interesting time of 8pm, a timeslot that will probably give it two hundred million thousand viewers until the Endemol Question Writing Cretins come up with a question like “what day is Christmas? Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday” and then everyone on the internet complains because actually most of those answers are right because it doesn’t ask for which year and then the show gets axed.

Then The Million Dollar (Money) Drop starts on Fox in the US the following week.