Looks like the BBC Only Connect game is up.
First quarter final this evening.
In other news, did anyone catch Alexander Armstrong talking about Pointless on Richard Bacon’s show this afternoon? Anything interesting?
Outing yourself in non-linear fashion
Thanks to an anonymous tip-off:
I did a run-through for Push the Button last year which involved being locked in a coffin and pretending to be a soap character who had died a tragic death in their soap. Hope this game is kept for one of the shows this series – expect us stand-ins to be replaced by the real soap actors, and the contestants to have to learn a list of around 100 soap characters so as to be able to identify the name and cause of death of any given 5 of these who appear from their coffins on that particular show. Which actors will appear? My bet: Dirty Den is a dead-cert(forgive the pun)…
Incidentally, I’ve looked into the It’ll All End In Tiers edit from this week’s show, in actual fact at no point do the clocks behind the families differ by several thousand to what’s shown on screen as claimed (although if you were really looking, sometimes it doesn’t match up by a couple of hundred). Once one team push the button, the money drops at about £150 – £170 a second (it’s actually quite difficult to tell unless you’re doing frame by frame analysis, which I can’t be bothered to do, although my rudimentry timing makes it £1k in 6.25 seconds, or £160 a second which is nice and “round”), whereas the rate of change early on is about £1k in 4.5 seconds. I would be very surprised if the actual rate was not consistant across the entire game – indeed, I wonder if contestants are furnished with the details beforehand?. But yes, an edited show is edited (certainly not the first time an edit has fit the result), but certainly no genuine evidence of impropriety.
However the unbroadcast lifeline element is still baffling.
Board of Excitement 28th Feb – 6th March 2010
Christ, it’s almost Christmas ALREADY.
- The Amazing Race (Sunday, CBS): Well last week’s saw some teams take some excellent transportation gambles, only for the Race organizers to screw over the clever ones with a bunch point. Go go Team Cowboy!
- Only Connect (8:30pm, Monday, BBC4): it’s the first quarter final so the questions are set to be a little harder than usual (although it was nice to see two teams get lots of big point questions last week, good AGGRESSIVE play as we say in poker), this week it’s the housewives favourites the Exeter Alumini vs the Archers Admirers.
- The Krypton Factor (7:30pm, Tuesday, ITV1): the second semi this week, and goodness, how much did those audience shots add to the show? Well worth dropping the intelligence test for, that’s what I say. Don’t know if the audience coloured lighting was in effect, it didn’t look very obvious on screen.
- The Whole 19 Yards (Wednesday, Pinewood Studios) – look out an audience report on Wednesday. Why not try and predict a) how many references to Vernon Kay’s saucy text scandal the warm-up man will make and b) how far over the predicted 8:15pm approximate finish time the recording will overrun to? If you’re reading from Endemol – get your old Total Wipeout episodes on standby, it genuinely worked brilliantly last time. Actually give us new ones!
- Survivor (Thursday, CBS): I haven’t watched episode three yet but I intend to after I’ve written this. Bother’s Bar: reliably mediocre.
- Ant and Dec’s Push the Button (8pm, Saturday, ITV1): Already went on about this in the previous post. This probably won’t get another billing here, but I liked the show enough that I’ll watch it if I’m in.
- Who Dares Wins (8:30pm, BBC1, Saturday): Nicky Nacky Knowles is back for another series of the mildly entertaining list quiz that’s popular here and basically nowhere else.
- Solitary 4.0 (Saturday, Fox Reality): well after the brilliance of the last few weeks, circuit training in a gorilla suit is a bit of a let down. Still though. I confidently predict this episode to be like the last, but with one fewer person in it.
- The Bother Series of Poker Game 3: Actually next Sunday. If you missed it last time, you missed an amusing conversation about the Austrian version of You’ve Been Framed. You don’t get THAT on Channel 5’s Party Poker coverage.
Ant and Dec’s Push the Button
Well hello there.
Seemingly no audience members wanting to write up the PtB recording, which is fair enough, but tonight we see the thing as intended. ITV1, 7:45pm.
I predict it will be fun albeit not terribly groundbreaking. I’ll edit some opinions in here later.
Alright then, foir me this a firmly 7/10 show, which if you read the internet is about five more than the average person would have given it. But:
- Those bits where Ant and Dec surprised the families was a lot of fun. Yes it was a little bit like The Moment of Truth, or at least the ones when Cilla could be bothered to see the families at any rate.
- It’ll All End In Tiers was absolutely epic. More shows should have quite tense timed skill games with the theme from Please Sir! in the background.
- The sorting the post and Simon Cowell’s teeth games were perfectly adequate, although the games with the cash clock are more fun than games with a fixed penalty.
- Yes the yodelling thing (and indeed the entire show’s set-up) was a bit naff and straight from The Generation Game. But The Generation Game hasn’t been on for years and apparently people are clamouring for phamily phun, so why not? I am definitely not of the persuasion that old things are better because they are old. Also I am intrigued by the idea of “non-viewer involving pap” – the idea that successful gameshows have to have great playalongathome value is one of the greatest fallacies of the last twenty years or possibly more.
- It did seem there were a lot of adverts towards the end, that is because there was almost twenty minutes before the first one.
- Originally I thought the endgame was unbelievably cheap – five-player Simon paying out the first digit for three notes, first two for five all the way to all five digits for 11. I didn’t think this was going to pay-out very big very often (when was the last time you tried memorising an 11 note tune?). One mistake allowed. However, @ThatBenBaker on Twitter suggested to me that if everyone just concentrates on their own notes and the positions of those notes then it should be possible. I was quite surprised to see the jackpot won this evening.
- And thanks to someone who was at the recording for pointing out that apparently the winning family were given an extra lifeline where they could listen to any one tune again. Why did they edit that out?
- I quite liked the disclaimer gags on the voting audience and salt and pepper shakers.
- Ronnie Corbett’s voiceover in post didn’t work at all, if I’m being honest.
Basically it’s fine and I hope it does OK for them.
In other news, I’m told a question was edited out of Innit this evening. Does anyone know why? A question about Chile or earthquakes perhaps? Edit: Alexander MacQueen apparently, thanks Gary.
Super Thing Found on Youtube Saturday
Just this second noticed a link to this and thought you’d find it interesting, it’s the pilot for Calendar Countdown. I’m putting this up whilst also watching it, so doubtless you’ll have some things to say when it’s finished:
Questions That Are A Bit Too Esoteric For Only Connect
It’s a sequence, what comes fourth? Time starts NOW!
- Love and adventure
- Cash to spend
- Love and affection
- Two or three friends
They’re the Things That Dreams Are Made Of (or at least, the things that everyone needs) by The Human League, which awesomely popped up on my iPod this morning. Well done to Mark D for being the first, and everyone else for the reasoning.
Join us next time for more Questions That Are A Bit Too Esoteric For Only Connect! Bye!