Weaver's Week 2020-12-27

Current revision as of 11:29, 14 January 2021

Last week | Weaver's Week Index | Next week

2020 was written by a middle school student who wants to show off what they've learned about satire and parody, but wasn't paying attention when the teacher talked about subtlety.

One story has dominated this year, and – almost wilfully – we're going to ignore it. We're going to tell the story of 2020 through the most meaningful – and meaningless – commissions of the year.

Crackerjack (CBBC)

We heard in early 2019 that Sam and Mark were going to revive Crackerjack. It was a risk: a lot of people had fond memories of the show, comedy and silly games and a riotous start to the weekend. Those of us a little younger had less fond memories of the show, a failed effort to move with the times led to a stale show, replacing fun and funny with gunge and gunge.

There was no need to worry: Crackerjack! hit all the right notes. It was funny, it was entertaining. Sam and Mark had a rapport with the audience, in a way Ed Stewart didn't. The Crackerjack! Players delivered top-class comedy, theatre of the absurd and the foolish. The games were sensible updates: Stickly Come Dancing, Piedentity Parade, and the closest Double or Drop has come to Eamonn Andrews' original format from nearly a century ago.

Best of all, Crackerjack! was made with great love and affection for the audience. Everyone involved understands what makes a seven-year-old laugh, and goes that little extra mile to make it happen. By some distance, it's the best "new" show of the year.

What with one thing and another, there haven't been many new shows for children – plans for Top Class had to be closed along with schools. Project Z had a second series on CITV, recorded last year, and gently advancing the backstory. Pete Firman was the ambiguous host on Don't Unleash the Beast, more concerned about his artefacts than the safety of explorers he sent to face the Beast. Recorded this summer, we reckon the show was compromised by circumstances, and we hope for a second series closer to the original ideas.

The Crystal Maze turned up on Nickelodeon, hosted by Adam Conover. He's the best maze-master on telly since Ed Tudor-Pole, enthusiastic and welcoming and full of energy. Some old editions of The Crystal Maze made it out of a Channel 4 stock cupboard and on air: they felt flat and tedious in comparison.

The Masked Singer (ITV)

Mainstream entertainment has had a strong year, when it's been allowed to air. The Masked Singer dominated the first two months of the year, an unexpected and tremendous success. It's a simple idea: get celebrities to dress up in fantastic costumes, and ask them to sing for our entertainment. There's also an interlude where a panel of experts try to guess who is inside the costume.

This column didn't get The Masked Singer, the singing was glossed over in favour of the guessing, and the show pretended it was more important than it was. We're happy to see that lots of people did get The Masked Singer, and lots of people absolutely loved it. A second domestic series has been made, and a couple of series were imported to pad out ITV's schedules over the summer.

Gaps in the schedule were caused by events being cancelled. Saturday Night Takeaway started its series with places in Disneyland for a carefree full studio audience. Then thry took away the end-of-series jamboree and had a somewhat nervous full studio audience. Then they took away the studio audience. Then they took away the studio. Ant and Dec did well to provide any sort of entertainment in such uncertain times, a tribute to their massive talent and experience.

ITV The Voice of This Territory came to a grinding halt when the taped episodes ran out. A little later, Got Talent also ran out of pre-recorded episodes. Both shows returned in the autumn, as if they'd never been gone. I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! made its usual November date, but swapped the heat and humidity of the jungle for the cool of a ruined castle in north Wales. An interesting idea, and one they might well build on in future years.

Over on the BBC, Strictly Come Dancing went ahead with a reduced cast, but the differences were so small that we couldn't really tell them. The Senior Eurovision Contest had been cancelled, and replaced by a tribute to this year's performers: it was the show we needed, but not the show people wanted to see on a warm May evening. By November, the Junior Eurovision Song Contest could go ahead, with songs performed in everyone's local studio against a Euro-standard backdrop. The show went ahead without S4C or TG4, both broadcasters chose to serve their domestic audiences first.

There was no way to stop the Eurovision fans. Rob Holley is our hero of the year. In mid-March, he asked if people wanted to watch a classic Eurovision Song Contest, and tweet along their thoughts. It proved to be a popular idea: #EurovisionAgain was a trending topic almost every week. The EBU gave their blessing to these repeats, and helped arrange a single point to watch, and persuaded broadcasters to liberate their archive. There's a permanent benefit to this work: the EBU now has pristine, crystal clear, broadcast quality copies of many old shows, often with stereo sound we couldn't hear on television at the time. Eurovision Again concluded last weekend with a bespoke contest, a mash-up of the best songs to get stuck in the semi-finals. "Playing with numbers" was robbed. Again.

The Wheel (BBC1)

We must have missed the rise of Michael McIntyre: an inoffensive stand-up comedian with a plummy voice, occasional contributor to Mock the Week and Heresy, and then exploding onto primetime BBC1. He's remained in the stand-up comedy world, playing to packed houses and drawing huge audiences.

With no other outlet for his talents – McIntyre can't exactly play to packed houses right now – he's invented The Wheel. Star of the show is a giant wheel, packed with seven celebrities. The wheel spins, it eventually stops, questions are asked, answers are given. Money may be won, or it may not. It's a bright show, glossy and glitzy, a little bit more foolish than you, and that seems to be what the audience wants. We'll have a full review of The Wheel early next year.

Back at the start of 2020, Jason Manford had a bright show, glossy and glitzy, and a lot more foolish than you. First & Last had one simple objective: be mediocre. Average. Middling. Don't be first, don't be last. The programme started with the Jumping Out of a Cardboard Box round, finished with the contenders naming their own prize, and had a lot of fun along the way. Somewhat buried in the schedules – it was BBC1's sacrificial lamb to The Voice and its Amazing Spinning Chairs – we still reckon First & Last is worth another go. We can't say the same of Little Mix The Search, which got lost in the autumn shuffle.

Glitz and glamour always feel a little out of place on BBC1, it's a jumper that doesn't quite fit. ITV always looks good in a slinky glitzy number, and none looked better than Stephen Mulhern. The king of good-natured gaudy brightened up spring with In for a Penny, archive footage of him meeting random members of the public in exotic locales like shopping streets and public parks.

In the summer, Stephen fronted Rolling in It, a very simple game of skill, luck, and rolling giant coins down a massive conveyor belt system. The show isn't won or lost until the very last moment. It's one of those games we had to play along with, it's almost impossible to just sit there and passively watch. And it's made all the better by Stephen Mulhern, it takes a lot of talent to make the show seem that simple.

Stephen reminds us of a younger and cheekier Phillip Schofield. Television's best presenter had an interesting year: released his autobiography, came out as gay, and gave us another series of 5 Gold Rings – though that was recorded way back last year. This year, Schofe has hosted The Million Pound Cube, a revival of the six-sided challenge show from about ten years earlier. Now played by couples, we're not convinced The Cube worked: it needed more challenges and less repetition. Less repetition, that's what we need.

ITV also had glitz from its younger presenters. Rylan Clark-Neal brought Supermarket Sweep to ITV Daytime, and some celebrity editions for Saturday teatime: the series is not quite firing on all cylinders yet. Alan Carr staged the Epic Game Show, five ancient formats revived and revised. Some of them worked (Take Your Pick was a winner, and it's difficult to go wrong with The Price is Right) but the others failed. There's a second series in the works, we hope they've learned from things that can be improved.

Taskmaster moved itself to Channel 4: house keys, ugly trophy, host, the works. It didn't change in the move from UKTV's Dave channel, which is both a good thing and an annoyance, because if you're going to make the same show, why bother moving? BBC2 brightened up the spring with I'll Get This, a series of entertainments after people have eaten out in a restaurant. We know things are back to normal when we hear they've commissioned series 3. ITV2 gave us Celebrity Karaoke Club, charmingly banal light-hearted entertainment.

Beat the Chasers (ITV)

Ten years after becoming a daytime regular, The Chase got a primetime spinoff. Beat the Chasers was louder, brasher, and far more compelling than its parent show. After a very brief cashbuilder segment, our player can choose to face two, three, four, or all five Chasers. More opponents means a bigger reward, but more opponents means less of a time advantage. While the introduction is light-hearted, the final round is 100 seconds (or so) of rapid-fire questions, play switches between the sole challenger and the team of Chasers.

It's the little details that make the show. Paul Farrer's fresh soundtrack, riffing off the established daytime programme. The co-ordinated clothes, black with little red details. We feared that Beat the Chasers would be done too much, while it's a moreish show it's one that could lose its lustre very quickly. ITV were right not to commission a new series until the new year.

Part of that is because The Chase has been doing great numbers at teatime. Four million viewers every single night from mid-October, reaching 5 million a few times in November. We've not seen such huge numbers at teatime since the early 1990s, when there were just four channels available.

Tipping Point has also been doing very good business, often attracting 3 million viewers to the simple game. Over on BBC1, Pointless hasn't risen tremendously, in part because it's in repeats for half the year, and in part because it wasn't on BBC1 for three months. Replacing Xander and Richard with Matt Hancock's Half Hour may have had public service value in March, but became an unchallenged establishment voice by June.

Back in primetime, BBC1's The Hit List and Catchpoint both came back with little adjustments to improve the show. ITV had another series of Brightest Family, with celebrities involved. They also gave us a few event weeks of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but the star attraction was Quiz. The dramatised version of the Ingrams' Millionaire trial asked difficult questions, such as whether they'd conspired to do anything.

My Generation (Radio 4)

To fill a gap in the schedule, Radio 4 invented a simple decades quiz, and invited people to take part from home. No prizes, it's just for fun, and host Stuart Maconie made an entertaining programme out of an adequate format.

"To fill a gap in the schedule" was the defining feature of the year. Careful plans were thrown akilter, sporting events were cancelled, schedules were ripped up, and printed listings magazines had to say "We have no idea what this channel's showing this week."

The team behind Portrait Artist of the Year made a virtue out of necessity, and got people to draw celebrities over video links. Everyone's got exactly the same conditions, everyone sees the same views of the sitter. The resulting show, Portrait Artist of the Week, was distinctly different from the main series.

Almost everyone amused themselves by devising their own quizzes, and video-calling their friends to ask questions. S4C was the first to put this style of quiz on air: Gêm Gartre invited viewers to beat the professional sportspeople. A little later, Be' Ti'n Gwylio? installed a suite of cameras in the contestants' living room, then retreated to ask nostalgia questions from a safe distance. On the radio, The Talk Sport Quiz was a surprise success, Darren Bent and Faye Carruthers built a little community of regular callers.

When things had calmed down a little, ITV ordered a new series of Family Fortunes, under new host Gino D'Acampo. It's extended to fill a full hour, and that makes the show run just a beat too slowly. The catchphrase, "Come to Gino, and let's play for Single Money" might just be the most disappointing of the year. But it is real people in a real studio, a cut above those shows where people appear in little boxes from their homes.

If we want people to appear in little boxes, we'll ask our friends to do that. Schlag den Brig III was a fun thing to do for mid-May, one of many challenges saw competitors tried to throw a ball into a little basket they were wearing on their heads. Other internet-only games included Royal Flush's Google That!, Quizzy Dan's eponymous Dan's Quiz, and Ash the Bash found out how long would it take to ask all 500 questions on 500 Questions. A little over twelve hours, the answer Giles Coren couldn't be bothered to find out, the lightweight.

The Chop (History Channel)

Was the real trauma of 2020 learning that so many people are cruel, ignorant, and irremediably selfish?

It felt like that while watching the autumn's reality shows. Or, in the case of The Chop, not watching them. The show wanted to find the best woodcarver, in the traditional elimination format, and looked likely to attract an adequate audience for a second-order pay-tv channel.

But the producers of The Chop had failed to spot that one of their contestants had white supremacist insignia tattooed all over his face. After a brief attempt to defend the indefensible – including a ludicrous claim that one tat was a tribute to his father who both died in the 1980s and turned up to the series final – even Sky (the new owners of History Channel) had to admit their show looked bad. It was taken off air, and we'll never see it.

No such sweet relief for Channel 4's The Bridge, a semi-scripted drama where the producers knew the plot points they wanted to reach, and forced the "contestants" to go where they wanted. The lessons of episode 1 were forgotten for episode 2, but The Bridge wasn't as funny as Seinfeld. The racist stereotype of a "full" island was made abhorrently clear when two white people ejected a woman of colour. There was no jeopardy, no humour, no colour, no foreshadowing – and by the end, no viewers.

Over on BBC2, Race Across the World showed its second (and, for the moment, final) series through Latin America. It was preceded by Win the Wilderness, where couples tried to win a cabin in the middle of an Arctic nowhere.

Comedy Central had a new game show: Gods of the Game. Real sports stars take part in made-up events, while members of the public try (and fail) to beat them at their own games. E4 reminded us of the best moments from Big Brother, chopped up and dissected by Davina McCall and Rylan Clark-Neal.

Five Guys a Week was an interesting idea – have five potential dates spend the weekend with their potential paramour, and watch her pick as the show progresses. Interesting idea, but didn't catch light with the public. It's hard to remember now, but Love Island actually had a new series this year. So much has happened since, not least the death of longtime host Caroline Flack. She's at least the third person connected to the show to die by suicide at a tragically young age.

Back in 2019, OFCOM announced that it would require programme makers to take reasonable care of all contributors to all programmes. The television business decided that it didn't want stringent regulation, it prefers to eke out profits at the expense of people's lives. As OFCOM has been completely captured by the business interests, and treats the public as irritants who can be ignored and fobbed off, it's watered down the requirement. Producers will now only be required to take "due" care, and there's an exception for "trivial" subjects and "minor" participants.

Why does this matter? People's lives are being damaged – and in some cases ending – because of television shows. OFCOM has shown that it puts money above lives. Along with the body's pointed and perverse refusal to recognise a political advert when it sees one, and its ongoing war against local radio, this column could be excused for concluding that OFCOM is actively dangerous to society. We might just have to act as if it doesn't exist.

Acting as if OFCOM doesn't exist is already an option for online shows. The likes of Netflix have dipped their toes into unscripted competition shows. The Big Flower Fight was the first game show commissioned by the streaming giant and made on this island. We've not seen an episode (we don't get Netflix, in at least two senses), and won't pass judgement.

Winning Combination (ITV)

It's been a difficult year for the smaller daytime shows. Even Countdown had to come off air for three months, delaying Luke Johnson-Davies' inevitable path to the trophy. Come Dine with Me and Four in a Bed had to suspend filming, though as both shows have immense back catalogues, nobody needed to notice. A second series of Beat the Chef was announced, but hasn't yet been made.

BBC1 made The Bidding Room, a version of ZDF's popular Rares für Bares that managed to be even more gentle than the original. Bargain Hunt marked its 20th anniversary with a week of special shows. The big success from daytime was The Repair Shop, where people tinker with old tech and bring it back to life. !mpossible, which looked like being the big success a couple of years ago, seems to have settled back into its afternoon slot.

Over on ITV, Tenable continues to have new shows, a show lots of people like but few seem to love. We've seen new ideas, Winning Combination is an entertaining – if repetitive – quiz, and Lingo comes back at the start of 2021.

Very Hard Questions (More4)

There's only one Only Connect. The combination of abtruse questions, uncompromising precision, and the sarcastic-but-warm host has grown to be television's premier cleverclogs quiz. It's the star of BBC2's Quizzy Mondays block, with University Challenge on the anchor leg, Mastermind running the back straight, and Richard Osman's House of Games (3) going at the b of the bang. It's two hours of high-quality quizzing, and quite some entertainment.

Many shows have tried to interrupt this flow. Not least Nigella Lawson, whose Cook Eat Repeat elbowed in during November. It didn't work: the cook picked up a few viewers when she wasn't expected, but Victoria and the Hieroglyphs proved more popular by the end of November.

The commercial rival, More4, commissioned Very Hard Questions. It wasn't a spectacular success. Jon Snow was neither sarcastic nor warm, the questions weren't abtruse but dull. They didn't have discussion around the topic of the question, or on a matter completely unrelated. Can Jon Snow improvise? That proved to be the very hardest question of them all.

Corner Shop Cook-Off (BBC Scotland)

A show so simple even we can follow it. Go to your local corner shop. Spend £15 on ingredients. Make a three-course meal from those ingredients, plus the usual larder of staples like flour, oil, sugar, eggs, and stock cubes. Clare Grogan hosts the show, brings a little bit of glamour to the corner of Scotland, and impressed us with a sharp commentary.

There are lots of lessons to take away from Corner Shop Cook-Off: the importance of community, and what you can make using ingredients from your local corner shop. There's an unspoken lesson on food poverty, the importance of looking after every last penny. And it's a show bringing out a sense of place, through the hour we meet a lot of people in small communities. No surprise that the show's drifted across to network television, Chef vs Corner Shop went for a pilot week on Channel 4.

The other cookery shows continued on their merry way. Masterchef Goes Large and its Celebrity version remained on BBC1. The Professionals also moved across to the main channel, perhaps to fill a void in the autumn schedules. Great Local Menu remained in primetime on BBC2, and gained a short Christmas series – in part because there's a cookery show gone missing. Best Home Cook had another series on BBC1, building up the cult of Mary Berry further.

Over on Channel 4, Bake Off continued in celebrity and professional and amateur versions. With more viewers at home than normal, watching figures went through the roof. The Great Pottery Throw Down had a series on More4, but Sewing Bee remained on BBC1. Caru Siopa was a charming show on S4C, rootling through charity shops for clothes, doing them up and selling them at a profit.

Ratings watch

It's been more difficult to obtain ratings data from BARB this year. We're able to present a top 10 for each of the major channels, and highlights of major commissions and acquisitions on other channels.

As usual, we note the most popular single transmission for each show. SD, HD, and +1 are included, as is catchup viewing on tv or online up to a week after the show first aired. First and last transmissions in a series are noted.

BBC1

Pointless Celebrities, A Question of Sport, and Christmas Would I Lie to You? broke 4 million, with The Greatest Dancer, The Wall, Best Home Cook, and House of Games Night just under 4 million.

BBC2

Pointless was one of those unplanned moves from BBC1; it's pushed Mock the Week from the top ten.

ITV

The Voice, Family Fortunes, and daytime The Chase all beat 5 million at least once. There were audiences over 4 million for (deep breath) Alan Carr's Epic Game Show, primetime The Chase Celebrity Special, Celebrity Catchphrase, The Family Chase, I'm A Celebrity A Castle Story, The Voice Kids, The Million Pound Cube, Rolling In It, and The Chase The Bloopers.

Channel 4

If you're going to take the various Bake Off shows as one, then the top ten's completed by Four in a Bed and a tie between the first eps of The Bridge and Five Guys a Week.

Channel 5

Other channels

We're only listing new commissions or acquisitions new to these shores. Repeats do not concern us.

BBC4

BBC Scotland

CBBC

CITV

Comedy Central

E4

ITV2

ITVBe

More4

Nickelodeon

S4C

The Satellite Channel

Artsworld

The channel moved from pay-tv to free-tv in October.

The History Channel

W

The Roll of Honour

(All results as transmitted are final)

Quizmaster – Pat Gibson

Christmas University Challenge – Leeds (Jonathan Clements, Henry Gee, Richard Coles, Tim Allen)
University Challenge – Imperial College (Richard Brooks, Brandon, Caleb Rich, Conor McMeel)

Love Island – Paige Turley and Finlay Tapp

Best Home Cook – Suzie Arbuthnot

Cân i Gymru – Gruffydd Wyn for "Cyn i'r llenni gau", performed by himself

The Greatest Dancer – Michael and Jowita

Dancing on Ice – Joe Swash

Got What It Takes? – Georgie

The Great Pottery Throwdown – Rosa Wiland Holmes

The Hairy Bikers' Chocolate Challenge – Ian Hofmeister

RTE Dancing With the Stars – Lottie Ryan and Pasquale La Rocca
Strictly Come Dancing – Bill Bailey and Oti Mabuse

Round Britain Quiz – South of England (Marcus Berkmann and Paul Sinha)

Only Connect – 007s (Frankie Fanko, Andrew Fanko, Andrew Beasley)

Masterchef – Thomas Frake
Celebrity Masterchef – Riyadh Khalaf
Masterchef The Professionals – Alex Webb

Fferm Ffactor Y Selebs – Dyddgu Hywel, Eilir Jones, Donna Edwards

Race Across the World – Emon and Jamil

Mastermind – Dave McBryan

Eurovision Song Contest – contest cancelled
Eurovision Young Musicians – contest cancelled
Junior Eurovision – "J'imagine" for France Télévisions, written by Igit and Barbara Pravi, performed by Valentina

Fighting Talk – Elis James

BBC Young Musician – contest postponed
BBC Young Jazz Musician – Deschanel Gordon

Sewing Bee – Clare Bradley

Brightest Celebrity Family – Shaun Williamson and daughter Sophie and cousin Guy

Bake Off Crème de la Crème – Thibault and Laurian from Cocorico Patisserie
Bake Off – Peter Sawkins

Rostrum Camera – Ken Morse

The Voice of Holland of This Territory Kids – Justine
The Voice of Holland of This Territory – Blessing Chitapa

One Man and His Dog – George Gardner & Bonny & Meg

This Territory's Got Talent – Jon Courtenay

BBC Brain – Graham Barker

The Chop – not aired

I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! – Giovanna Fletcher

Portrait Artist of the Year – Christabel Blackburn

Taskmaster – Richard Herring

Countdown – Luke Johnson-Davies

Coming up...

Boxing Day Monday Holiday Type Day brings a Celebrity Mastermind champion-of-champions show, and House of Games (3) festive special (both BBC1). On Tuesday, there's the first of four Only Connect specials (BBC2), and documentary TV Gameshows Then and Now (C5). For some viewers, Mastermind Plant Cymru (S4C), and Breaking the News (BBC Scotland).

For New Year's Eve, we've got The Hit List and The Wall celebrity editions (BBC1). New Year's Day brings us Lingo (ITV), Taskmaster's New Year Treat (C4), The Archers Anniversary Quiz (R4), and Hewlfa Drysor (S4C).

On Saturday, we meet the second half of players on The Masked Singer (ITV), and the return of The Wheel. Family Fortunes and Beat the Chasers return on Sunday 3rd (both ITV); The Great New Year Bake Off turns up on Channel 4. From Monday the 4th, new episodes of The Bidding Room and Pointless on BBC1, Beat the Chasers continues all week. The Cabins is a new dating show (VM2 and ITV2, nightly).

Later in the week, The Big Fat Quiz of Everything begins on C4 (Thu 7th), and there's new Would I Lie to You on BBC1 (Fri 8th). Same date for the main series of Crackerjack! (CBBC). Paul Sinha's TV Showdown (ITV, Sat 9th) is a comedy-quiz hosted by the Fighting Talk regular.

We expect to return on 10 January. Until then, we wish you all the compliments of the season, and we wish you a happy, healthy, and safe start to the new year.

Photo credits: BBC Children's Productions, Nickelodeon Productions / Fizz / Stephen David Entertainment / Bunim/Murray Productions, Bandicoot Scotland, ITV Studios, EBU / KAN, Hungry McBear Productions, Zeppotron (part of Endemol Shine Group), Over The Top Productions, Wildcard Television, Potato, Possessed and 12 Yard, Shiver, Thames (part of Fremantle), Labyrinth Games, Big Wheel Film & Television and Motion Content Group, Workerbee and Zeppelin, Label 1, Netflix, Youngest Media, Mentorn Scotland.

To have Weaver's Week emailed to you on publication day, receive our exclusive TV roundup of the game shows in the week ahead, and chat to other ukgameshows.com readers, sign up to our Google Group.

Last week | Weaver's Week Index | Next week