CHRISTOPHER STEVENS opinions weekend TV
Wheel Of Fortune / Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win
The Great Pottery Throwdown
Be in little question, Saturday evening belongs to ITV. The greatest stars, the shiniest reveals and probably the most colossal money prizes are all on ‘the opposite facet’.
With headline-grabbing recreation reveals both facet of ITV’s surreal superstar expertise contest, The Masked Singer, Auntie is not even an also-ran.
Ant McPartlin and Dec Donnelly returned with Limitless Win (ITV1), promising that one pair of contestants can be going dwelling with 1,000,000 kilos this sequence. Ant and Dec are the channel’s figureheads, however way more shocking is the face now fronting a revamped Wheel Of Fortune (ITV1) — one of many Beeb’s most extremely paid presenters, Graham Norton.
What did BBC1 must compete with that line-up? An FA Cup match, two run-of-the-mill celeb quizzes in The Weakest Link and Pointless Celebrities, and the hospital drama Casualty, now in its thirty eighth sequence. Meanwhile, on BBC2, we had 5 hours of Shirley Bassey, which is an terrible lot of Hey Big Spender.
It’s almost 30 years since Norton hosted Channel 4‘s sex-themed quiz present Carnal Knowledge, an expertise that had appeared to place him off presenting recreation reveals for all times. He has a comic’s pure rapport with the general public, although, and slipped simply into banter with the three gamers.
Limitless Win is extra difficult, a guessing recreation with twists copied from basic quizzes together with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Play Your Cards Right. In much less succesful palms, its complexities may overwhelm it, however Ant and Dec make mild of the cumbersome guidelines by goading the gamers into continuous chatter and fluster
Wheel Of Fortune is an American format, like Jeopardy! (which additionally launched on ITV final week, with Stephen Fry). It’s been tried within the UK earlier than: Nicky Campbell hosted it within the Nineties, earlier than handing over to others together with Bradley Walsh.
Telly historians may even bear in mind a model from 1970, introduced by Michael Miles, the place contestants may win an electrical meals mixer or a yr’s provide of eggs.
Impish Graham is providing greater than eggs on the present he calls, with recreation present panache, ‘Wheel Of For-Choon-Ah!’ The winner collected greater than £35,000 and a spa vacation, after fixing a sequence of phrase puzzles that appear to be half-completed crossword clues.
The format feels dated, although, with gamers taking it in flip to spin an enormous wheel, extra fairground gimmick than roulette, to rack up prizes or, in the event that they’re unfortunate, lose the lot. It did not assist that one contestant took an early lead and held on to it all through.
Limitless Win is extra difficult, a guessing recreation with twists copied from basic quizzes together with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Play Your Cards Right. In much less succesful palms, its complexities may overwhelm it, however Ant and Dec make mild of the cumbersome guidelines by goading the gamers into continuous chatter and fluster.
Tracy and Tina, sisters who described themselves as ‘two outdated birds from the again finish of nowhere,’ netted 100 grand — helped by the hosts, who provided a solution in regards to the variety of seats on a jet to Australia. Well, they’d know that.
Filming on the Gladstone Pottery Museum in Stoke, presenter Siobhan McSweeney (fantastic as Sister Michael in Derry Girls) strikes the correct stability between larking about and providing assist to the beginner potters
Judge Keith Brymer Jones’s scoring system on The Great Pottery Throwdown (Ch4) is brutal — any piece of earthenware that does not meet his approval is dumped into his ‘bucket of doom’. That’s like Paul Hollywood chucking any individual’s show- stopper sponge within the bin.
Filming on the Gladstone Pottery Museum in Stoke, presenter Siobhan McSweeney (fantastic as Sister Michael in Derry Girls) strikes the correct stability between larking about and providing assist to the beginner potters.
We be taught extra in regards to the contestants’ backgrounds than on comparable reveals, reminiscent of Sewing Bee or Bake Off. But that is as a result of the spectacle itself is much less various — we see clay going spherical on the wheel, clay drying, clay being glazed . . . the truth is, it isn’t until the ultimate judging that there is something to take a look at besides clay.
All very good but it surely does lack pleasure.
