Catchphrase (Review)

There are a handful of shows that represent my childhood television viewing: Big Break, the Generation Game, Noel’s House Party, Movies Games and Videos, and Catchphrase, a clever quiz show based around contestants having to guess famous phrases, sayings or nameable films, songs etc for money. Headed up in its hay day by Roy Walker, it went downhill after he left with Nick Weir taking over, an alright host but most famous for managing to fall down the studio stairs and then by Mark Curry, which I didn’t even realise until I read the Wikipedia page just now.

I loved the show as a child and it’s still my ambition to get on the show someday, so I was very much pleased to see it return, now with Stephen “Britain’s Got More Talent” Mulhern in the driving seat.

To be honest little has really changed from the original format. There are now three contestants rather than two, with one eliminated after the first round. The graphics have been given a lick of paint and are pretty good for a television budget, even if they do resemble my first year work as a computer animation student in modelling software Maya, with a style that echoes between professional and amateur looking depending on the elements looked at. Even the opening credits are similar, just more modern looking with the theme tune given a jazzier remixing, though the lack of three catchphrases narrated during it is a sad loss. Oh, and then ‘Super Catchphrase’ is made far easier and less frantic at the end, though the money available to successful contestants is considerably more.

Mulhern makes a good host. Whoever they picked would never be able to be as iconic to the show as Roy Walker and much of the negativity on Twitter to Mulhern is misplaced because of this. He’s a likeable host, perhaps a little cheekier and confrontational than Walker was, but has a good banter with the contestants and audience, adopting the established sayings (“say what you see”) whilst adding his own, though they do seem awkward in this first episode, with his TV Burp-esque wry looks to the camera working better than anything spoken.

The first edition did open with a little bit of a misdirection. Mulhern asked ‘I know what you’re all thinking and, yes, he’s still with us’ and my mind naturally jumped to Roy Walker, but in fact he was referring to Mr Chips. A part of me, I supposed, hoped for some involvement from Walker. It’s great to see Mr Chips back after “leaving” with Walker all those years ago.

My hit rate on the catchphrases seems similar to when I’ve watched classic Catchphrase re-runs on Challenge TV so it doesn’t appear to have been dumbed down for a modern audience - and the appeal of guessing with friends and family and trying to beat the contestants to the answers remains as addictive as ever, though ITV seems to be milking the show in the modern age with it running in a forty-five minute slot rather than thirty minutes, but with seemingly a good fifteen-twenty minutes of that being adverts, with the first break coming just seven minutes into the programme. I know ITV are struggling but this is ridiculous.

Overall I’m pleased with the return of Catchphrase and it keeps the spirit of the show whilst tweaking a few elements for a modern audience. The animations are not going to win any awards but for the sheer amount they’ll have to create for the series on, no doubt a very limited budget, they’re actually pretty detailed even though they do show a certain rushed quality at times in the modelling and animation, very much resembling my so-so CGI work as a student. The catchphrases themselves are as expected in the difficulty level and Mulhern holds the show together and banters well with the audience and contestants.

Overall, I’m happy with it. Just more show, fewer adverts please ITV.

(The disappointing thing is I can’t use the phrase ‘It’s good, but it’s not the one’ as, well, I enjoyed it. Welcome back ‘Catchphrase’!)

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Don’t Blow The Inheritance (ITV1, 5pm)

One of my favourite comedians launched this week a new ITV teatime game show called ‘Don’t Blow The Inheritance’. Surprisingly, and a little bit unexpectedly, the game show is only due to run for two weeks at just ten episodes, rather than a longer run.

DBTI is a very traditional game show. If you didn’t realise it was 2012 from all the adverts that cut into the hour-long show you’d think it was the early 1990s and Bruce Forsyth, looking a lot younger now, was doing game shows again rather than dance competitions.

Vine, using the game show as a vehicle in parts for his puns – which are hilarious, eye-rolling and cringe worthy in equal measure but I love them – is definitely channelling Forsyth, from the use of catchphrases – “You can blow a candle, you can even blow a trumpet, but whatever you do, don’t blow the inheritance” complete with the audience shouting the last line, surely a catchphrase that will lead to some dodgy adult interpretations – to the audience interaction, with ‘nice to see you, to see you, nice’ replaced with ‘We’ve lost a team’ to which the audience reply, often incomprehensibly, ‘It’s the end of the dream’ as if their microphones are up too high.

The basic structure of the game show is straight out of the Forsyth book of game shows. Vine comes on, dressed casually in a tie-less shirt, to stand in front of the now traditional large video screen that displays some typical graphics and the questions / answers, to introduce the four sets of contestants: one parent and one child. He goes across and speaks to each of them and find out about them whilst also thrusting in some loosely connected one-liners into the proceedings, which is clichéd but fun enough. We then get four rounds of gaming with one pair leaving the game after each round, with only one pair left to win the money, with the final round putting the child at centre stage to try and inherit the money the parents have raised, hence the title.

Round one is your typical general knowledge round with the kids buzzing in as Vine reads out a question, but only if they think their parent knows the answer. If the parent gets it right, they get £1000 into the pot. If they get it wrong all the other pots get filled with an extra grand. This continues until the end of the round and the person with the least amount of money leaves.

Round two is a spin on family fortunes with the winning child picking a category and the parent has to fill in the ten responses that satisfy the question, e.g. ‘Name the last ten UK Prime Ministers’, getting a grand for every correct answer. The second ranking team then get to pick a question followed by the third. Again, the lowest scoring family are out.

Round three is like a simpler version of ‘Only Connect’ with three clues gradually revealed by Vine and the kids have to buzz in when they think the parent will know the answer. If they get it right they get a grand; get it wrong the other team get it, with the final team with the lowest score sent away.

The final round sees the child take centre stage with their pot of money. They have five questions to answer and no time limit if they keep getting them right. Get one wrong, however, and the pot of money starts decreasing and Vine reads out constant questions until the five are answered or the money runs out. They then go home with whatever is left. This certainly adds a good bit of tension to the end of the proceedings.

DBTI isn’t a particularly revolutionary game show. The concept of the kids – mostly teenagers or those in their early twenties – having to know what their parents know to win big is a good hook but a lot of the other elements – the rounds, the at-times-forced catchphrases and the puns – are a tad derivative of classic game shows.

It’s very much a throwback to the game shows of my childhood and, actually, that’s pretty fun. It’s a little bit knowing, a little bit cheesy and Vine is at home with the style of humour needed for the game shows. It doesn’t have perhaps as much viewer interaction as, say, ‘Pointless’ or ‘Only Connect’ but it’s fun to watch with family and friends and is a vast improvement on the usual confusing and overly complicated game shows ITV has recently rolled out. And it’s far, far better than ‘Red or Black’.

DBTI is a great third string to Vine’s bow following his successfully stand up and appearance in excellent BBC sitcom ‘Not Going Out’ and it’s fun, retro, cheesy fun for an evening. It’s not particularly unique but is fun enough and the nods to the Forsyth / Monkhouse / Walker era of game shows that were just so much fun is great. There is some genuinely good amounts of money to be won by the contestants, certainly in contrast to similar game shows that, even if the contestants do manage to win any money, it’s paltry. But with only a short run of ten episodes I hope it doesn’t turn out to be a mistake for Vine to have stretched out into the world of game shows and leaving, for instance ‘Not Going Out’ behind in which he was so good. I’ll certainly miss him from that and not sure if him fronting a game show that would normally be on when I’m at work where he recycles some of his stand-up jokes, even if they are great second time round, will be a good enough substitute, but hopefully this is the first in a long line of new ventures for him.

I do, though, wish the show the best of luck in getting a second, hopefully longer, run as it’s a fun, enjoyable, cosy, family-friendly game show that harks back to a rosier time when Noel had a crinkly bottom and not twenty-two red boxes and ‘cuddly toy’ was an often heard call in the living rooms of Great Britain.

7/10

You can watch ‘Don’t Blow The Inheritance’ until the 31st August, 5pm on ITV1 weeknights.

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Are ITV letting Primeval fail?

Returning to a topic I’ve covered several times over the past year or so, I want to ask the question that has been on my lips for a long time: are ITV letting Primeval fail?

For those of you not familiar with the trials and tribulations of the programme, the show – which looks at a team investigating rips in time through which past and future creators enter our era – was cancelled after the third series and only saved by a global deal that saw ITV show series four first followed by digital station Watch, with Watch getting the premiere for series five. Finally, almost a year after series five debuted ITV start showing it on Saturday.

Now I’m not going to say ITV have an easy sell with Primeval series five. It was shown on television last year and has been on DVD and Blu-Ray for nearly as long. But they’ve not exactly gone out of their way to promote it to the not-unsubstantial audience already out there that have yet to see the series, which in my opinion is the strongest one behind series three.

I’m not going to be naive and say that ITV must be champing at the bit to re-commission Primeval due to their financial troubles, but with an audience of 4.6m on average for last year’s series it’s not a small audience and it’s the closest thing they have at the moment to Saturday teatime drama. Though we are getting a series follow-up in Canadian spin-off ‘Primeval New World’ I don’t think I’m the only one who would like a UK-based sixth series, promoting British actors and actresses and set here in Blighty. The UK doesn’t have enough home-based drama that can be sold abroad – Primeval and Doctor Who stand very much alone in this field – and the loss of Primeval will be a great shame. Though nearly eighteen months since the cameras last rolled on the series it’s still not too late to get everyone back together for a sixth series.

But I don’t see it happening. Why? Well, aside from the focus now moved to the North American version, ITV are certainly proving either incompetent at marketing the show or intent on letting it fail to justify not renewing it.

Television adverts promoting its return have only started airing within ten days of its return. Itv.com/primeval remains down since series four ended. @itvprimeval hasn’t been updated since the 9th March last year; their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/ITVprimeval deathly quiet. If you go to itv.com there’s nothing on the front page: no publicity for the returning which is now only six days away.

Contrast this to Watch’s marketing for series five when it debuted on their channel last year. Granted, they had to make the effort to promote the series on a minority channel but, especially considering their lesser budget compared to ITV, did one of the best marketing campaigns for a series ever with specially filmed on-air promos featuring the cast, a strong website and a month-long Facebook fan page which gave its members a special treat each and every day to whet their appetite. If they can manage it, why can’t ITV?

I would love a sixth series of Primeval to see more storylines and how the characters develop and have a credible alternative to Doctor Who, which is treated with far more respect by the BBC than Primeval ever has been ITV. Unfortunately I don’t think we’re going to get it through a combination of factors from the unavoidable, such as the financial issues faced by drama creators, but also by the things that have been done badly or could have been done better, such as the disappointingly poor promotion by ITV. Even their publicity last year for series four was hardly earth-shattering, but at least they had information on the website, a Twitter handler and a generally bigger buzz, all things that don’t cost many pounds to undertake.

As ITV are promoting the fifth series with ‘The beginning of the end’ I hardly think the future of the show looks rosy, poorly marketed and hidden away in the schedules amongst the buzz of Euro 2012 and against a month, June, that’s typically one where people would rather go out than stay in and watch television (though the typical British weather is putting paid to that at the moment).

ITV, you disappoint me.

(But, you know, if you’d like someone to update the online pages over the next week for free I would happily do it to help boost the viewing figures – message me!)

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