Comments on: As Seen on TV

By: Tayles

Tayles — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:32:49 +0000

Apart from the basic premise, “As Seen on TV” has little in common with “You Have Been Watching”. The former is fluffy, broad and lightweight, whereas the latter tries to be more cruel and cutting. That said, my main problem with “You Have Been Watching” is Charlie Brooker. I’m a big fan of his written work, his sneering voice-overs and his scripted put-downs but when he talks to the panellists, he resorts to an irritating high-pitched voice, sounding something between a whining teenager and an overwrought sycophant. Sort it out man.

By: Steve Williams

Steve Williams — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:33:10 +0000

Er, that should have been “well-known faces rather than comedians”.

By: Steve Williams

Steve Williams — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:32:37 +0000

Basically this is That’s Showbusiness (that was its name, although it mutated from a similar series the previous year called A Question Of Entertainment) in that it’s got two teams of celebs, mostly well-known faces rather than celebrities, one led by a mumsy TV favourite (for Fern Britton read Gloria Hunniford) and one led by a comedian – although you’d have to say that Jason Manford and Kenny Everett are some distance apart. It probably owes more to that than Telly Addicts.

Mike Smith certainly doesn’t need the work anyway, as he runs a company that supplied helicopters to TV companies and almost every time there’s a shot from a helicopter on a TV show, it’s one of his choppers doing it. In fact it’s often him flying it. Then there’s all his Carphone Warehouse booty, apparently he did the ads when they started and they couldn’t afford to pay him so he got a load of shares, and they ended up being worth millions. He’s doing just fine.

By: Glenn Aylett

Glenn Aylett — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:14:04 +0000

Why not revive That’s Entertainment, the reasonably popular showbiz panel game from the late 80s and early 90s? Mike Smith has been off air for a very long time and needs the work and also it was quite a good show.

By: Andy Elms

Andy Elms — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:07:39 +0000

Steve W. wrote:
Guess The Year was… last bloody year

That jarred me as well. Not to mention the question about the name of an actor appearing on a TV show in 2010. While I can understand the Beeb trying to drum up excitment for the New New New Doctor, that was a touch excessive.

However, if they run out of “Thingys” they could always have a “Whose Former Flatmate Am I?” round…

By: Steve Williams

Steve Williams — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:32:44 +0000

Logic seems to be going out of the window on this show – last week we had one of Britain’s best impressionists and they didn’t get him to do any impressions (though Peter Serafinowicz was pleasingly silly in other ways) and this week, one of the years in Guess The Year was… last bloody year! What on earth is the point of that? Why is this show so desperate not to include anything from before the last decade? Surely showing some silly clips of seventies or eighties telly can get a laugh, get the panellists to do some funny anecdotes and appeal to a much wider audience? Why show clips of Wallander? Harry Hill couldn’t think of anything funny to say about that show – so what chance Fern Britton?

By: Steve Churchill

Steve Churchill — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:57:39 +0000

Anyone else find the long shots in the end round annoying, as the viewer at home can’t see the image the teams are identifying?

Change the host, add funnier guests (Peter Serafinowicz has been the only success so far), stop Fern Britten doing “comedy introductions” and add questions from pre-1990, and this could be an entertaining quiz.

By: Andy Elms

Andy Elms — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:20:35 +0000

Well, I enjoyed last nights as fairly light, undemanding froth – fairly similar in style to Head Jam (TV theme tune round, please!), down to the gangly presenter off T4. Most of the comedy gems came from Peter Serafinowicz, although I probably would have enjoyed it more if I actually knew who the two women on the opposing team were. Was one of them Kate Lawler off Big Brother?

The idea of having a contemporary in “Thingy Off The Telly” was a good one, though I would have preferred the slightly more sexist Whiteleyan “Himoff”. The rotating podium is a neat trick, and its novelty got a couple of decent gags. Maybe more historic questions – as TVCream says, anything in the last decade sort of blurs togetehr. Oh, and a “Dead or In Manchester” round (was a soap character killed off, or did they “move to Adelaide”) would be fun.

The only time I didn’t enjoy it, of course, was when I hadn’t a clue about what they were talking about. But I suppose you can hardly have a TV quiz without mentioning soaps.

Most of all, as with You Have Been Watching, taking less emphaisis over the scoring – especially not reporting it at the end of each round, and arbitrary supply of points ala Clive Anderson in “Whose Line…” would lighten the atmosphere.

By: Gavtronic

Gavtronic — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:38:38 +0000

Both this and ‘You Have Been Watching’ seem locked in laughably moribund formats – Charlie Brooker and his coterie of ‘Off The Kerb’ alumni and alluringly clad popsters (ahem, Jamelia, ahem) , for example, have out-cooled and outwitted themselves to the point that the atmosphere is one of a particularly uncomfortable episode of ‘Ask the Family’.
You are only ever going to receive fourth, fifth, or sixth-hand wit and naif reaction (how long before any plagiarised satirical line on ‘As Seen…’ is greeted with “That’s so random!?” by a guesting bimbobot?) from ‘ASOT’ and what Jones possesses in terms of a “shagger’s swagger”, Brooker is prismically opposite from. Increasingly the scatalogical, cannibalistic, nihilistic s-wordsmith of the Guardian reveals himself to be coy at the delivery of his own lines and apparently in love with a certain tier of celebrity that he used to deplore – at least upon the page.
Why didn’t Brooker go the whole hog in his ‘Victor Lewis-Smith’ Tribute act and look at the early twenty-first century’s ‘The Vicious Circle’ – VLS’s doomed but laudable foray into round-table TV criticism containing lost-years “IN-Vindaloo-On-Shoulder-Gear” Keith Allen, on Channel 5.
Copying that format and adding that particular tincture of verbal MSG that makes hima little more palatable than Lewis-Smith would have been a shrewder move for Brooker.

By: Richie JH

Richie JH — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:10:07 +0000

They would have been better off bringing back Telly Addicts, also some proper archive clips (ie 70′s & 80′s – everyone loves a bit of nostalgia) might have helped – one of the guess the years was 2005 which seems like just yesterday!