“Big cheers for the first blue”

For the very interested, here is a full game report for yesterday’s jackpot episode of Deal or no Deal?: Read more

Aces

I rather liked Pokerface and, in fact, I was the one who wrote in OTT’s 2006 in Review: “If it had aired every seven days there would have been more space for the public to discuss strategy, theorise on potential outcomes and quite possibly work up a word-of-mouth frenzy about the programme.” Read more

“I’ve got no brief for this moment”

Someone has finally won £250,000 on Deal or No Deal?. Read more

“I can assure you this worked perfectly in rehearsal”

It’s somewhat exciting to see Tomorrow’s World being used to highlight BBC’s technology reporting at the top of a BBC press release. Despite the parodying of Look Around You and the messing about with the format in later years, I still think of it fondly as it was the cornerstone of my viewing when I was growing up and really did seem like a weekly window into the future. As this wikipedia entry shows, they were often really, really accurate. TV Cream has a history of the show, with pictures. Read more

Guy Lyon Playfair

I think I’m always going to be interested in the Enfield poltergeist. Read more

This Life + 10

Almost without exception the press hated this belated Christmas present from BBC2. The depth of their fervour was inversely proportional to the height of expectation the self-same newspapers had whipped up prior to the programme’s transmission. Most critics sounded as if they had been let down by the show, and wrote as if they had somehow been betrayed for previously speaking out so positively. Read more

The Secret Millionaire

It’s a rare production company that chooses to atone for past failings by making another TV series. RDF Media, however, has decided to make up for Wife Swap with The Secret Millionaire, a disconcertingly similar show that somehow manages to be the exact opposite of its flawed predecessor. Read more

The Sarah Jane Adventures

It’s the law. It’s Doctor Who-related, so we have to fret about it. It must be the subject of fevered expectation. Read more

2006

Advancing years take away from us what we have inherited and give us what we have earned. Our relationship with television is a forever-burning example of this; the longer we feel we’ve hung around pouring our time and energy into watching it, the more we feel not merely blessed but actually owed an increasingly rarefied quality of enjoyment in return. Read more

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