Twil's Week in Gameshows (TWiG)

Episode 1 – Week Beginning 23-09-2024

This week’s Raven: Series 3 Week 2

I'm starting a new phase in my life right now, and I need something to ground me. I also need a new outlet for my gameshow ramblings. These two things have combined to create this: Twil's Week in Gameshows (TWiG)! One part gameshow review column and one part diary blog, this will be nowhere near as objective, professional and put together as other weekly gameshow columns (PS: go read Weaver's Week right now) and will entirely be for the benefit of me and my 11-year-old self.

I'm still out of routine at the moment and it feels like the only thing grounding me to the passage of time is the TV schedule. Monday is Only Connect, Thursdays are Taskmaster, Saturdays are Strictly Come Dancing. Richard Osman's House of Games are the bookends to my Raven in the morning, filling up my evenings Monday-to-Friday.

This week's Only Connect (‘Third Agers vs Introverts’) was very normal in terms of question quality, which wouldn't be remarkable if it wasn't on the heels of last week's ‘Bloomsbury Group vs Tea Totallers’ which was extraordinary, and two before that's ‘Harmonicas vs Cat Cows’ where I thought the question quality was well below its normal standard. One question referenced my namesake, which was a pleasant surprise, but as you don't know my name it will have no significance to you except a source of mystery.

Also. BBC quiz shows go one episode without a question referencing ‘TERF Teen Wizard School’ challenge: level impossible. It makes me so uncomfortable as a GNC person and there is a disproportionate amount of them.

Strictly Come Dancing is a weird area for me. It's close enough to a gameshow (under my 'talent show' category of gameshows) to get my brain buzzing, but it's also not really my scene. Sometimes the focus on glitz and glamour can be suffocating. I mainly watch it because my family loves it, the girl I had a crush on in Secondary was obsessed with it and would talk to me about it, and because the music is good. The fact they've gone back to no same-sex couples has also soured me a little to this series. However Strictly also likes to drag in links to other gameshows to keep me hooked. It was Annabell Croft (Interceptor, Treasure Hunt) last year, Anneka Rice (Treasure Hunt) the year before that. Add the sporadic appearances of Moira Stuart (The Adventure Game) reading the voting Ts&Cs and appearing in the Christmas special, they've hit my full trio of older women in gameshows.

This year it's Montell Douglas, who plays Fire in Gladiators and is – along with Electro – one of the only gladiators to have magic powers. Yes, I make that joke every time either of them are on screen. Yes, my family is sick of it. To no one's surprise, she's a stunning dancer and she's sure to go far in the competition. She's even incorporated her gladiator pose into a dance. I'm hoping at some point we get some behind-the-scenes footage of either the celebrity special or series 2 of Gladiators during her training indents. It seems probable. It's also my hope that they get Johannes Radebe (her professional dance partner) to appear on a future celebrity special and relax the gender split so they can meet each other on her home court. But that's a little more unlikely.

Last Wednesday I had a lovely talk with a pink-haired Reverend about The Crystal Maze and Knightmare, which isn't a sentence I ever expected to type. We had a really interesting conversation about why The Crystal Maze reboot didn't land for some old fans and how it makes a fascinating case study on reboots vs tributes and the change of attitudes with TV, both by the industry and the audience. This Wednesday I showed her my gameshow patch jacket and we talked about The Adventure Game. Part of me wants to throw a new gameshow at her each week, to see how many she’s seen. The more sensible part of me is saying not to push it.

Recently the soundtrack to my morning commute has been Temporal Discussion: The Knightmare Retrospective Podcast, as I was a few episodes behind, which means I've had Knightmare on the brain. Unfortunately, this week I completely caught up, so I’ll probably re-listen to some of the older episodes and sprinkle in a couple of my favourite Professional Contestants episodes. I'm looking forward to their series 5 coverage, as the series introduces some favourite characters of mine – Gwendoline the Green Warden and Smirkenorff the dragon – as well as some characters I wouldn’t call favourites but doubtless make the series better with their inclusion such as Elita the Cavern Elf and Sylvester Hands.

I've also been doing a deep dive into BBC press releases for gameshows using my beloved Wayback Machine. It started as gathering concrete evidence for which gameshows were inspired by each other but quickly turned into a study on how the concepts behind the gameshows develop and change over time.

Mission: 2110 is a fascinating case. The original contestant casting was for a show called 'Roboidz' whose protagonist was called Leon. The first press release also calls the show Roboidz, but this time Caleb is mentioned. A second press release gives us the show in its final form by its final name. So the character of Caleb was finalised before the shows title, which is interesting as so much of the show revolves around the ‘Mission’ motif. But why did they go from Leon to Caleb? It’s such a superficial change.

Last Commanders was only ever press released as ‘Fear Falls’ with the description of "a futuristic game show where contestants control avatars and navigate cyborg starships whilst completing complex challenges to help conquer malevolent overlords." It sounds similar enough both aesthetic and format wise, but the story seems quite different. And we know from interviews that Skye Zero herself started out male and very similar to the character of Vaygus, and was even genderless at some points of development. While I love Last Commanders, I would love to take a peak into that alternate timeline and see if it’s even recognisable. Last Commanders is definitely a better name that Fear Falls though, and the change kinda reminds me of how Knightmare used to be 'Dungeon Doom'.

Relic: Guardians of the Museum didn't start with its subtitle. Presumably it was picked up to differentiate it from the similarly named horror movie. That would makes sense. What doesn't make sense? The fact that Raven – a gameshow airing on CBBC, aimed at children – had the original press release article title of 'James Mackenzie is Scotland's new fantasy pin-up'. It’s a turn of phrase with some very specific connotations which makes it’s usage here questionable.

And there it is: My week as told through gameshows. Tune in next week to find out if the column continues! And remember, it's only a game, isn't it?

Gameshows watched: Raven, Knightmare, Mission: 2110, Gladiators, Splatalot, Ninja Warrior Japan, Prosiect Z, Only Connect, Richard Osman’s House of Games, Taskmaster, Strictly Come Dancing