Strike It Lucky or Strike It Rich - Whichever Name it Went By, It Was Great Fun

Strike It Lucky or Strike It Rich - Whichever name it went by, it was great fun and now there's probably the nearest there'll ever be to some official uploads.

Yesterday whilst scrolling Twitter, as I'm one to do, I happened across something that caught my eye:

The best way to start the weekend is with a dose of Eric and a good belly laugh! A good cure. The FULL episode is over on my YouTube channel (link below) X pic.twitter.com/0Msakyx1HQ

— Michael Barrymore (@MrBarrymore) June 11, 2021

The key bit that I noticed, "The full episode is over on my YouTube channel". Michael Barrymore is uploading episodes of Strike It Rich himself and I'm all for it. There's a lot of shows I've been watching on YouTube over the last year and a bit, and I'm very well aware they probably aren't from 100% legitimate sources. I don't imagine all those episodes of Indoor League I've enjoyed came from someone at Yorkshire Television. And if you like Indoor League, I highly recommend twitch.tv/nikkiandbunty on a Sunday evening, their watch-along streams usually include some Indoor League and Fred Trueman being the most Yorkshire Yorkshireman that ever did Yorkshire.

Strike It Lucky/Rich was a great show, it's quite hard to find anything not to like. An easy to follow format that doesn't suffer from one of my biggest bugbears of modern TV, overproduction. Nowadays everything seems like it's timed to the second, positions and timing are adhered to very strictly and there's no room for spontaneity. In stark contrast, Michael Barrymore found time to completely derail a show from the running order, start dancing with contestants, rant at production about giving an elderly couple trapeze lessons as a prize. One great example, the show starts with an introduction to the contestants which just never ends because MB just gets such great entertainment out of a couple. It goes so long, the episode goes on to skip the first half of the game just to make sure the show still fits its half-hour slot.

If you've never seen it, give it a half hour of your day, it's simply enjoyable throughout:

And I can't mention Strike It Lucky without mentioning the parody from Dick 'n Dom, Strike It Mucky. You know what they say about imitation. Mark Lamarr was less than complimentary about a similar parody of himself on "Never Muck the Buzzcocks" but I hope MB doesn't mind Dave Chapman's impersonation.

 

Fun fact: Dave Chapman, with his other talents as a puppeteer, would later be behind BB8 in Star Wars

The Crystal Maze Comes to BritBox

 It's been available on NOW TV for a while but, just in time for its 31st birthday, The Crystal Maze is coming to worldwide subscription service users via BritBox.

Available in the UK, Canada, the U.S. and Australia, BritBox provides subscribers with a wide range of boxsets of British shows and currently boasts 1.5 million subscribers in North America alone. They also create original content, a notable example being the recent revival of Spitting Image.

💥 Arriving in March 💥

Which shows are you most excited to stream? #BritBox pic.twitter.com/2XCMj61anG

— BritBox_UK (@BritBox_UK) February 10, 2021

^^ Look, top billing!^^

March sees a selection of 90's favourites being added, including 'Jungle Run', select episodes of 'Knightmare', and the first 3 series of 'The Crystal Maze'. So that's 1.5 million more I need to pester to watch TCM. It's going to be a busy March.

The Richard O'Brien Industrial years will be added to BritBox on March 4th 

BritBox is available for £6 a month or £60 for a year

You Bet! - When Talent Shows Were 100% Dancing Dog Free

It's been over a month since the last post. Life has been busy, things have been hectic, and everything's been a bit bleh. But while I've got some free time in the office, I thought I'd look at the other show I liked maybe a little too much.

Everyone's got one unusual, maybe even weird skill that it could safely be assumed isn't all that common. No show took advantage of that quite like You Bet!. 

Based on the German language format "Wetten Dass?", You Bet! invited celebrity guests to bet on the outcome of a very wide range of weird and wonderful challenges taken on by members of the public and some of these challenges were the kind of feats you wouldn't really see anywhere else.

First hosted by Bruce Forsyth in 1988, followed by Matthew Kelly then Darren Day, You Bet! was a talent show that featured the bare minimum of singing, dancing and illusion. Instead, you could see feats such as a dutchman driving a flatbed truck up and over an arch without disturbing the dinner service set up on the back of the truck. Or if that doesn't take your interest, how about a teenager identifying makes and models of car just by looking at the shape of the rear lights. Or a driver cracking eggs using the teeth on the bucket of his digger, whilst blindfolded.

'It's Only A Game Show' Talks The Crystal Maze This Saturday

 Following on from last week and @jordha talking about TCM on 'Game Shows I Suppose', this Saturday sees the UK perspective. Brit based podcast 'It's Only A Game Show' (no points for knowing which show that references, I've mentioned my Jim Davidson story enough as it is) takes to your podcast feeds at the end of the week to have a fun little chat about our favourite big-budget adventure game show.

The '90s Was The Golden Age Of Television, And Has Filled My 2020 So Far

The '90s was the golden age of television. Nothing will sway me from this opinion. Could I be slightly biased in that the '90s were my formative years? Absolutely. Were my years from the age of 1 to 11 based solely around that box in the corner and whatever was projected on the screen? Definitely. Did I learn to read age 3-ish by using the TV guide so I knew when my shows were on? Odd but true. It worked and I could read to a level where my nursery school ran out of books for me, all because I needed to know when The Crystal Maze and Fun House were on. However, it doesn't alter the fact that all the best TV was around during the '90s.

One of the perks of living in the here and now is that everything is online somewhere. Whether officially available through services like iPlayer and All4, or if it's a forgotten series that's just been uploaded by a YouTube user who enjoyed a show, had it recorded on VHS and wanted to share. 

With the recent situation seeing a lot of increased TV time, I've found myself trawling a lot of older TV shows. Sitcoms like 'Drop the Dead Donkey', 'Red Dwarf', 'Bottom' and 'Absolutely Fabulous' have kept me amused and dramas such as 'Crime Traveller' and 'Jonathan Creek' have filled a few hours. I found a show I'd forgotten existed called 'Harry' which was a BBC One drama set in and around Darlington, a town I'm very familiar with. I spent most of it infuriated by moments where I found myself saying "...and that street doesn't lead into there" far more often than I'd have liked to.

More Free Time? Here's Some Game Show/Panel Shows To Enjoy

Well this is fun isn't it? All this free time and panicky shoppers raiding Sainsbury's is proving.... well it's something isn't it. I got a little mini lecture off a woman this morning in regards to me buying one of the last three bottles of semi-skimmed. Anyhow, in between trying the Resident Evil 3 demo and relearning to bake bread since everyone's had it all, I've been cobbling together some YouTube playlists of gameshows and panel shows to have a flick through. No more than one episode of each show, if you like something I'm sure you can go look for more in your own time, we've all got plenty of that for now. I'll be constantly adding to them over time as I remember and find more.

Game Shows

Panel Shows

As Bradley Walsh Departs Doctor Who, Here's A Reminder of "Midas Touch"

As in the case of Bradley Walsh, every so often there's a personality whom you can't remember not knowing who they were. Jonathan Ross has been on TV since at least the 1950's for example. Before him Bruce Forsyth was entertaining Queen Liz I. But do you remember a time BB? Before Bradley?

He's done it all, quizzes, gameshows, sitcoms, soaps, serious drama, a film, viral corpsing videos from 'The Chase' and has just announced his departure from the role of Graham in 'Doctor Who'. Seriously, go look at his Wikipedia and gawp at just how much the man has done. So as he files another project away alongside "Wheel of Fortune" and "Mike Bassett England Manager", I wanted to quickly talk about the first show I remember seeing him on in 1995, "Midas Touch".

Scavengers: ITV's Entry In The History of Adventure Game Shows, and John Leslie's Entry in 'Who Can't Act'

"The time: The Future. The place: Deep Space. Aboard the mothership Scavenger, the shuttlecraft Vulture prepares for takeoff. At the helm, Commander John Leslie..."

And thus ended all credibility this show had within 30 seconds. 

In 1994, ITV wanted a piece of the adventure game show pie and, in association with 20th Century Fox, came up with a show that had the working title "Aliens: The Game Show". Ridley Scott got wind of the idea and told them in no uncertain terms: "No." Thus Scavengers was born.