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Crystal Maze With Dicky-ade

Started by Twed, May 26, 2017, 06:10:12 PM

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TheManOne

Quote from: JoeyBananaduck on June 22, 2017, 02:03:12 PM
Everyone I've ever spoken to - and I talk to a lot of people who love gameshows - absolutely LOATHE celebrity editions of anything.

Indeed. US Survivor is the only exception to this - and they're not really "celebs" - but their re-use of old contestants or the cross pollination from other reality shows really works there. Mostly because the focus is entirely on tactical game play and so it's great to get a particular playing style back in.

Oh! And The Genius. Even though they weren't celebs to me - because I'm not South Korean.

Norton Canes

Quote from: icehaven on June 22, 2017, 01:58:42 PM
Which is exactly why he's been asked. Expect most of 'celebrities' will be known to be thick as bricks and/or extremely polished, all about the hair and make up etc. so we can watch the 'fun' as they stare blankly at logic puzzles or scream and panic as they fall in water or have to walk across a rolling log etc

Compare this with one of The Crystal Maze's spiritual predecessors The Adventure Game, which boasted guests of the calibre of James Burke, Fred Harris, Michael Rodd, Graeme Garden, John Craven, Johnny Ball, Richard Stilgoe, Sue Cook... intellectual titans of their age. An equivalent new Crystal Maze team would be something like Brian Cox, Jim Al-Khalili, Dan Snow, Dara O'Briain and Alice Roberts.

checkoutgirl

Quote from: olliebean on June 21, 2017, 10:52:57 PM
I had a quick look at who the "celebrities" are for episode 2, and it looks like episode 1 may be the highlight.

Well traditionally TV shows will try to start with the best stuff to try and lure people in.

Beagle 2


Replies From View

Richard Ayoade comes across in this like a teaching assistant who has been drafted in to cover the class while the teacher quickly has a piss.

imitationleather


Replies From View

Louis the Pirouettist was locked in and they're about to buy him out?  What's wrong with the world??

Captain Z

This is like watching England vs Iceland all over again.

Replies From View

Quote from: Captain Z on June 23, 2017, 09:45:43 PM
This is like watching England vs Iceland all over again.

It's like watching sport, yeah.

Replies From View

Removed the moat from around the Crystal Dome.

Replies From View

Finished and dreadful.  Ayoade turning and leaving as if he's cacked his pants.

Captain Z

Quote from: Replies From View on June 23, 2017, 09:47:24 PM
It's like watching sport, yeah.

I mean like something you really want to put your support behind, and surely it can't possibly go wrong, but it does.

Serge

Oh, I liked Ayoade. And the fact that while they hesitated to buy Louie 'Colin Hunt' Spence out, they agreed that if Ore was locked in they'd buy him out immediately. But I'll probably enjoy this more when it gets to normal twats rather than celebrity twats.

Replies From View

From the bizarre remark at the start that faces on TV change all the time these days, it was all too knowing*.  Shows like this can't be smug and self-aware.  They have to be naive and unashamedly absorb you into their silly world.

The pedantic decision to keep saying "mins" instead of "minutes" is desperately affected and annoying, as well.


* See also:  "Because of editing you will be wearing a helmet on the other side of the door."

Replies From View

Quote from: Serge on June 23, 2017, 10:04:55 PM
But I'll probably enjoy this more when it gets to normal twats rather than celebrity twats.

Absolutely.  It was a misfire to start the reboot like this.  It sets a precedent for the non-celebrity contestants to be smug prancy-dancy annoying, as well.  People who apply to be on television these days are a bit attention-seeky by default, so I'm beginning to suspect that even the non-celebrity episode of The Crystal Maze are unlikely to resemble the 90s show very much.

Depressingly shit.
All guests were vacuous and, as predicted by all, Ayoade was such a bad choice. I like him in other things but he just didn't suit this at all. Utterly rigid throughout and far too self-conscious to muster the enthusiasm to make it work. He looked like an awkward man suddenly and unwillingly forced into the spotlight cos he was picked to be best man at a wedding.

Cuntbeaks

Made a point of not watching it, which seems to have been the correct decision.

Richard O'Brien will be screaming as he watches his legacy being dismembered.

Cunts aside, how were the challenges?

TheManOne

Made it as far as Louis Spence.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: Cuntbeaks on June 23, 2017, 11:32:06 PM
how were the challenges?

I literally caught about 20 seconds (sorry - secs) of it whilst channel hopping, and the one that was on when I got to channel 4 was one from the original series - Aztec world (I think), floating about on a precarious little shitty floaty thing and collecting other little shitty floaty things.

That's all I saw.

Rolf Lundgren

Quote from: JoeyBananaduck on June 22, 2017, 02:03:12 PM
Everyone I've ever spoken to - and I talk to a lot of people who love gameshows - absolutely LOATHE celebrity editions of anything. Even casual fans.

It's not so much celebrities for me but people who aren't interested in the gameshow. Members of the public always are because they choose to go on them and go through an audition process. Most celebrities aren't because they just want to be on telly and their agent has suggested it as a good idea. There are exceptions of course where you see them get into it and it's worthwhile. For example Shaun Williamson on Pointless and Mo Farah on The Cube made for great shows.

This episode of The Crystal Maze was rubbish because Louie Spence and Vicki Patterson couldn't shut the fuck up and when you've got people attention seeking and making it about them rather than the game then surely it alienates the core audience. It didn't help that they were all largely bad at the games too.

Quote from: Cuntbeaks on June 23, 2017, 11:32:06 PM
Cunts aside, how were the challenges?

Alright. Some of them seemed quite easy. There was one game where you had to connect 3 pipes from a choice of 4 and a word game that most people would have cracked. I expect they'll make them harder for the non-celebrity versions but we'll see. The set looked great though, especially the Futuristic zone.

TheManOne

Quote from: Rolf Lundgren on June 24, 2017, 01:11:13 AM
There are exceptions of course

Vic Reeves final round on Tipping Point. Truly nail-biting brilliance. I'll hunt it down. (Edit - can't find it easily)

Oh! And Lucy Porter on any general knowledge quiz. She knows everything.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Serge on June 23, 2017, 10:04:55 PM
Oh, I liked Ayoade. And the fact that while they hesitated to buy Louie 'Colin Hunt' Spence out, they agreed that if Ore was locked in they'd buy him out immediately. But I'll probably enjoy this more when it gets to normal twats rather than celebrity twats.

I'm with you and thought Ayoade did a decent enough job. Spence was all but unbearable but at least he was absent for half the show and the rest didn't annoy me too much, and I thought it was a fun enough 44 minutes.

imitationleather

How many of these celebrity shows are there?

Unless it's in the contract, going on last night's episode, I really cannot see this surviving to a "proper" series.

Replies From View

Quote from: Rolf Lundgren on June 24, 2017, 01:11:13 AM
The set looked great though, especially the Futuristic zone.

It reminded me of the set for the 2009 Red Dwarf special - in other words, obviously made of painted wood.

It's not the set itself that was the problem, though.  Of course a spaceship set is going to be made primarily of wood, and the material wasn't distractingly obvious in itself.  The problem is that it wasn't brought to life by Ayoade.  He was commenting on "mins" as an idiom at one point, and that's the problem - the self-consciousness of the show as something nostalgic and silly rather than what we had with Richard O'Brien, who treated everything as real yet gave it all a wild, eccentric energy.

"Will you start the fans, please?" - give it some welly for fuck's sake.

MoonDust

What annoyed me the most in the whole episode was all the twats taking for fucking ever to solve that problem of how many animals does this woman have left from a list of loads. They were going about that in a well fucking mental way. I got it in 10 seconds: count all the animals, subtract all the ones with 4 legs. Simple. The fuck were they doing though?

I think Richard was feeling my frustration too with his commentary over it.

I couldn't tell if Richard was taking the piss or being his cynical self the whole time. Especially since whenever he'd run off with someone grabbing his golden hand, he seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: Replies From View on June 24, 2017, 10:46:15 AM"Will you start the fans, please?" - give it some welly for fuck's sake.

I've not seen this yet, but from the above I'm now imagining SOTCAA's take on the Raymond Luxury-Yacht sketch in comparison to the original.

The Crystal Maze: The "That Voice" Edition.

Replies From View

Quote from: Ambient Sheep on June 24, 2017, 12:24:32 PM
I've not seen this yet, but from the above I'm now imagining SOTCAA's take on the Raymond Luxury-Yacht sketch in comparison to the original.

The Crystal Maze: The "That Voice" Edition.

He says it like a man with his mouth too close to a microphone, who therefore has to subdue his voice rather than project it.

I understand that it's difficult to say an iconic line in a new way without it sounding unnatural or contrived, but Ed Tudor Pole got around this problem by saying a slightly different line.

BRen

Quote from: Replies From View on June 23, 2017, 10:28:28 PM
From the bizarre remark at the start that faces on TV change all the time these days, it was all too knowing*.  Shows like this can't be smug and self-aware.  They have to be naive and unashamedly absorb you into their silly world.

The pedantic decision to keep saying "mins" instead of "minutes" is desperately affected and annoying, as well.


* See also:  "Because of editing you will be wearing a helmet on the other side of the door."

Agree with this, not a fan of Ayoade, it's too knowing the way he's presenting it: 'I'm Richard Ayoade doing my oddball aloof/sarcastic persona presenting that 90's game show The Crystal Maze'. With O'Brien and even Tudor-Pole you felt like they were part of The Crystal Maze, Ayoade feels like he's just been placed in there to present it and it does feel pretty artificial.

Twed

I am very disappointed that they don't seem to have gone with the conceit of Ayoade living in The Crystal Maze.

Beagle 2

What's the point going to all that fucking effort to build those massive sets and then being all ironic and sarcastic about it? Baffling.