Went along last night to see a recording of a pilot for a new TV quiz, which looks promising.
The premise is that 3 celebs are locked in a house – hence the show being called The Bubble – for 3 days without any access to the world, then brought to the studio and presented in a series of rounds with 3 news stories – 2 are fake and one is real. They try to guess which is the real one.
The rounds were a mixture of news clips – including pulling in some fairly notable names (Chatshow Charlie, Brian Paddock etc) for the fakes, and mock-ups of newspaper stories.
It worked generally quite well – the celeb guests (2 ladies who I can’t remember – sorry! and Frank Skinner) were genuinely shocked at the nuclear submarine story being a true one – and the recent fuss about a No Kissing sign at a train station threw them.
I think the news clips were too long for what is presumably going to be a half hour program, but maybe they’ll iron out those kinks if the program gets commissioned. I’d suspect it’ll be aimed at the 9pm Friday slot occupied by the likes of QI and HIGNFY.
They also had a slight problem when it turned out none of the people on the set had any water to drink, so bottles (with labels ripped off) were run up at each break to keep throats moist.
I am a bit wary of going to TV recordings following a harrowing experience years ago, where friends took me along to another pilot recording and we had to get very excited at each point score. Deeply embarrassing – and they apparently use these as stock footage, so there is a risk that I could end up “being in the audience” in the future on some god-awful reality TV show!
My favourite TV show which I will go to watch live – Have I Got News for You – very rarely shows anything more than the backs of the audience heads as the credits roll. I feel safe there.
Last night they did pan the cameras at the audience a few times, which instantly puts me off going back (although it appeals to some people), but I suspect I’ll be watching it on TV – if it goes ahead.
Update: 8th Oct 2009
My Hat Trick website tracker tells me that the show has been commissioned and recordings will start in January 2010.
I also went to this, looks pretty promising and it was pretty funny too !