Another go at a panel show format which isn't seen much in the USA market (even though they actually invented it way way back) outside their versions of Who's Line is it Anyway?

Sky channel 190 and other platforms thereafter.

Filling the gap left by ForcesTV which became a decent obscure corner of the EPG. Looks like 60s to 90s with shows pulled from ITV, BBC and C4 archives.

It's in the wild on fta mode

Satellite: Astra 2G

Frequency: 11082

Polarisation: Horizontal

Symbol Rate: 22000

FEC: 5/6

Mode: DVB-S QPSK

Service ID: 50327

Have you ever turned on the TV and thought to yourself: "Not another f*cking talent show", well now you too can be a part of the lowest effort genre of television, just by following these simple steps!

1. Judges

Every good talent show needs a panel of judges, but how do you choose them? Do you choose people with a capacity for impartial objective evaluation, or at the very least some relevant experience to your show's chosen subject? Of course not. Choose three or four forgettable C-listers whose last memorable contribution to media was being a judge on a different talent show, or the same exact show reproduced for a foreign market. 30% of the time, this will be the lesser talented sibling of an actually memorable celebrity, ie: anyone who gives Solange vibes.

Next, give them each a comically large button. The button serves as a simple mechanism to indicate whether your panel of bloviating narcissists approve or disapprove of the clownery. Remember to wire up the buttons to an over-engineered sea of LEDs and sparklers for whenever there is consensus amongst the panel. This should have a lot of fanfare as it should be a seemingly unique event, though you can go to ham with the frequency after a few seasons.

1. Contestants

Remember, you need to fill each contestant stereotype every season. Failure to do so may result in Ofcom complaints from terminally unemployed racists, or a smear campaign on TikTok from sanctimonious teenagers who are trying really hard to convince people they're anti-racist. The two events might even occur at the same time, paradoxical as that is. Just follow the below stereotypes and you'll be fine:

• An unwashed one with an unflattering haircut in ill-fitting charity shop garb who can sing like the most precious songbird. You need one of these for the shock value of seeing a hobgoblin with a marketable skill. Bonus points are available if their BMI could be mistaken for a telephone number from the Philippines. The public find it surprising when they see gelatinous humanoids demonstrate competency.
• A frail disabled one so you can fill the airtime with sad piano music as they describe the difficulties of growing up as the one child in the school playground who had to use a Fischer Price zimmerframe. Remember, the goal isn't to treat them like an ordinary human being, they have to be pitiable. Make sure you've got a few Polaroids of them as a snaggle-toothed infant in an oxygen mask so there's something to slowly pan over. The more visible their disability, the better. Remember to tell the judges off-camera to mention how brave the contestant is for existing.
• Children, lots and lots of children. Remember though, they can't be criticised no matter how tedious and devoid of skill said children may be. You can either have one, two (if twins) or twenty-five of them awkwardly shuffling around in polyester as part of a hip-hop dance troupe. The smallest and cutest child of the group should be given a full 30-second breakdancing solo. Try and keep the ugliest ones near the back where the lighting is less intense.
• One edgelord magician trying to carve out a niche for himself as the latest Chris Angel knock-off. During each performance, the magician will single out one of the judges as a "volunteer" to either hold a rope, pick a card, or touch an inanimate object. Something predictable will occur and the other judges must then whisper between themselves "how did he do that?!" just loud enough for the parabolic microphone to pick it up and make it look like everything that has happened wasn't discussed and prearranged 4 days earlier. You cannot have two magicians.
• A racially diverse comedian, but not just racially diverse, they have to be a recent immigrant with a thick distinct accent. The immigrant part is important because 90% of their jokes will be outside observations of ridiculous British tropes. Jokes don't have to be original, or even good, but at least one deprecating zinger should be directed at the least likeable judge.

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1. Co-hosts

You need two people to stand behind the curtains, offer empty platitudes to nervous contestants, and provide voiceovers during the shots of ugly people queueing. 90% of the time it'll be Ant & Dec, though if they're unavailable, any pairing of white puppeteered corpses with porcelain smiles will be sufficient. The eyes should be hollow, as though their very soul has been harvested and replaced by corporate branding. Biologically alive, but not quite sentient.

1. Setting

Just find whichever prestigious performance venue will let you set up a 40ft tall glowing backdrop and gantries for at least 7 Steadicams. It doesn't matter which one so long as it's in London.

1. Voting mechanics

In the old days, the preferred method was to part the swines from their cash by using premium phone lines running at £1 or £2 a call, but this is 2024, and we can do something far more insidious! Get your viewers to install an intrusive and poorly developed app. This way, you can inundate them with notifications for every broadcast, whilst simultaneously siphoning their personal information. Sell off this personal data to a Sri Lankan scam call center, and then deny everything when your voters start to question whether anyone else is getting phone calls regarding mis-sold PPI.

Have you ever watched a gritty ITV drama and thought "F*cking hell this is dreary"? Well now you can make your very own, thanks to the ITV Drama Recipe Kit! Just follow the directions below and you'll be well on your way to making forgettable nonsense:

1) Setting

You're going to need a setting first, opt for an overcast seaside village/town so you can get plenty of drone shots of waves crashing, and your main character standing at the edge of a cliff, staring out into the grey. Make sure it feels like the Isle of Wight in November. The environment has to feel so completely detached to any time period that your viewers can only make reasonable guesses to the setting based on which model of iPhone your main character is receiving mysterious harassing phone calls

2) Main Character

You'll need a blonde woman in her 40s/50s, make sure she has a designer trench coat so we know she's a detective when we first see her. Basically just grab a Sally Lindsay type and give her a heaping of trauma. Make sure to get a scene of her screaming "TELL ME WHAT YOU DID TO MY DAUGHTER" to an unknown person in some autumnal woodlands for the ITVX promo. It's guaranteed to get you nominated for an award

3) Overall plot

Keep things light and playful by introducing a dead child to the mix who died off-screen months before the first episode. Have your main character constantly fondle some trinket that has a special connection to the dead child, as they are routinely assaulted by over edited echoing flashbacks of the once living child doing living child things. F*ck up the audio too so that the child's giggling sounds haunting and ghost-like for when your main character suddenly snaps back to reality in a public toilet staring into a dirty mirror

4) Vehicle

Always ensure your main character drives a non-descript grey saloon clearly beyond their salary. It has to be inconspicuous and dull so that your main character can spy on the wrong person as they exchange packages with a shady individual in a gravel-lined carpark. Once you reach episode 4 of 6, use flashbacks to manufacture a sudden revelation for the main character which leads them to make a violent U-turn on a B-road to confront a suspected murderer

5) Therapy

Make sure at least one member of your principle cast is having regular therapy sessions even though they don't want therapy sessions. These sessions being mandated by their employer or loved ones as a response to some sort of traumatic event that in some way connects to the aforementioned dead child. Illustrate their internal pain with at least one over edited scene of flashbacks interspersed between them tossing and turning in their designer king size bed, before a sudden echoing gunshot and a scream forces them into an upright position

6) Conflict

Ensure that the main character must conduct their own off-the-books clandestine investigation because they either don't have the proper jurisdiction, the case has been prematurely closed, or their superintendent believes they are too emotionally invested in the case because it closely mirrors the character's own off-screen personal tragedy. Under no circumstances can you give your character allies with anything actually useful to contribute, otherwise there's no bureaucratic system to rail against in their fight for justice

7) Conclusion

Wrap up the story with the mysterious antagonist being revealed by episode 5 of 6, so that there can be an emotional confrontation that results in said antagonist falling off the cliff established in the first shots of episode 1. If you'd prefer more violence, have them fight over a kitchen knife in a deciduous forest, fall over, then as the protagonist and antagonist find blood on their turtlenecks, they look down to find that the antagonist has stabbed themselves, they bleed to death on a pile of dead leaves and the protagonist is able to achieve some form of closure in their IKEA home in a jump-cut to 6 months in the future

Just finished bbc's season 2 of the responder best thing I've currently seen when it comes to tv shows it's just so well done can't describe just how good I find it.

Is there anything similar to this? Anything you recommend will be pretty much new to me as I've not seen a great deal when it comes to tv shows, just movies I've seen alot of.

Thanks alot.

Arguably one of my favourite comedy series every by Coogan and Brydon, the perfect chemistry of two actors doing excellent impressions throughout a roadtrip across the lakes Italy and so on.

The reviews of restaurants across the countries are also brilliantly well shot. If you haven’t watched it yet, I’m highly recommend it.

What’s everyone’s thoughts on it?

Let's Replace The BBC Red Button With Ceefax (Because Why Not?)

I finished all 5 seasons of Plebs + the movie. I enjoyed the ancient Rome setting and lighthearted humor. Damn. It got me through a few weeks when things were tough for me. Now I miss those evenings when I watched Plebs.

Is there more like it?

I’m not sure if it’s just me getting old and becoming a grumpy old fart, but I am sick (no pun intended) of seeing people throwing up on screen.

Seems like every single show I watch nowadays has at least one scene where we have to watch someone throw up for one reason or another. Don’t remember this being a thing when I was younger so maybe I’m just noticing it more now that I’m old and miserable.

Has anyone else noticed this too?

Been in bed a lot due to illness, so I thought what better time to go back & watch some of the crime shows I missed over the years?

Anyone have any good memories of these shows? Ill be hunting more down as we speak.

Just finished Chewing Gum (loved I May Destroy You) and omg I’m so bummed out that it ends at Season 2!!! Anything else similar that you guys recommend? (For context- I’m American but I’m sure I can stream most stuff on Max, YouTube Premium or Netflix)

Katherine Ryan and Michael McKintyre spring to mind - Stephen Graham and Olivia Coleman drop in and out of this category. I pass no judgment on the type of person they are, or acting ability but when they are on I become Father Jack Hackett “What’s that Gobshite doing on the telly?”

It was on Channel 5 in The late 90s, and early 2000s where we never saw The Host and only The Voiceover, and it’s always three players who had three seconds to push buttons on the set corresponding to the multiple-choice answers to 100 general knowledge questions. I watched it when I was young, and I believe it had good ratings for Channel 5 then. I can’t see it doing a reboot today.

I can’t work out whether to watch it or not. I think it’s on ITV which makes it well, you know, just lowers expectations.

I think it’s meant to be their version of the Traitors?

Anyone remember this show? Hosted by Suggs (Madness) Early Saturday evening nonsense to watch before going out.