'Richard Osman's House Of Games' - Series 3 Commissioned - 100 episodes

Moggy wrote:I enjoyed the first episode but agree with the comments on the audience. At times it felt really flat as the only reactions seemed to be Nish laughing and utter silence around him.

KK wrote:

Moggy wrote:I enjoyed the first episode but agree with the comments on the audience. At times it felt really flat as the only reactions seemed to be Nish laughing and utter silence around him.

I think it needs an audience like the rebooted Room 101 or maybe even a fake audio track.

DML wrote:It's only the crew in the studio. The truth is having an audience would massively change the tone of the show and we wanted the celebs to relax. Because they aren't playing up to anything, they get very competitive.

Mini E wrote:Have only watched the first episode so far - thoroughly enjoyed the format. Nish Kumar is possible the least funny comedian on a panel show ever though. Every time he opened his mouth it irritated me. Really enjoyed the rest of it though. Great stuff DML!

DML wrote:

Mini E wrote:Have only watched the first episode so far - thoroughly enjoyed the format. Nish Kumar is possible the least funny comedian on a panel show ever though. Every time he opened his mouth it irritated me. Really enjoyed the rest of it though. Great stuff DML!

Ah it can be a good thing if you don't like one of the celebs, you can root against them!

Too clever by half. So sharp he’ll cut himself. Nobody likes a smart alec. Richard Osman must hear remarks like that all the time.
The famously brainy quizmaster — who created Pointless, the gameshow that made him a household name — is always top of the class on telly, whether he’s presenting Child Genius or guesting on shows such as QI.

He had a stab at inventing a traditional quiz format a couple of years ago with Two Tribes, where players swapped teams every round. It didn’t catch on: watching contestants zigzag about tended to bring on motion sickness.

House Of Games (BBC2) is another attempt to establish a teatime gameshow. This time Richard has fixed the player problem, with a single set of celebs who stay put all week. But he can’t control his compulsion to over-complicate everything else.
House Of Games uses every type of trivia question ever devised, and then comes up with more. It’s an imagination eruption, a brainbox effervescence.
There are games based on codes, puns, picture clues, rhymes, guesswork, teamwork and musical memory.
Even the general knowledge tests are tortuous: in one round, players picked up their iPads to see a map of Britain, and had to point out the location of the UK’s first nuclear power station (Windscale, on the Cumbrian coast) and its highest mountain (Ben Nevis, in the Grampians).

Another game challenged players to find the rhyming connection between a former Foreign Secretary and a gooey yellow spread (Douglas Hurd, lemon curd).
As ever, Richard seems supremely superior to all the confusion. Every thoughtless mistake is mocked with gentle thoroughness and arched eyebrows.
Radio 1 DJ Clara Amfo had to estimate how many British babies were named Richard in 2015, and said: ‘60,000.’ With lethal logic and statistical analysis, the host explained that, if Clara was right, 20 per cent of all baby boys that year would be Richards.
It’s like watching a university don eviscerate a hapless first-year student. No surprise that Richard, as he occasionally likes to remind us, went to Cambridge.
Landscapes of the week:

Sheep farmers in the Lake District can barely break even these days. But countryman Jonathan ‘Boo’ Hodgson, in A Year On The Farm (More4), was drinking in the spectacular views. That’s real riches.

But nobody likes to feel stupid — and this show leaves viewers floundering. No sooner have we worked out the rules to one game than Richard has strode on to the next. There’s no space to reflect. Questions come so fast that we barely have time to start thinking of answers.
Great quiz shows, such as Eggheads and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, convince the viewers that we are geniuses. This one leaves the viewer feeling dimmer than a 40-watt bulb.

2 stars out of 5.

Rax wrote:So their issue is that they're dumb and don't like to be reminded of that?