ITV has been airing their new Stephen Fry-hosted episodes of Jeopardy! They only placed an initial order of 20 episodes which are airing at 4pm weekdays just ahead of The Chase. But the first episode did get a slightly later airing on New Year's Day. But that timeslot is probably going to limit their audience a bit. However, ITV's afternoons from 3-6pm are all hour-long quizshow formats.
I've not seen enough of the original Jeopardy! to know how it's very different. To my eyes, the sets, graphics, and music are all the same. But ITV has stretched episodes out to an hour. And you need to remember that UK broadcasting rules prohibit stuffing as many minutes of commercial airtime in our shows as the US allows. In other words, one UK commercial hour needs more content than two US commercial half hours - or two episodes of Jeopardy! All of this means that Fry can be a bit more relaxed, and add a few interjections of his own - clarifying answers, adding details and so on. And we get longish chats with contestants, which most of the 45-60 min quizshows tend to include. He also has to be a tiny bit lenient about contestants getting the answer format 100% right, since it's not built into UK viewers DNA just yet. The hour runtime also means we get *two* rounds of Jeopardy! before we get to Double Jeopardy! and then Final Jeopardy! as usual. A Radio Times puff piece included this: "As Fry mentioned, participants are able to play an extra round in comparison to the original format. This has been done to increase the stakes for the players." But it's pretty clear that ITV wanted an hour long show, and that's the sole reason for the extra round. Overall, while I like Fry, and the level of questions is high, I'm not sure how well this will do. I think it needs a longer run. I can't say I'll be going out of my way to watch it. Fry has also recorded six primetime episodes for Australian TV, on the same UK set, but with Australian contestants. Adam -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGDZAxNkq66XUL_r-Ts0B%3Dds4t-xe15nodPo3kanxnnxUw%40mail.gmail.com.
