Smtv Live reunion

Certainly looks quite SMTV... The umbrella possibly being a nod to the opening titles of Chums?

These bits look like they could be similar:

I think it’s fair to say that people are generally only interested in the Ant, Dec and Cat period. H & Claire, Brian Dowling and anyone else that followed were presenting SMTV in name only.

Exactly. It's like The Big Breakfast where only die hard fans and us pres geeks really care about anything outside Chris/Gaby or Johnny/Denise. Who even remembers the final SM:TV Live incarnation with Des Clarke and Shavaughn Ruakere?!

The irony is des and shavaughn had some potential. Des especially was funny and shock horror likeable. They had stephen mulhern for a bit too. Much better than people like tess daly who never seemed to want to be there.

There’s a trail online for SM:TV Gold, the version of the show for its last few months on air which mainly consisted of old clips, and they promote it only using clips from the Ant/Dec/Cat era.

Kind of sad how they botched the passing of the torch, but Saturday morning TV was dead within a few years anyway.

Shavaughn literally just vanished one week without any mention, which was strange. Then she was back for the final show as if she'd never been away.

Though with the Ministry of Mayhem we had an almost as strange occurance where we didn't know it was Michael Underwood's last show until about 5 minutes before the end where they suddenly announced it out of nowhere and ran clips of his best bits.

The strangest departure was H and Claire, as they presented it for six months and then one week it was just Tess and Brian presenting, but H and Claire were guests and performed their latest single, after which they said "H and Claire there", and made absolutely no reference to the fact that were presenting the show until the previous week, and then they never appeared again. Absolutely baffling.

It's like The Big Breakfast in that the show was so heavily based around the personalities of its presenters and then when they left there was a chasm, and then you had a revolving door of hosts who all lasted five minutes and you never knew who was going to be on. The Big Breakfast managed eventually to save themselves, for a bit, with Johnny Vaughan, but SMTV never found anyone to replace Ant and Dec. And they also did the thing The Big Breakfast always did, which was when presenters left they just abruptly disappeared and were never mentioned again, no matter how stupid it looked.

Of course, it was suppsed to be James Redmond as the full-time replacement for Ant and Dec, but it never worked out and he was soon out of the door. This was a real shame, I always liked him, and it wasn't his fault he didn't make much of an impact because at the same time he started they also hired Brian Dowling who was more famous than him, and got in all the papers, and it looked like they were trying to replace him before he'd even started. They'd have been better off keeping James and Cat on their own for at least a few months to allow him to get established before bringing in other hosts. Presumably they were having second thoughts and went for a throw-enough-mud policy.

Speaking of the ministry i think holly and stephen would have been ideal together on SMTV.

I remember this! If I remember correctly the final show was pre recorded and links alternated between Ant, Dec and Cat and Brian, Tess, Des and Shavaughn in what seemed like two completely separate studio records with the two lineups only coming together at the very end of the show.

I agree Des and Shavaughn had potential, and they actually invested a lot in that relaunch - new graphics, new set, new sketches and ideas that weren’t just knockoffs of A&D, and CD:UK was also made a completely separate show with a different lineup. Then for some reason, Shavaughn vanished and it all became a bit of a mess until they fully gave up and Stephen Mulhern came in to present SM:tv Gold.

It was very different, with a new title sequence and rearranged theme tune, and you'd have to say that this was probably the era when the Beeb and ITV's shows were the most similar, you could flick between The Saturday Show and SMTV and you could forget which one you were watching. I thought Des was a good presenter, I didn't much like Shavaughn.

The final show was a bit of a disappointment, as you say it was pre-recorded, and given it was two days after Christmas that perhaps wasn't a surprise, but it was a shame it was so obviously pre-recorded (seemingly in two different sessions, as you suggest) because it didn't feel particularly special.

The Should have ended it when Ant and Dec left while it was on a high, but they use to do this on Saturday Morning Kids TV, Try and bring in new presenters and a lot of the time it never worked, how many revamps did Fully Booked/FBi have lol.