Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon

I really hoped that Jim Bowen was going to be involved in the show, not just as a joke. Twats

I've not watched ITV so religiously on a Saturday night for good five years now so I can safely say that The Gameshow Marathon was a great idea. But lets hope they do something with it now and not decide to do the whole thing again in six months.

Out of all the quizzes I seen so far I think both the Price Is Right and Play Your Cards Right would not look out of place in a revamped Saturday night ITV line-up, indeed the same would go for Bullseye and Family Fortunes. They all need to placed at peak time with a decent host who fits the game and who has some charm and personality.

I actually think Ant & Dec would be better suited to presenting The Price Is Right and maybe get in a more old school presenter (as it only needs the one) to host Play Your Cards Right, the same goes for Bullseye. As for Family Fortunes, well why not bring back Les Dennis?

Are you sure about that? On last night's show when he was talking to Gloria Hunniford thay said she used to do Sunday Sunday in the same studio (that was an old LWT show so I'm assuming it was made at LWT, probably in Studio 1). I didn't see the closing credits though.

he doesn't want to come back, well that's what he said!

FF is apparently coming back next year...but Les Dennis has turned it down. Vernon Kay is supposedly favorite for the job. I can't see it working myself. people seem to be forgetting Family Fortunes and Play Your Cards Right were still on air as recently as a couple of years ago..performing very poorly in the ratings. Why would it be any different now?

It really wouldn't be a good idea for ITV to go back down that road. There are only two reasons why this show is performing - Ant and Dec.

Take a step back and look at it for a second - aside from anoraks like us who are watching for the old idents, and for a nostalgia-fest, why should it work as a prime-time Saturday night show? It's a bunch of old quiz shows and some Z-list celebrities, and as pointed out before, when these shows were cancelled they didn't have great ratings. Can anyone imagine Bullsye being screened on a Saturday night?

Yet Ant and Dec can turn the worst possible format into TV gold. Without them, I'm A Celebrity would have been found out. Without them, the Saturday Night Takeaway would show itself up as the dated Noel's House Party-alike that it actually is. They seem to have been parachuted into this show in a bid to rescue it - The X Factor, on the other hand, has a solid enough format, so they can get away with putting the anonymous Kate Thornton in charge.

The gameshow marathon is getting away with it because of the personality of Ant and Dec, and because each of these shows is making a one-off appearance, there is a novelty value there. But try and string any of these into a full series, and you've got Crossroads on your hands.

well i'm sure the main reason for FF having, such poor rating was because of that ANDY bloke which no one realy like.

and rememeber bullseye got axed 1-2 years after it got move to a saturday instead of it being on sunday where it should have been kept!

I don't see that as being conclusive. Crossroads' comeback only failed as a direct result of the Yvon Grace revamp. Had the series been left to develop in 2002 it would still be here today, probably with a chavvy edge though.

Before the Grace revamp it was developing very nicely. If, say, Bullseye was to make a return, one would hope ITV learnt from that mistake.

Well I suppose it can't help trying and then if any programmes brought back do flop than at least people will have to stop saying "XXX should be brought back its better than YYY which is on these days"

They could always just bring Gameshow Marathon back next year with a different set of game shows, and therefore have a 2nd entertainment format for Ant and Dec (Gameshows in the Autumn, Takeaway in the winter)

Agree with the comments above - the success of the Gameshow marathon is down to Ant and Dec, and more so to the nostalgia fest and the chance for viewers to snigger at what we used to watch.

Game Shows are unlikely to perform well in a regular Saturday night prime-time slot, though personally I think they're ideally for the slot around 5.30pm after the news.

I don't think there has been a new high profile GAME SHOW on TV for quite sometime - they were effectively replaced in the late 90's by the QUIZ SHOW, with more intelligent tougher formats.


As for Les Dennis, he is the rumoured host of new C4 show Deal or No Deal, which will air in the post-Countdown slot on weekday afternoons.

I disagree totally with that, I watched the Gameshow Marathon for two reasons. Firstly for nostalgia reasons and secondly to see if the quizzes would would work again in 2005. Ant & Dec are overated and are just bearable on this programme.

I also believe old and indeed new quiz shows would work on ITV as long as they only run then for say six to eight weeks. Look what over exposure has done to WWTBAM.

But what I meant was that we are watching the programme for different reasons than the vast majority of the ITV audience. We're watching it for the idents, for the nostalgia and to see if the show can make it in 2005. The majority of primetime Saturday night viewers don't care about any of this. They want lowest common denominator, fun, light entertainment with very little thought involved. Therefore they need a reason to watch it, and Ant and Dec are keeping the format mainstream enough to attract a sizeable enough audience to justify it.

If Ant and Dec weren't in charge, and they'd put Kate Thornton or some other average presenter on, I wonder if it would have achieved the same success.