Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway 2015

Both the Miriam Ryan reveal and Louis Walsh out of my ear features fell spectacularly flat I thought.

The show is tired and is seriously in need of some new features and ideas for next years series.

Didn't help when she mentioned she could see his earpiece!

It's been a strange series, it sort of started well then they kind of gave up momentum halfway through. Still, they're back on with Cowell next week, the other clinging on saviour of ITV.

It does feel like they used the budget up half way through the series - the End of the Show Shows have been especially weak in the latter half. Also really got fed up of them sending everyone to New York - I'm sure icelolly.com would have given them a few tickets to somewhere else if they'd asked.

And notice that the randomly drawn player of Win the Ads was a woman yet again this week - think that's every show this series.

It feels a bit flat for some reason and I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Even the End of the Show Show seemed a bit like too much like back-slapping than being genuinely entertaining. It's a shame because you can tell Ant & Dec and the team really want to make a great, enjoyable show.

Anyone looking again for an ITV family free show tonight will have been severely disappointed - every one of them helping on The Chase section was from the channel. One aim for next series might be to try and do an episode that doesn't feature either an ITV show or ITV personality in it! For flagship Saturday night, surely they can get top quality guests?

A bit nit-picky, but Ant v Dec was a bit of a shambles in my view. Dec's team got six questions correct, and Ant's team also got six questions correct. Therefore, surely, it was a tie? If anything, Dec's team should have won because it took them less time to get to six questions correct than Ant's team, but Ant's team won because they went second and caught up. I know it's only a bit of fun and I doubt either Ant or Dec genuinely care whether they win or lose after the series finishes, but I'd feel a bit swizzled if I were Dec.

I'm not sure, getting people in who know what the show is about and will play along in the right places is better to me than some American pop star who doesn't know the format and is only really there to perform their new single.

I'm getting quite bored about people complaining about other ITV faces appearing, why does it matter? As long as they are entertaining and actually give something to the show it's not an issue for me.

People say it's just plugging another ITV show, but half the people accused of this don't even have a current show on air, or were on The X Factor 5 years ago or some really tenuous link that links almost anyone to the channel. What's Paddy McGuiness flogging for example, next year's Take Me Out?

On the show overall, I think people are in danger of over analysing every little bit, yes the live get me out of my ear didn't work great, but it was 5 mins, they laughed if off and moved on. It shows how short shelf live things have now if items are now considered tired when you bear in mind how many editions of each feature there has actually been in total, particularly with the rotation of items, compared to how many editions of a feature on Noel's House Party there was.

Ant won because he was in the lead overall across the series.

But had Dec won they would have forgotten about that and had tonight's game as the decider.

Last week's missing sugar probably messed it up as they would have tried to ensure a draw heading into tonight

The Get Out Of Me Ear segment was utterly painful to watch. Obviously nobody assumed the bartender would be asking Louis questions about what he wanted, and would therefore interrupt him or throw him off track. And I'm glad it wasn't just my imagination that she said she could see his earpiece. Surely one person who'd be on guard would be somebody working in the same environment as Saturday Night Takeaway.

Despite me being very fond of SNT, this series has filled me with a fair bit of doubt and dissatisfaction. As previously mentioned, the show feels too tight and over-rehearsed. Even Ant vs Dec is pre-planned and the surprise of what the challenge is is now no longer there. Also, somebody is trying to implement essences of Morecambe and Wise into Ant and Dec and it doesn't feel natural. And as for the ITV-centric roster of guests, Andrew is right as in the guests themselves are relatively tolerable. But once you notice a majority of the guests work for ITV, it's tricky to let it go over your head. Especially when you're met with somebody like Cheryl Cole who has the charisma of a pedal bin.

I hope somebody knows how flawed this series was, and that it can be sorted for next series. It's a shame to say that the best moments have been when things haven't gone to plan, and those moments were few and far between. This is the sort of show that needs to be a little unhinged to take full effect of the live studio environment. But it pains me to say that this has been the way since it came back from hiatus a couple of years ago. Granted the flaws have only just become apparent to this extent, but I hope improvements can be made. I wouldn't want to see a show like SNT put to sleep.




Technically, going by the rules of the Final Chase, the Chaser sets the target and the contestants win by reaching that target within the time given. So the system was right, but it was flawed in that a team of contestants did a Chaser's job, so one of them would've been at a disadvantage.

He has a new ITV sitcom "The Delivery men" starting on Wednesday week.

And it wasn't even mentioned. I've no issue with them plugging other ITV shows - the BBC would do exactly the same if they had a similar format. The only problem I had last night was they'd already spoofed The Chase this series, plus it was a pretty weak ending to the series.

Moan, moan, bloody moan.

They can't win can they? It's either too slick and over-rehearsed, or its car-crash TV because a segment went wrong.

There's a difference between something going wrong with it still being entertaining, and something going wrong because it hasn't been very well thought out.