Countdown : Jeff and Rachel take over

I enjoyed today's programme, Jeff was luckily being good ol' Jeff, he wasn't trying too hard and he seemed rather comfortable in the chair. I thought Rachel did well too, although she was nervous and that's fair enough she had big shoes to fill, and she was lucky the numbers rounds were quite easy aswell.

Two things I did notice...

The camera zoom on every first letters round of each part, that seemed different, nice touch aswell.
The letters weren't shuffled properly, one round there was E,E,E,I and I think two S's aswell, although Jeff did joke about what you can do with one I.

Overall, a promising start, will be tuning in again tomorrow.

Multiple letters coming out in the same round isn't anything new, in fact it happens quite regularly, just more noticeable this time as everybody took vowels in lumps of three.
If we had a string of five E's and four S's then yes, you could argue the pack hasn't been shuffled.
Somebody picked up on one of the unofficial Countdown forums that the letters were unbalanced and that Rachel can't shuffle a pile of plastic, though I don't think that falls within her remit anyway.

The new show is a bit blue, the set looks huge and very pretty. The problem with blue is it can be a very overpowering and potentially cold colour, though it makes a change to have a darker looking set from the TV-AM type breakfast TV type sets that the show used to have for a while.

Watching Rachel though, very slow to do anything. Perhaps a simple of nerves though and after a few shows those letters and numbers will be going up much faster with more confidence.

I'm sure she'll pick up pace over time - her first numbers round was quite reminiscent of Carol's early days, going through it all quite slowly with overly large writing on the board.

Ah, that'll be Dudley, who's been the warm-up man since 2003. Don't know what happened to his predecessor...

Susie (not any of the contestants) spotted "Cinnamon" for eight letters in round three or four.

I should have been sitting next to that bloke who Russell Brand telephoned, not her.

it looks good as does Rachael

Perhaps Ms Riley was somewhat slow secondary to the quite ridiculous heels she was wearing. Some kind of fetish stilettos- she must have an effective publicist already.

Lads mag spread within 3 months. Dead cert.

Yeah "Respectable Rachel shows us her vowels" etc

1.2 million viewers for the first show then... not bad!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/13/countdown-tv-ratings

I think the crunch is how many of those come back for more, but a good start.

Or "I'll have two from the top and one from the bottom please Rachel" etc

The critics seem to have been reasonable favourable to Jeff and Rachel today - our local paper even describes her as a young "Princess Diana"!