Generation Game to be brought back with Mel and Sue

You are correct when The Generation Game came back with Bruce it was indeed a Friday night.

People try and say the films are set in that era, but even if the books are meant to be, it's quite obvious the films aren't. Pretty much every single detail in the "muggle" scenes in the films sets them in the 2000s, not the 90s, I could be here all day listing them. There's not a single attempt to get any 90s period details, or cover up anything 2000s in there. When there's a key scene where the Millennium Bridge is destroyed- while people look on from City Hall and The Gherkin it's obvious they weren't even trying to imply it was set in the 90s.

In fact if you've been on the studio tour at Leavesden, you'll notice amongst the genuine props for the films are Dudley's school certificates- dated 2001.

And yes, it is the Jim Davidson version we see. Complete with 14:9 letterbox bars on the TV.

Sadly that's not right - two series of the Gen Game were on Fridays. The first series was indeed on Fridays at eight in 1990, and then after ratings declined a bit on Saturday nights, it was back on Fridays in 1993 (with Brucie's "make a date, Friday at eight" catchphrase) - http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1993-09-10#at-20.00

I remember ratings absolutely rocketed in that slot, though, partly because it was during the brief period when ITV moved the Friday episode of The Bill to Saturdays so it was only facing You Bet (Brucie's old show vs Brucie's, er, old show) and it absolutely thrashed it. And so it was "promoted" back to Saturdays in 1994.



Yes, that does appear to be the case. Actually that whole show was seemingly something of a disaster behind the scenes because I remember when it was first announced they said they were going to do it live, with viewers able to join in, but somewhere along the line they abandoned that. It was a truly awful programme, though, the most generic panel show you'd ever seen. In fact the whole thing was more or less the panel show from Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive - which was supposed to be a parody of derivative panel shows - played for real. There was another awful C4 panel show around the same time called The Mad Bad Ad Show where they re-edited the later episodes from an hour to half an hour.

It probably happens quite a lot that there are issues on TV shows that need to be salvaged in the edit. I remember the appalling h&p@bbc, Hale and Pace's big flop BBC series, was a weird forty minute duration and they didn't say hello at the beginning or goodbye at the end, and stuff just happened with no beginning or end, so it all felt as if it had been very heavily edited down from what was supposed to be a longer programme.

Also as well, I remember circa early 1994, Trevor and Simon talking in their column in Live and Kicking magazine about filming a series for primetime BBC1, and then I never heard anything about it for ages, before this one-off turned up over a year later...
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1995-07-29#at-17.50

I remember the opening titles featured odd clips of them "arriving" in the studio in lots of different ways and I always assumed that the series had to be abandoned for some reason or other, and they did this one-off as a way to use up the stuff they'd already shot.

I stand correct and doth my hat. It’s surprising how memories work from childhood as I knew I watched it on a Saturday I thought it was always on a Saturday

Well it's on BBC1 now. Thoughts?

What are Lorraine Kelly and Richard Osman doing there?

I'm sure they're using a laughter track for some of this as this is painfully unfunny.

Once again, they've tinkered with a successful format too much, especially with the You Bet style celeb feedback on the contestants.

I agree, some of the audience reaction is clearly unnatural, whether that's canned laughter and applause or the amount of editing that's been done.

It’s a format very much of it’s time. Pottery, sausage making & plate spinning feels very dated.

They’ve also basically used all the famous games all in one episode.

The canned laughter is quite ridiculous, it’s almost like those shows where they make fun of canned laughter, fading it up and down after every slight gag.

Remember the show was reduced from 4 episodes to 2, so heaven knows what the other two were like.

Is there going to be any innuendo left in the world for next week's episode?

Does anyone know where they filmed this?