Saturday Night Takeaway 2020

The kids were just props who looked constantly confused and uninterested in the background. They cheered and waved their arms in the air when instructed to. It was the crew who filled the silence and played the part of audience, as they do on I'm a celeb and I'm sure they would on SNT.

Unlikely they could have written a whole additional show so quickly isn't it?

Pre recording a few original links in and out of a highlights package (essentially what many radio show podcasts do) might have been a good idea.

Could they find 100 local people I wonder who are younger than 70 possibly

Or the whole of Studio TC1 empty apart from Ant, Dec and the production team

I'm out in Kilburn I'd go 👋👋

I think if the audience is banned they ought to make an attempt at going ahead anyway, if it is safe to do so. I’m not sure how it would work and if it’s terrible they could not do it again, but I think it’s worth a try if it comes to it.

Follow the form of Stephen Colbert's Late Show and have a reduced version of the show, in front of 100 staffers

I think it would be fine. They always present a link or two per show from behind the scenes. They can add a running joke about canned laughter to ease the tumbleweed.

Exactly. I’m sure everyone watching would understand. If they don’t do a show it’ll be drivel on all the main channels, better a slightly awkward Takeaway than no show at all and driving everyone to Netflix.

Watching the edited version today, you can see why a good chunk was taken out last night on +1, three instances of muting and covering the mouth before she comes on stage.

Talang - 'Sweden's Got Talent' - had no studio audience this weekend. It was different - but still watchable.

I think the conversations here on the last few weeks have been really interesting. And as critical as we are, we're also pretty happy with saying when a show is much better, as last night's episode was. Maybe it was simply down to less Virgin/Disney promotion - spending some time entertaining rather than just giving out tickets to the audience with the briefest of backstory as to why they derserve it. Always good when something happens to prove it's live too!

It just felt better having a normal open too to be honest, rather than feeling like they have to do something during the song (last week's wackily playing with the cameras didn't work for me. I think there's a technique for deliberately doing something badly, well)

Be interesting if it's back next week. I'm not sure it will, and I imagine they really don't want to play to an empty studio. Funny for an opening link, but a buzz kill for the other 85 minutes. A highlights programme with the new Undercover would probably still command the ratings though. Makes you wonder if they've ever had a standby programme, like BGT had when the live link went down.

One technical annoyance - who keeps shooting 'live' content filmic style?? The illusion of Ant and Dec and JLS being live just didn't work when repeatedly cutting between the two styles. Same as in the first show when they went to Westfield. Minor gripe though, it's so good to see TVC being used like that - reminded me of the Buble one they did at TLS.