GENERATION LAME
Generation Game fans blast car-crash revival featuring repeat of Johnny Vegas’ pottery sketch as Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc’s gags flop
THE BBC’s reboot of The Generation Game suffered a conveyor belt of gaffes leading to its debut.
And the latest blunder in the show’s car-crash revival has proved just how few new ideas show bosses have.
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Producers recycled a section starring Northern comic Johnny Vegas from the show’s 2005 outing, hosted by Graham Norton, and used it almost like for like on Sunday.
Johnny taught contestants how to make a pottery teapot in the Make That segment in scenes almost identical to the show’s last outing 13 years ago.
The copycat appearance is the latest blow for the doomed game show, which for some reason also introduced a celebrity panel.
The Sun told last week how bosses had been forced to use canned laughter to boost the audience’s reactions after gags by hosts Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins fell flat.
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Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins front rebooted version of Bruce Forsyth's The Generation Game
It came after the BBC, which had originally booked comic Miranda Hart to front the show, halved the number of episodes from four to two as a result of a lack of quality content to air.
A TV source said: “Producers loved the 2005 pottery class and hoped viewers wouldn’t notice them slipping it back in.
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“It’s been very hard to find genuinely funny moments to put in the programme and Johnny was definitely one they could bank on.
“The whole production has been a struggle and bosses are quite frankly looking forward to the whole thing being over next week.”
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In an exclusive interview in February one former host, Jim Davidson, slated the Great British Bake Off pair’s casting.
On Mel and Sue, who interview guests including Martin Kemp, Gemma Collins and James Argent, Jim said: “They’re not right, they won’t know how to ad-lib.
"They’re not there to teach them how to bake a f***ing cake.”
Judging by the performance, I doubt they’d even manage that.
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Bruce Forsyth performs bizarre balloon routine on the Generation Game
Viewers slating reboot
FANS were quick to express their views.
Viewer David Riddell said on Twitter: “Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game was brilliant. The current version bears no comparison. Awful.”
Another, Peter Quinn, called it “a shadow of its former self”.
New hosts Mel and Sue also failed to impress.
Mark Pittam tweeted: “Oh dear God, the two most unfunny people hosting the new show. You could have done better.” And the canned laughter added to prop up their gags was also a turn-off.
One viewer said: “Can someone turn off the canned laughter – it’s not an episode of Friends.”
That would have been a much better watch.
READ ON FOR THE REST OF DAN WOOTTON'S BIZARRE TV COLUMN
Anthea's answer
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IT’S no mystery to Anthea Turner why her old show Blue Peter has been haemorrhaging viewers.
In recent years the one-time BBC flagship children’s show, which moved to CBBC in 2012, has struggled to retain its traditional place at the top of kids’ TV ratings.
One episode last year had zero viewers, though the BBC was quick to argue that it was a repeat and had been watched by 53,100 viewers when it first aired.
Now Anthea reckons it needs a slot back on BBC1 to restore it to its past glory.
Best of the pets to have featured on BBC children's TV show Blue Peter
Talking at the launch of Ruthless! The Musical at London’s Arts Theatre, she said: “We are a diluted medium and at one time you came home and you put Blue Peter on and you didn’t have an alternative.
“We had six and a half million viewers on a Monday and Thursday. If you want to put the figures up, put it back on primetime television.”
She’s not wrong.
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