Sad Boyz - Tom Scott Shows Us The Most Ridiculous Game Shows

Episode Date: August 1, 2026

Check out 150+ bonus episodes at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://patreon.com/sadboyz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ✨find us everywhere✨⁠⁠ https://linktr.ee/sadboyzpod⁠⁠  🎬 CREW 🎬 Hosted by Jarvis Johnson and Jordan Adika Produced & Edited by Jacob Skoda Produced by Anastasia Vigo Thumbnail design by @yungmcskrt Outro music by @prod.typhoon & @ysoblank 00:00:00 Welcome, Tom Scott! 00:02:16 Lazy Commentary 00:06:00 Gladiator vs. American Gladiator 00:36:49 What Makes an Astronaut? 00:40:45 German Cutting Things In Half Competition 00:54:56 Beat The Bridge 01:17:03 Sad Boyz Nightz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Sad Boys, a podcast about feelings and other things also. I'm Jarvis. I'm Jordan. And today we are joined by a very special guest, the illustrious Tom Scott. I don't think I've ever been described as illustrious before. I figured we'd give you illustrious. I'm not sure I could define illustrious in that context. Well, you've been behaving very illustrious.

Yeah, I mean, that's a very illustrious thing. I have luster today. Yeah, you're ill of luster. It's mostly the sunblock. Oh, sure. And the lights. Is that illustrious? It's like illuminate or, because that's how we think of it.

but it's illustrative, is it? I, well, I think that they have, like, a similar root word, but I think it's like, uh, it like if you call someone like a luminary, you know, like a luminary is like it's light. I'm having to suppress my instinct to immediately Google things so hard. Oh, I mean, the thing is, I think, Tom, you are, you are a mind palace thing you're on here.

You're a professional and we are like kids in a sandbox. And we can do, we can Google. This is the show where you're allowed to Google it. Jacob. Let's define illustrious. Show me work. Illustrious. Well known, respected, and admired for past achievements or glory.

You know what? I am learning to take compliments. I will take that. Thank you very much. Like God. Let's not go that far. You are a God. No.

That actually, that is incredible. Yeah, past achievements is very funny. Not current achievements. I've got new videos coming out, folks. I think they're better than the old ones. This is a posthumous episode of Serb Wars. We would put it out. It would be fun.

If I died in between recording and the show release. Would you still air it? I would want it to come out. If I... You said this on record and enough that we would have to do it. To honor your wishes. You would then have to do another episode with you and a casket. Yeah, yeah.

That would be really good. Or an, like, embalmed... I'm like, I'm like... Full weekend at Bernies, but it's... podcast. A pair of sunglasses. That's so true. We are a soundboard and some strings.

Just tired today. Easy fee. Tom has joined us today to discuss something that I want to say you are an expert in. I'd go with knowledgeable. You're knowledgeable. I guess, yeah. Ironically, my specialist subject on a game show would probably be game shows.

Like last time I was on, the whole Patreon episode was I was just riffing. on old time. And you also, you've written game shows, you've, you've hosted game shows. Lateral. You've both been on lateral. You've got to check those out. And I mean, you've also done them on screen. Like you're our resident game show guys. Yes, you could say. Have never a luminary of the game show genre. David Boddickam, who's producer of lateral and who writes lateral. I'm just the host. He's the main person behind the scenes. He's the best. And I have have worked on a few things that have,

we've got them to like non-broadcast pilot where a channel has gone, oh, we might, we might. But I don't know if you've ever worked with television. It is. It's not. Oh, I've heard. I've heard stories. It is an industry with a lot of supply

and not much demand. And channels have... Fettily British, uh, maneuvering. British moving and shaking is, uh, might as well be like said of a raven. It's a very staggered process. By which I mean, the guy who turns into a raven on the show, right, right.

Right, right, right. You've lost your life goodbye, whatever it hits you with? So I have brought game show clips. You've brought game show clips for us. Because this is what I promised last time. Yes. And one of the things that I hate is a strong word. One of the things that I get really annoyed by is the sort of reaction channel where it's just,

I'm going to put on a clip and I have done no research. I'm just a nod along this. I'm not providing any context. I have context. We're going to fair use the hell out of these clips. That's my favorite. thing is taking something little and expounding upon it, blowing it up. Some would call it Slop.

Some would... No, no, no, no. Slop is putting the clip on and sitting down and going, huh, ha, ha, ha, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's true. Oh, I wonder how they did that. Look it up. You have the internet.

I think you can make a truly illustrious career out of sitting in a chair with a really wide angle camera, watching any clip, and then when something of note happens, repeating the last word and saying is crazy. Oh, blue is crazy is crazy. Let's not name names. We've got clips. The thing is that that is true.

One of things that helps me with that fact is that for every person who's done that, there are literally 100,000 who are lost in the wilderness with no viewers. It is possible to do that because it's very easy and cheap to do that. But statistically, it's like winning the lot of. Like, of course you're going to notice the people who are at the end of the power light, the power distribution. Yes. On that. Like, yeah, there's going to be people up there.

But that's the top. Mm-hmm. Point zero one percent. Yes, there's not a medium-tier version of that. There's really not. No. And there's a lot of people who are sat just churning this out. Yeah.

And it's getting nothing. I'll say it. Unlustrious. Okay, that's, if we say it enough, It may be recognized legally as a word. Unlustrious sounds like the title of a podcast that also isn't doing very well. Yes, unlessrious. It's like an autobiography of someone with like my unlustrious life.

Unlustrious. Two-thirds of my face hidden in shadow. Oh, yeah. The story of the world's most problematic podcast. The bad boy of YouTube. And who would you say is the world's most problematic podcast? Put out a big scroll. And Tom, I would say you're the bad boy of YouTube.

Yeah. One thing I love, there's nothing I love more than a fun fact. And getting context on game shows is it's brain candy for me. Okay. So where do you want to take us first? All right. So we are going full brain candy on this. I'm not providing much that's deep or knowledgeable here.

We are starting with a show that I think you will both recognize. Okay. In very different contexts and styles. Jarvis. I assume you know American gladiators. Yes. Jordan, I assume you know gladiators. Yes.

I think of gladiators as you stand on a high, medium to high platform with a cotton swab. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that. Yes, yes, yes. So American gladiators came first, and it is known, particularly in the US, as being this kind of really low-rent, trashy television. It is low-brow-brow. It has a tiny audience and I think we have a clip for you.

They're kind of present as wrestlers, right? It's that. Yeah. It is very much, it's W. WWE, but it's absolutely sports. Turbo and Thunder power. Yeah. So Turbo and Thunder are two of the Gladiators.

Oh, that seems better than Jordan and Joe's. Yeah, Turbo. Oh, you're going to need gladiator names. I want to be Turbo. No. Well, later on, there are going to be some suggestions for gladiator names to run through. Perfect. Let's see.

This is the original American Gladiator. Our first competition in this quarterfinal match is the joust. I went straight for joust. Now, you notice how it looks like it's a stadium, but isn't. It looks like a circus tent. If you just want to pause on, when they came back, just go back a little bit to where they were on the wide shot there. Now that very much looks like it's a stadium.

Yes. There are people in the front. Right. And then there's just some lighting to give the impression that there are more tears. That is. That's me, right? I mean, that's probably a bunch of people up there. Yeah, yeah. But that's clearly a television studio.

They're trying to make look bigger. Yeah, I feel like you can start to see the studio if you, like, look further up the frame. You start to see scaffolding. Yeah, this is like everything that's above a multi-chem sitcom. Yeah. This is a big sound stage somewhere. And I will say that like this is familiar to me, not in its original form, but in like the adopted form that Nickelodeon would do for kids. Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the platform's small than nice things. Yeah. not only is the platform smaller, it is also wobblier than you might expect. So if you don't know, like, we've got the gladiators. This is an old style graphic. Oh, yeah. This is very reminiscent of a time.

Yeah, he's not the gladiator. He is the member of the public, the fitness bro that is coming in to challenge. Oh, it's like a pros versus Joe's type thing. Now, obviously, the pros are also just like on this, on this budget. They're also just regularly guys. But they're regular people who have practice at the events. Right. and who are probably on quite a lot of stuff,

if I remember the scandals. But that's against the rules. Yes. I probably not. You defeated Rob Patigi? Apparently. So the job is very simple. In this round, knock your opponent up.

Pugel stick? Pugel stick. Pugil stick. And they're not really showing the podiums. Yeah, there's a lot of wobble going on there. Oh, wow. And he just kind of hops down and he got shot like, he's upset.

American Gladiators, look at that shot of the crowd. Like that is just a television audience. That is just a television. That is just a television. People, Tom, presumably. This is what every television audience looked like in the 90s, I feel. Yeah, this is late 80s, early 90s. I love that fit.

This got recognized as like, it's trash TV. Yeah. Like, this does not have a good reputation. This was this reference point for, oh God, where is television going? It's really interesting that this was trash TV because it has whimsy in a way that our current era of trash TV does not. Yeah, it's way less hateful. I think it's a trash TV in an era where television was still a, it was the idiot books. Like its function supposedly was that it distracts you.

Right. In a kind of classist way in some cases. Yeah. Yeah. But it was also the only option for broadcast stuff. Like if this was on, like I don't know, I don't know whether this was. I actually don't know which channel this aired on. I assume it was not free-to-air television.

My assumption is this is a cable show. What is like the cable channel of that era that would do this kind of thing? It's such a blind spot in my head. It certainly doesn't seem like CBS. NBC or something. But NBC. NBC.

NBC. NBC. There was an NBC revival. There was NBC revival. Oh, yeah. No, that's not. So the original, it just says aired in first-run syndication on various-levels. So this is, for those who are not American watching this, syndication is where a show is made

and then individual stations decide to buy it or not. Yes. If you can get to 100 shows, you can make it in syndication. It's cheap for that reason. The British one, we have no context of this. I was, oh, I said, 1999. So I'm like coming up to, yeah, early teenage years, maybe like 11, 12, just kind of in exactly the demographic that would like this sort of thing. Okay.

One of the UK channels decides we're going to do a version. Mm. And I don't know how they got the budget to do a Saturday night big entertainment show off this. But they didn't call it British Gladiators, because that doesn't have the same. No. Gravitas. No. They just went with Gladiators.

And I would like you to compare what America got to what Britain got. They are youngest Gladiator fan, and if he grows up anything like his five-year-old brother Adam, he'll want to be a gladiator to. The American... I mean, here's the thing. Okay. You know when that was a tiny little TV studio? Yeah. With some dubbed in cheering.

That's actually the sound in the actual arena. Wow. That is the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham. It's one of the biggest places like that in Britain. By season three, they were filling it. That's awesome. Also, I'm enjoying that the stat screen that comes up for each of them, respectively, for the one that's a real person.

It includes their hometown and their like general set. And then in this case, it's just the size of their body. I do like also the wireframe rendering in, like the graphic. Oh, they were on season three by now. They'd got a budget. Yeah, you could see the budget, like even in the platforms.

Right? That's how they have so much information. They used a computer. Yes. Taking off the glasses. Taking off the glasses. Might not stay. Oh, look at that technology.

Right? It's much higher up. Oh my gosh. And he's one. Huge for South Oxby. Oh my lord. They've got cheerleaders. This is such a distillation of like, I understand the ancient Romans now. It is very telling that like, because I don't know about you.

I feel like I had this exact perception of America at one point in time where yes, there was a degree of trashiness and goshness. But that was almost like the romantic thing about it. Like how unashamed, unabashed it is. They're wearing the flag. They're yelling their own names. The version of America that we were sold through pop culture is still kind of, I think, deeply embedded in a lot of the world. I think that's true, yeah. I've gotten that experience from traveling around, and I don't usually want to say that I'm from America.

You probably swag out of Canada, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the easier thing to say. They go, oh, okay, that's fine. I'm not offended. The soft power that comes from... We didn't even think this was American, by the way. Right.

Like, there's obviously, there's red and blue. We've imported some of this, but I don't think the context was this is an American show. No. Everyone hears British. The gladiators are British. Right.

And again, the gladiators are just who the casting team went out to find. These platforms look bigger as well. They are bigger. They're much higher up. By the time they got to later seasons, they were dangling people from the roof to, like, throw around.

Oh, my gosh. It was a lot. This is also, I think the Pugie stick or whatever. The Pugel stick, of course. I don't know history. The ancient Pugel stick, I always feel like they are designed for more of a fencing method. Yeah.

A little more of kind of like hema stances. Yeah. But they're like TAS. Okay. So from a production. Yeah. I do love this technique. This is an excellent technique.

Just keep hitting them. Just keep it. The lumberjack. Okay, so just a production question. Yeah. Thing shows with the live studio audience often film multiple. Yes. This type of exhibit is so short.

I don't know. I don't know. My assumption would be that they've had two or three shows going on at the same time. Yeah. Because if you spread them about the season, the audience won't notice that show one has the same set of events as show 10. Right. So you now get the next two contenders in for this and the next two contents in for this. And over the course of three, four hours, the audience will get to see most of two shows.

Or they'll get to see half of two shows. I just feel like if these, like, the actual gladiator bout happens for 30 seconds. And now they've got to take down everything. And now they've got to take down everything. My assumption would be that the audience got to see half of three shows or something like that. Maybe the audience got to see. Eight rounds of joust. Because then they have to get the contenders in for multiple episodes and their families

and the audience in for multiple episodes. Oh my God, yeah. Like, logistically, this is really difficult. Not to mention, if you're in the live audience here, you don't get the same context on the fight. So, yeah. And also, there's such a long time. Like, they have to keep the audience entertained. They have to have a hell of a warm-up crowd there.

Yeah, I wonder what that's like. It's mostly more, it's more reflective of actual gladiated. to... Season one, by the end of it, like the last parts of the show are frequently filmed with a nearly empty audience and dubbing.

By the end of season three, it is the biggest show, one of the biggest shows in Britain. I remember Mike, this was such a cousin show for me. This was such a... Jack, hey, shout out of Jack.

We're related. Did you know that? This is such a like, you've got to see this, being like, whoa. Right. Where's demand so big?

Let me in introduce you to the gladiators. That's the next clip. Oh, yeah, some of these iconic names. And look, I will just ask, as we run through the names, if you can see a pattern. I'm also wondering, there has to be some sort of super cut of every one of these put together and it's like a 10 minute video. And it's like five seasons of the show.

Also, incredible theme tune. I'm in. I'm already in. Oh, a triangle. Yeah. Oh, it's a G. Yeah, it's a cheap. Whoa.

This is, by the way, I think I sent you the upscale version that someone made. This is aggressively 90s. Yes. These names are going to go by fast, okay? Here we go. Cobra. Cobra. Falcon.

Hunter. Jet. Lightning. Nightshade. Panther. Cairson. Whoa. Corpian.

Shadow. Wait, hold on. Yeah. Okay. J. Warrior. Wait a minute. Yes.

Now I'm looking back on Saracet. Yes. And Nightshade. Hold on. I didn't notice this until a couple years ago looking back in going, oh. For a second there, I'm like, oh, there's an interesting theme of like the predators and the animal. And what was there? Yeah.

Blacklow. Gorilla. Sorry. Criminal. Okay. So this is so many gladiators. was the idea that throughout the season you're introduced to a cast of them?

There's a whole cast of them. Got it. There is the villain. If we go a little further, the one that's I think about to pull up here, Wolf. That's scary. Wolf is the villain.

Zodiac. Wolf has a big peppermint. An adorable lollipop. But his schick is that he is the villain. It's a pantomime villain. All this is pantomime. All this is pantomime. Wrestling type thing.

And even, I think the players, I don't think are playing for much as a prize. And that's kind of the point. Yeah. This is true of a lot of British game shows. You're not playing for 100,000. You might get a holiday or something nice at the end. You're doing that because you get to do this. You're playing for Hull.

Yeah. Like you go back and you get to be the guy from Hull. There was actually, after Gladiator was so successful, there were several attempted follow-ups by other channels, including Ice Warriors. Whoa. Gladiators, but on ice. That actually seems dangerous.

Yeah. Well, the thing is, because it is dangerous, the events were much less impressive. Yeah. So it was set in a post-apocalyptic future. And contestant would be introduced as being, from the city state of hull. Wow. It's not.

They love canon. I feel like in British real. British game show is more. I do like a game show with like canon and law and things like that. The world building is appreciated. Presumably there's a huge fan wiki for, like, the crystal world. Yeah. So Wolf is the villain. He is, he doesn't cheat, but he's a sore loser. And he'll grab the crowd signs and crumple them up. He's the villain. He has like a spiked

Pugel. A weapon. He's the guy who'll go up to the referee and agro and get a yellow card. The referee, like John Anderson, also became famous just a scotch. Like, every part of this became massive. in British pop culture. Can you run back some of those names real quick? Yeah. Hunter, lightning, Jet. I did not notice the pattern in the names when I was a kid.

I don't think anyone in Britain did because it was the 90s. This is very funny. Hunter is like, Hunter. Hunter was absolutely the... What's the pop... I don't know enough... The face?

The face. I was thinking boy band. Yeah, he's very much the face. Okay. What, he's going to hunt me? Jet was the female woman to the face. Lightning has the most in 90s possible hair. Oh, yeah.

Oh, the night shade. Cool name. Cool name. It's better. As long as it wasn't a... As long as it wasn't a pattern. Yeah. Panther.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. All right then. Simitar. Mm-hmm. What is Saracen?

It's a... Yeah. I think a now not celebrated term, possibly. I think it, oh. You want to give the definition? Yeah. It's crusades. I'm like, maybe we have to look up if this is currently a slur.

Saracen is a historical term used by medieval Christian writers to refer to Arabs and Muslims. It's very much the Saracen Savage and the honest Templar kind of thing. Unden. That one's just so like, even for 98. Yeah, in the sketch version of this, the next one's just named Black. This is in the key and peel. We laugh, but unfortunately, that guy, that guy had a steroid scandal and did not have a good end. That did not so well.

It's so interesting. They cast a shadow on his career. Was there ever a scandal in any of the American, it just seems like presumed to be on steroids? Oh, there's a whole documentary on Netflix about the original American Gladiators. Oh. three-hour Netflix. I know that like some of those, I feel like anybody about like 10 years older than me from here will like reference a particular member of American Gadias.

It's been like, that was the first cool guy I saw. Yeah. And they brought some of the American ones, contestants and gladiators over to do an international battle. And for possibly the first time, they brought the American ones over to Britain to film it because we had an arena and all this. They're like, oh, we can make the American show look this good on our budget. Yeah, well, we'll come over to you.

That's funny. There's that show the floor. I can't remember. The game show, the floor, and it films in Ireland. Yeah, they brought the American ones over because, oh, we can get this on this budget. And the people will actually make some noise that we don't have it. Amazing. I remember seeing, I don't know why this is stuck in my head as like brain tape, but seeing an interview with one of the Americans who came over being like,

Yeah, like, this is so much bigger. The crowd here is so hyped up. It's like, yours? Huh. Incredible crowd. Interesting names. Interesting names. I'm a hawk and I meant this guy.

I don't want to, I didn't think it was Black Hawk. Okay, so here is the next reason I bring this. This has recently been rebooted. Really? There is a 2024 version, 25, 26 version on the BBC. in Britain. Not ITV no more. Nope.

They've moved it over. They don't have commercials. And they brought back a lot of shows. They don't usually last. They don't normally have the same reception. Right. This is still a big show. Wow.

Because all the people who grew up on this now have kids. Yeah. And if you want to show that kids are actually going to be off their phones and watching, true. People beating each other with big. Yeah, it is very, it locks into like a carnal. So I think our next one should be the same event. Different.

That is a British... Oh, I recognise him. Yeah, that's Bradley Walsh, quite famous presenter, and his son. Oh, that's good. It's a bold choice, but... And this is from the grand final. A different event, but again, I want to show you the scale of what they're doing here. Yeah.

This is the edge. The edge. The edge. Right? The edge. Edge. Edge. Oh, this, by the way, is copyrighted music from Justice's first album, because the BBC has a blanket license for every major.

for every major pop song and can just use it. Because they ain't going to sell this on DVD. So they can just use it. No, we can't even play this song. It's so famous. Right? That is an enormous thing, 50, 60 feet in the air, maybe? Wow.

In the Sheffield Arena. Still so big. Full to the rafters. While we're still paused, is there a reason that every game show in 2026 looks like America's got talent? Britain's got talent, the voice. They all, like, have this color scheme.

In this case, it's inherited from gladiators. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Which I guess is original. But I don't know. Lay the seeds itself, right? Like, I don't know what it is. Like the stage lighting. Yeah.

It's the new cameras. It's the same reason that all the Netflix shows have that high dynamic range going on. I imagine it's because you can do darkness and light now because you don't have to color watch everything, light everything to get it. And I get LED lighting everywhere. Giant arena floor. Oh, scary. It's so high up.

It's really simple to win, you get across. To lose, you get knocked off by the gladiator. Oh, yeah. Whoa. It's Sabre. Yeah. Also, if you are into muscles, this is very much the show for you. There's a lot of...

Oh, yeah. I mean, we're not even finds out of this. Oh, also that is Mark Plattenberg, the referee. Same guy? Mark Plattenberg. No, different guy. But if you've been watching the World Cup on Fox Sports, he's the referee analyst on there.

He's refereed World Cup football. He's refereed Olympic football. But most impressively. Well, he's apparently really enjoying just being the guy who turns up. He does, like, yes, he's enforcing the rules. He's playing. But also, he gets to be this guy who comes in and goes, no, you broke the rules, yellow card.

Yeah, yeah. In this kind of pantomime theater. And then everyone, everyone reacts. Where it doesn't really matter. No one's going to docks your house because you made a call. He gets to be this guy here in this silly thing that no doubt his kids or maybe grandkids,

I don't know, but are watching. He gets to be this. Yeah, that's fine. He gets to role play himself. They all get to be this. Yeah. We may as well let the event play out. Because I want you to see just, again, the scale of this.

Oh, and they, okay, they have to get across. The other person is just attacking them. The other person is just right. Now, there's clearly some rules about what you can and can't do and what the gladiator can and can't do. No weapons. But also, if the gladiator falls off, that's a free 10 points for the player.

So they're not immediately going for it. Like if you're fast. Also, they've now got cameras on the helmets. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's great. Oh, that's a dangerous move. Oh, right? It's actually, that's a long drop.

Yeah, there's a net. But you don't want to get caught by that. No. whether Saber might regret that opportunity to finish this off. She seemed to back away. I would sit down. All the commentary is almost certainly recorded afterwards, of course. Yeah.

Oh! Take them both out. Like, that's a long fall. That is a long fall. Oh, big, perhaps with someone on a double of you? Yeah. Like, it is actually a little bit dangerous. There were injuries on the earlier series.

There have been injuries on this series. Like, it is all fun. But you can get hurt here. And you're like, you're not trained to, maybe the gladiators are. You might not be trained to know how to fall. Right. That's a specific skill.

Another difference to the old series is that the gladiators are all a bit more friendly now. Like there's a lot of respect. Like, no, no, she did well. Right. Apart from the two villains, one of whom is playing the wolf. Right. The incoherent ramble grabs the microphone throws him. Ultimate Warrior.

And the other is just smug. He's just playing. He's called legend. He just hit the characters playing, believes his own hype. That's so cool. He's the breakout. Sometimes I feel like I dabble at that. That's right.

It's me. I wonder. There's aspects of this that remind me of, there's a show in America that spun out of the real world. It was like the real world, one of the first like reality TV shows. And then it became there was road rules, which was like the real world like traveling on the road trip. And then there was the real world slash road rules challenge. And it was taking the people from the real world. and having them do various, like, challenges and eliminations in that sort of thing.

And then they were, like, get rid of the real world aspect of it. Now it's just a show called The Challenge. And a lot of people compete in that's on right now. And you have, like, a lot of people coming from various other universes, like survivor players play it and stuff. There is this, like, reality player industrial complex. There is. There really is.

Because the traitors in the UK is entirely civilians, or entirely very, very, very very big-name celebrities because he has that reputation. Whereas the US version is like, oh, that's folks from other reality. Yeah. I think this new season of the traders is going to be like regular people. Okay. As a novelty, almost. Because I was initially something that turned me off of the traders when I first started

watching it because I was like, I'm not really tapped into the real housewives universe. I would be curious to watch a version which, with people less self-consciously maintaining a brand that already exists and actually trying to engage with the game. Okay. So I don't get the traitors as a game. It's the mole but worse. The celebrity version just doesn't work. It's just not...

The celebrity version, yeah, it makes no sense. It's fun, but there's no incentive. It's an excuse, as with any panel show, it's an excuse for a conversation. Yeah. My last Gladiator's clip then, they're bringing back the American one. Whoa. On Amazon Prime. So having seen the British one, the scale they've got here, the huge crowds, everything like that,

are they coming over and filming it in Britain? No, they're not. No, they're not. Oh. But Amazon has so much money, this surely will be... Yeah, what is interesting? Oh. Like, it's big, but it is...

Oh, my Lord. Now, I can't tell whether they're filming that's in the same arena, and they've just removed some of the seating or cleared off some of the seating. Oh, it's the MIS. Oh, that's the MIS. By the way, Mike the Miz is from the Real World. He was on the reality show, the real world.

He later became a professional. wrestler. He did he did real world road rules challenge. He or the Inferno. There was a whole thing. If you go to the Wikipedia page it's very complicated but anyway then he became a WWE wrestler I think. Really?

That everyone hated and then was so good that now everyone loves. Right because he was like a heel type guy right? Yeah and he was like a technician that everything's so good like actually a he's like a he was a he was very like good at a challenge

Like, him doing this makes so much sense because he is the, like, I was just referencing the challenge. And then we were talking about the like connections or the similarities with professional wrestling and things like that. He's a Captain America type. He seems like he was on the whiteboard pretty high up with potential hosts. Well, here's a strange thing. Firstly, this is already aired, which I didn't realize. They got commissioned two seasons. Secondly, filmed in France.

Ooh, la la. Okay. When I was talking about the floor. that show, I was talking to a friend of ours and they were like, should I go film? I got an offer to go film the floor. And I was like, yeah, that would be a great story to do. It's like, oh, but everything films in Ireland because that's where the big floor set is. It's cheaper to fly people over than rebuild one.

Exactly. That happens a lot for big shows. And I wonder what it is in France that they're using. Maybe that's the cheapest arena. Maybe they were going to film a French version and a German version. Yeah, yeah. Oh, we're just to set up a European production hub. Right.

That makes sense. I mean, I'm sure it's got to be related to a cost. But they've pulled in the games from the British version. Somewhere in this trailer, you will see The Edge. Oh. That is from the new one. So I seem to, I did spot one event in this trailer so far that appears to just be fighting on the ground. Newsbeams up my jelly roll.

Awesome. By the way, they do the Hollywood Squares layout for the contenders, yeah. That's not the gladiators. To be clear, the gladiators' names, if we go forward a little, are not Blake. Oh, okay. Yeah, Terry Ben, Michael Bailey are not the gladiator names in this one. Jordan. Wondering if I recognize anybody.

No. Charisma isn't awesome. It's always difficult to cast something like this, though, because it would be trivial to cast people who can beat the gladiators. Like you just find the fittest person that you didn't cast as a gladiator or who can only do one day. And you bring them in, they wipe the floor because, yeah, you can find people to do that. You have to carefully. You have to find people who are at the right level.

Do they do, like, confessionals to camera? Okay, because you also want people who are charismatic and are going to be a... Right. They don't do confessional. They do interviews on the floor. Interviews on the floor. I think we've got a locker room cam for when they go back in and when the Gladiators go and grumble to each other about it. It's so funny to think of a show like this that does not have become so accustomed to the event happening.

Yeah. cut to voiceover then to green screen room. And I really thought that's when they were going to get me. Yeah, no, the British one doesn't do that. I don't know if the American one does. Well, I mean, they have a locker room set that is not the actual locker room because you're not going to actually set a camera up in the locker room. Right, right, right.

Yeah. So that is my first set bringing you today. I don't know how we're doing for time. No, this is great. Can we just play a little bit more of this trailer? I'm curious. I want to see the names of the gladiators. Yeah.

Are they going to include them? If not, I'll look these up. We'll go head to head for $100,000. There we go. Oh, wow. I've never seen a definite article there. Not Bull. The Bull.

And he's got a whole logo. Like, oh, I guess a few of them do. That's sick. They brought back lightning. No, the UK, again, can use licensed music. So not only do they have names and colors and everything. They all have theme tunes that are pop music that you will recognize. American gladiators ain't going to be able to afford that.

Well, he's got jelly roll, Tom. Like BBC blanket license. That's going to be the men. Hilarious that Eagle is doing a salute. Oh, yeah. And now Lightning is a buff guy instead of a woman. There we go. There's the...

Oh, crush voltage, Empire. Hurricane, Huntress, Blaze, Supernova. Why does Supernova look like the, um, the Superwoman font? Also, they've used the wrong font because they've had to make her box wider. I don't like how I think. Oh my god. No, I think for the audio listeners that aren't currently looking at this, it is exactly what you think he meant. The, the, uh, black bounded, uh, display for her is wider because the name is the grid is not aligned.

The grid is not aligned. Yeah. If you catch my drift. So, yeah, that's, that's my first set is American gladiators for you. This is such a tendency watch. Like the blaze like that. Isn't that like a network or something? Oh, like a restaurant or a restaurant.

Blaze pizza? The ring, the edge. Hangtive. The Atlasphere is really cool. That's an original one. That's giant metal balls you run around in to hit stuff. They're absorbing or whatever. And there are also gladiators in giant metal pods to throw you off.

This is such a, I'm noticing that like there's been at some point a cutoff where my, the pride of my 20s has now officially dissolved away because I'm looking at this and going, no, I would lose. Yeah, yeah. I'd be six years ago, I'd probably figure out. Is that... I'll probably jump over that. There's a quote, I think,

snow crash by Neil Stevenson that's like, until... When they're young, every man believes that he could be the baddest guy in the world and at some point you realize that you're not. And there's some pride in acknowledging it.

Yeah, that's just... Versus the potential shame of trying to play the edge and then hurting my leg. They don't even catch me? That was me. I once filmed in a centrifuge, like a military testing thing.

where G forces, and I passed out at three point something G's. I failed astronaut selection. Like, that's not, like, it wasn't astronaut selection. Right. But, you know, there's a bit in your brain where you're like, you know what. If it came down to it, I could... It's just sitting down. It's just sitting down.

And then I pass out during that, I'm like, oh, I... Nope, that's not on the car. The dog that did this better than me. Yeah. Yeah. I feel bad for Lance Bass all the time. He was a member of Insink. He wanted to go to space, and then Russia canceled the program.

Mm-hmm. He never got to go to space. Then Spass was maybe going to go to space. Did Lance Bass never get to space? I thought he got to space. Can we Google? Did Lance Bass get to space? Who would have thought that this would be on the docket?

How much did he? No, he didn't. Despite completing months of stuff. I stand corrected. I thought Lance Bass got to space. It's a sad story. Wait, can you just scroll up real quick? I know, we don't have to...

National Space Society, Governor Lance Bass. No. What? I was like, what is this? Like, for real. Lance Bass, Board of Governors National Space Society. Yeah. They've misspelled Ensignth, but fair enough.

Whoa, incint. Well, it's different bad. Here's the National Youth Spokesperson for World Space Week. Philanthropic activities including the Lance Bass Foundation formed to meet the health and educational needs of children. Is it? Stolen valid if you have a photo view in a spacesuit? Not if you did the training.

That's true. There's loads of people who are astronaut trained, cosmonaut, I never got to actually launch. Yeah, I do think that photo is also, like, from a long time. Well, yes. Oh, actually, Thomas, this is a question I've posited to the world before. Okay, okay. I haven't received a satisfying answer because it's not the answer that I want.

Okay. If you go to space by accident, like you trip on a skateboard, then a banana peel or so, and you roll. Yeah, we have a space camp situation. Fall into a spaceship, you know. That's 1980s movie space camp, where some kids go to space camp and actually get launched into space because of plot. Yeah, a friendship. Yeah, if I accidentally go to space,

I fall in a trebice or something. Yeah. And I survive. Yep. You know, I could take it. Am I now an astronaut? This is a very contentious question because the Blue Origin rocket.

Yeah, I was going to say, Katie Perry is not an astronaut. So you're not. This is the thing. Blue Origin, which is... I don't want to be too rude because, you know, there are people who...

Like, it still takes bravery to get into something like that and let them like the camera. It also takes like engineering and the enormous amount of money. So I don't want to take away too much from that. But there is a very strong argument that if all you have done is sit there, go up and come down, and you've not spent large amounts of time up there, you've not done research up there, you've not done much training, then astronaut does not apply to you in the same way that pilot does not apply to me because I flew here, transatlantic.

Yeah, I think it's if you're a passenger, you don't get the claim. The line is always a bit dodgy there because astronaut has always been applied to people who did research on missions. If all you did was sit there, do a couple orbits. You're a tourist. Like Yuri Gagarin, I don't think did much in a way of pushing control. Certainly not during launch.

You just had to. There's a lot of folks who have been very brave, have been done incredible things, but also have not piloted. Right. So where you draw that line. I think if you did the work and the training, if you didn't have to do training. Tell you what, if you got, if you did a space camp, if you got up there by accident, by automated launch, and then you had to do a load of 1980 science shenanigans to get back down

with your plucky group of kids, absolutely. I put a wire and some dirt. Stir a cauldron or something. Absolutely, you're an astronaut. Oh, well, okay, but what if I don't do that, but I do make contact with aliens. Oh yeah, that's fine. I have a bit of a chat. Do you become the liaison for the aliens?

Yeah, they don't like me. They find me rude and you blow up the earth. Do we have another game show? I've got two more together. Oh, great. I'm excited. We're already halfway through our time here. Yeah, no, that's why I'm moving us along.

I want to see what else is next. So I'm going to ask you if you have seen on your various social short form things, clips that are like, can't come out now. I'm watching the German cutting things in high. half competition. Yes, I have. Yes. Let me introduce you to the German cutting things in half competition. It's so German. Just logistics. There are many, many rounds of this. It goes on for 25 minutes. This is primetime television with quite a large audience. Like, this is a full studio set. So what's going on here? Ginger's such a tricky shape. Right? I know. The trickier, the shape,

The harder this is, I think that's really cool. I find this very interesting. Is that a good range? Is that a good range? We don't know. What about the guy in red? I saw him loose in peace. Two grams.

Okay. Now, we should probably pause that because I'm pretty sure this is in content ID, so we should have to do it. Firstly, now you know, why I ask you to bring down the precision scale? It all makes sense. Because I figured we couldn't do this without at least trying it. We're going to see if we can cut my index finger in half.

There's also a, I want to say it's a German guy who slices bread on Instagram. Okay. And tries to see if he can get a perfect slice. But the way that he's trying to do it is not by weight. He uses a, as a caliper, I think, to measure that he's gotten even cut all the way around. Because a lot of people have looked at this. and thought, oh, this is a weird German show. We can adapt this game for our own stuff.

The question is, what is a 25-minute cutting things in half competition doing on German TV in prime time? That's weird, right? Mm-hmm. Yes. Here's the background. Here's the context that no one doing the reaction to this thing has ever noticed. Yes. The show is called Schlagden something.

It would be Schlagden-Rab, originally. Oh, okay. Schlaugden-Hensler, in this case. I see. Or Schlagden Starr. Schlagden means beat. Your job is to beat Rabe, famous television personality. Imagine if Simon Cowell was a bit more likable. I just can't even imagine that.

He's so incredibly charming in his face is normal. Just generally quite good at stuff physically. Right. Yes. The object of this show is that over 15 games, up to 15 games, one point for the first one, two points for the second one, three points for the third, random member of the public has to beat Stefan Rabe, or in this case Stefan Hensler, who

did the second one, or just a celebrity. Right. The star. We had a show called Shaq versus. That may have been based on this. Because it was him versus professional athletes and based on the concept. But it was based on the concept. I can see the wheels turning. The novelty of it

not just being the game, which you could even play at home, but the game versus like a, institutional. But then, yeah, we also had pros versus Joe's, which is a similar concept, but it was all sport, like professional sports. Yeah, this is just one of the games.

Right. This is game 11 or 12 or a game 11 in a potentially 15 episode show. So I figured, thank you much, let's go with, let's do the uncrustables. There we go, I'm gonna give you each an uncrustable. There's a beautiful symmetry to that. I'll move the rest of these off for now.

The symmetry makes it less excusable if we get around. No, no, I'm on board. Yeah, let's just go. I have some pretty symmetrical. Good. I appreciate it. Let's go with the Uncrustable. If you would like to...

I'll take the camera. Oh yeah. Go for it. I'll take the camera. There we go. Good. So, take a plate each. And your job... It's very...

With a round object, how hard could it be? How hard could it be? How hard could it be? Let's go from this side to match the other camera angles. There we go. Crustables is like all crust.

You have anything of it? It's crimped. It should just be... crimpable. Wait, are these still frozen? They might be still frozen. Oh, okay. Though I do think they're cutable because it's peanut butter. It's a sharp knife.

I'll wait for reference, right? But be safe. Oh, no, no. No. No reference here. Oh, I do both pieces. Yep, you do both pieces. All right. One solid cut.

I'm assessing. It's a few crumbs. That's okay, but it's one solid cut. Yeah, one cut. That's very important. Activating previous Europeanness. Seeking, channeling my friend Christoph from

Secondary score. Oh, solid cut from Jarvis there. One single maneuver. We've got some crumbs from you there. I think we'll need to put them on. A little bit of crummage. All right. Jarvis, we will go with you first.

All right, let's have first half, please. All right, first half, 30.24 grams. Okay. 30.24. Second half. You've got a calculator ready up there. We might need. No!

Oh, no. I wonder if there's a chunk of ice. 24.8 to grams. Do you want to zero out the scale? My hope is that the interior is where the symmetry is. First one. 22.36. 29.9.9. incredibly close.

Jarvis, I think that's yours. This is where the trouble is. Oh. Right. You had a cavity. You had a cavity. Javis takes the crust. It's all a part of my...

This is very... I know it's not crust. Yeah. But it's a bit crusty, isn't it? I could play this for 22 minutes. I'll tell you that. So here's the thing. There are 15 games in this show.

How long is this show? Is it 25 minutes? This game is 25 minutes long. Yeah. This is game 11. Right. And it's just fresh new item. Wait a second.

So I assumed it was a game per episode. No. Oh. Oh no. Oh my God. It's a like three-hour show. It's a show that starts at 8pm and goes until it's done. Oh my God.

That's very German. This is the rules. That's like American broadcast can never. Game one is worth one point. Game two is worth two points. That means you must get to at least, I think it's game nine or ten. What are the variables? Like then you have to do a third or it's always chopping it directly in half?

No, it was always chopping it directly in half. This is also one of the lowest-stakes, smallest games in here. Right. It took off because everyone's like, oh, that's fun. I can play that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The next game, you may have seen this on short form as well. Because similarly going around, can't talk now.

I'm watching the German rolling a ball into a toy train that's going around a track challenge. Oh. That's like an ethical challenge, right? All you have to do is drop the ball in and the number of points you get is on the train. I was born in the wrong country. I know. These games are built for my brain. Right?

So how? And she's just, there's no, like she's got a minute to do this. There's lots of time. She can watch the train go around. Remember, a lot of Germany is watching this show. Yeah. And what is, it ostens to be a very boring show. Oh my God.

No, you missed it. Does she get multiple tries? Yep. But they're taking it in turns, so the opponent is blindfold while they take a turn. That's the whole thing. That's 12 minutes. of the show. They killed the train operator.

You say that like, I don't think 12 minutes is enough. I already have so many questions. Does it matter if I'm close to, yeah, if I'm close to five or one, does it matter the number of balls I make it into the buckets? But some of these games are massive. The ones that have gone around the internet are like these little tiny at home ones. Yeah. Some of these are like, no, we're doing a race around the studio in go-karts.

No, we're putting you both up on a very high tower and you're having to throw things down. Like they're doing big picture stuff. This is a really big show. I think it is really compelling when a show, I mean, really anything, but especially a game show, is relatable enough scale-wise to be like, oh, oh, that is like a go-up. I want to do this. Yes. Right. I think it's why curling went viral when, like, people saw that the Olympics.

Because they're like, oh, that doesn't seem, I could do that. The game design on almost all of them is like, oh, you've nailed this. This feels like it's achievable for a regular person with some difficulty. It reminds me of those bar games, like maybe Batchie Ball or cornhole or something like that. The prize, if you beat the star, whoever it is, 100,000 euro. Oh, my God. But that kind of makes the star the villain, right? Yeah.

If the star wins, the prize rolls over to the next one that might be months away. This is an event show that happens a few times a year. You're actually checking. I don't think we, do we have event shows in America? America doesn't do event shows. America certainly doesn't. Germany is the only country that I know of. Yeah.

That does this kind of big event. It starts 8pm. It's going to go till it's done. Are you in? And enough people are in to make it work. I watch that so much. Yeah. There's no reason to not watch this.

Like, yeah, it's a point of viewing because it's like in a, in a time of streaming and binging shows. Like, I would, I love a, I love when the World Cup is on. I love when there are these things where it's like I can, be a part of a larger community. I'm trying to think of a parallel. There's no parallel. I guess if this was every week,

it would die. It's far too much. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Four or five times a year. Big show here. It is the best way to do it for the game. And I see why a cynical executive here, why wouldn't we just do one that comes on every day?

Oh my God, yeah. I need to maximize it. I need it in every phone, every screen. Imagine this format for Is It Cake, as opposed to just think, like, Artillion sip it, like, oh, it looks like a door handle, but it's not. Someone I know, his name's Nick, runs a site about game shows. One said that the best possible format for this would be celebrities walking through a door.

Like, it's the mask singer. It's the first episode of Celebrity Big Brother, which is the only one anyone watches. It's like, here's the door, who's going to walk through it? Here's some clues. Here's the... Oh my God, they got that guy? Yeah. That's the best format.

Doing it in bulk, really? Yeah. to just come through. I have one more game from this, and I can't actually remember what it was. I think it might have been one of the big ones. This is awesome. An exciting variable would be if you like,

there's a severe punishment, like you get a limb removed or something, if you fail one of the guesses. I feel like I'm going to be, you're going to ask me one day why I went to sleep at like 4 a.m. And I'm going to be like, well, it was my appointment viewing

the German event show was on. I've been with a group with someone who could translate the rules, just idly watching, might have been during lockdown, but like I'd be watching going, oh, okay, what's the net? So again, one more from this.

This is the most relatable game. This is everyone, I guarantee at some point, you will have played this game. Oh, brilliant. That's so good. Oh. That's so hard. The shopping cart in the cart box. Oh.

This is so much harder than it looks. Right. Because anyone who's done this knows that we don't know. like if the white wheels are lined. Yeah, but the game design here means that they will have had to go and source shopping trolleys and they will have play tested it

with shopping trolleys that don't have squeaky wheels. No, right, they've gotten someone who's oiled up the bearings. Yeah, everything's like, no. That's the game. That's game, what game number was this? We should have a number

if you call it the title of the... That's game nine out of 15. That is such a... It's so... I haven't shown you the spectacular ones. They have big stuff as well. It's interesting that this isn't like a precision base. This is a binary success or failure.

Yeah. Because I can totally see a version which is a, you hit the lane. Yeah. Right. So in a show like Survivor, which has been around for a long time, and I got really into Survivor this past year and watched a lot of seasons of it, they have moved over time to this like a lot of their games are based around like an obstacle course or doing something for a long period of time, et cetera, et cetera.

The most compelling games and Survivor for me are like, there's a season that, uh, that Ken, Liquid Kin from Smash is on. I watched that. And, uh, one of the games, I think because I can't say for sure why, but one of the games was just shooting an, like an arrow close to a target. Yep. And it's like not a normal arrow. It's like some sort of like makeshift thing. And that type of stuff is like way more fun. Yeah, camp games. Yeah, like camp type games. Relatable to you. Is that one. where they were the edge. Do you ever play Bulldog in school? Yeah, yeah.

It's pure Bulldog coded. It's just something you do as a kid, but with flashy lights now. Yes. Because they're intuitively fine. Do you want to explain Bulldog? Yeah, can you? Kids line up at both ends the playground. And you get hurt.

You basically just get tackled. Is it like Red Rover? Oh, yes. Very similar. Yes, essentially. Because you're like, because you're banded together and you like run through. You essentially sprint at one another with,

it's kind of like the, Halo zombies or something are infected where one person sprinted a group and vice versa and if you don't grab you smack into them and you're in children so you're made of rubber and then you they have now joined the team and at a certain point it reaches a critical

mass where the only way the game can go is that two equal groups of people get hurt the game ends because there's just it's like medieval warfare the vanguard bashes they're head to do For any Americans who haven't played Bulldog, I was looking up the differences between Red Rover and Bulldog. The difference is kind of exactly what you said, which is in Red Rover, one person runs and in Bulldog, like, all or most of the runners go at the exact same time. Yeah, it gets banned in a lot of playgrounds.

It's awesome. By the way, it is funny to talk about a playground game by saying it's like Halo Zonby. It's Halo infected. I have one more show for you. Amazing. Give me the show. And it is a UK versus US comparison. Hmm.

Very powerful. This is, I feel like that's every episode for us. And I realize that in both these comparisons, I am making the British one look better. I, look. I don't think you have to try hard to do that. There are plenty of adaptations where the Americans have gone bigger and better. Sure, sure, sure. I agree.

But I think that continue. American TV often falls into this like executives, like, joccing for how cheap. Distilled version. This is the perfect example of that. And I don't mean to denigrate anyone who worked on the show, they did the best they could on a very limited budget. First, I'm going to show you the British one. And I don't know if you recognize this guy.

Vaguely. This is Ross Kent. I was going to say, he could have, the hard lead. I'm going to join the S-A-S-A-S. Despite the fact he's an actor. Yes. I'm not going to insult Ross Kemp. He's Ross Kemp.

Like, I'm not going to... Super Army soldiers. But he's very much played the tough guy in a soap opera. And then I know the stuff. I'm trying to think of the parallel. His parallel is like the guy from the shield here. What the hell is his name? Oh, you're not going to, I'm not going to be able to do.

And the thing. Have you seen John Oliver on the American soap operas? Yes, I have, but I can still talk about it. Have you seen it? Okay, okay. The list of the list for the Patriot. So, he's played tough characters. He then did some series where he actually went and did investigative journalism,

a bit shlocky, but into gangs. Oh, wow. Like, Ross Kent on gangs. He's going and he's actually getting a bit of respect because, yeah, he's putting himself at risk. Very much like a progenitor of that particular kind of YouTube journalism where it is a, I'm going to this place. Yeah. I'm going to have a look at it. Yeah, this would be like a vice video in like 2015.

It's Louis Theroubitt for the lads. Yeah, yeah, it is. And now he's a game show host on something called Bridge of Lies. Bridge of Lies. So just go with the accent and the style here. They certainly went with a... Honestly, it's a left-field choice. It's not bad.

Welcome to the Bridge of Lies, where every step counts. Everyone has the LED wall in the show now. Yeah. It is a truth. There is one path across the bridge that you need to find. All the others are... Well, maybe a couple of paths, depending on the one. All the others are lies.

Have a look at how this works. Five minutes on the clock. Each correct step is weird, right? Like, that's a lot of thinking time for a vague game. Yeah. Then the clock just constantly runs. Okay. Step on a lie.

Oh, step on three lies in your... Yeah. So, there's plenty of paths across. Yeah. Ten lies on the board. Step on one, you lose half your bank. Step on three, you lose everything. The folks watching, for the rest of your team, have a panic button.

We're just like, stop. We're taking that money. Okay. You don't know if they've hit it, but there. There's some extra stuff we won't see. you know, extra wheel biscuit passes. All you have to do is step on the stuff that matches the category.

So the category is, does contain nuts. Oh. And it will start pretty easy. Also, the British one will always explain exactly what we mean because we have pedants in the audience. We mean culinary nuts. Right.

We don't mean this, we don't mean this, and we're using the BBC food definition off the website. That's so funny. And we don't, and we aware that most of the others don't usually contain nuts. Preemptively, heading them with the like, There's actually no need to reach out to the BBC support.

Yes. Please don't write a letter. No doubt the adjudicator came in off camera and explained all that separately. Right. To the BBC Good Food website, all lines do not... Yeah, there's a rule. You should check a long-for- rules. Right, Louise, your five minutes starts now.

Chicken sauté, potatoes, braves. Chicken sauté. Chicken saute, that one is obvious. I think it's the chicken saute. Unlike they're instructed to tag it through a little. You've got five minutes to get across. Five minutes is just to stop people. Waldorf salad and chicken moly.

Chicken moly. Nope, Waldorf salad. Oh, because peanuts in chicken moly. Peanuts aren't usually in chicken muck. Oh. Waldorf's. They might both be valid. There are ten lies on the board.

I'm with you. You don't know if the other one's a lie. Well, also a peanut isn't in a nut, right? Well, peanuts is not, now I'm being a peasant. Peanut isn't a nut, right? Yeah, that's why they said culinary nuts. That's why I was saying chicken moly technically. Wait, hold on.

Just keep it rolling from it. Keep it rolling. In fact, you can skip forward a little here. Okay, for what it's worth, chicken moly does contain nuts. Okay, so both of those are valid? There's multiple parts across the board. That makes sense. That makes sense.

That possibly, mate, but I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure you have pine nuts in pesto. Truth or lie? So, like, money's ticking up? That opens up. Do you want to keep skipping forward quite a bit? Oh, no, what are those things? That was an Elvis sandwich.

Right? Once you're halfway across the board, these start getting really tricky. Do you want to backtrack to an easy one and find another path? You can walk wherever you want to on this. Oh, I see. So she could go on and be struggling off right now if she wanted to. She could. But I believe you're asked not to step back and get the extra ones.

You might be waiting for a long time later. Colin Skink? Right? What is that? That's a fish stew from Scotland, does not have nuts in it. And by the time you get to the end, it's actually really, really. tricky. You might have to guess on this.

Oh, this is already quite tricky, yeah. Yeah. And you lose half your part if you're set up. Half your part if you're on a lie. Yes. That is the truth. So far she's killing it. Yeah.

And this being a British daytime game show, they're aiming for the team to win a few thousand if they win it. And they're aiming for the last game to maybe get a win a third of the time. Yeah. If you don't get it, you say, American daytime television has like a similar price size, at least when I was growing up. Did you have fun?

Yeah. One of the, one of the jobs for the producers is to work. out the maths on the potential of success, how much the prize pool to deal with the insurers, everything like this. Right. And they hire in one of about three companies to do the adjudication. Unless it's a reality show where the like the producers can just change the rules, you sign

up for that. You sign up for Britain's Got Talent. You know they're going to do that. Right, right, right. But if it's a game like this, they must be played fair. I believe Survivor is technically a game show and has to follow all of those things. Yeah. I've seen a wonderful clip of an adjudicator on one of the celebrity editions of The Chase in the UK,

where the celebrity is a puppet character. And the puppeteer is just under the podium playing the game with a monitor. But the adjudicator comes over and there's an audience here. Eye line on the puppet. Puppet's having the argument where they're in character about the question. That's funny. That's going to be so tricky. Tom, this sounds like a perfect career path for you. And alternative career path is being a rules patent.

In the most recent season of Survivor, there was a game where Jeff Probst miscalled it. And then the adjudicators who were like right outside of frame had to kind of talk to him and change things. And I'm not, I feel like it was left in the show because of the rules around the game show. That once. We're going to take a diversion here. Jacob, could you search up deal or no deal empty box? Oh, the old swap.

No. Not that. No, no, no, not that. Also, you're going to learn about the different US and UK versions of deal or no deal here. A lot less romantic. What do you think of the US version? You've got models holding boxes, right?

Yeah, models holding boxes and what's his face hosting? Who's a germophobe? Howie Mandel. This is the British version. The only audience is the player's family, And the people on the wings with the boxers are the upcoming players. Oh. You get to know them over weeks of watching it.

Wow. Also, this guy's a priest. Yep. Someone has messed up. Don't touch it. Don't touch it. Because there's 250 grand on the line here, right? There's a quarter of a million pounds.

God, this is so nostalgic. And the priest says an act of God. But at this point, like, what do you do? You film the show. So at this point... ever happened before. We've got a camera. And to be fair,

like, Noel Edmunds, the host here gets a lot of stick. He's... He's done a lot of television over the years, and not all of it is good. This is going to take some time. But in terms of hosting, there are very few people

better than him for something like this. The reason I pull it up is because they do exactly this. If you just want to hit play and let this run, is that, yes, what we're seeing here is half an hour of production decisions cut down with cuts to the audience. to see what's missing.

But the independent adjudication knows what's meant to be in there. So they've actually put in backstage shots. That's so funny. Like someone in the production gallery has deliberately gone, okay, get some weird shots that we don't normally get,

get some audience ambience, make it clear that something strange is going on here. And that we're addressing it. And that we're addressing it. Maybe we'll scratch the show and restart. Right. Because you can't kill the fiction, right? Like as soon as you acknowledge,

like, oh, well, whoops, we forgot, whatever. And you can't have a random cut. Because it looks strange. And apologies from particularly the independent adjudicator. We've never ever had this happen in 707 games. This is such a good hosting job, like for all the stick that the lemons get. I mean, I love him. I don't know if he's ever done anything.

He's done a lot of weird stuff over the years. I've been out of the loop. He's not been, it's absolutely not been canceled for anything to think it's about. He's just a lot of odd stuff. Oh, okay. was filled. We're very satisfied that this was a genuine human error. However, it is very important that you feel happy with the way in which the game is played from the year. What a way of telling the audience and the people how to do this?

I'll sit down, you sound very serious. Deal or No Deal is a game of great fun, but we never ever forget. Deal and No Deal is a game of great fun. of great fun. Also, it was somber a bit of possible. It's so illustrious. It's just,

it's how you land at moments like that. Just, just keep it going. This is great. So it's like, do you want to abandon the game? Or do you want to

reshuffle? Ooh. Like, that's the best possible outcome for the player. Like, they could restart the whole thing. All of this will have been cancelled. It's a compelling story, too.

It would be ashamed to kind of... All of the sums of money. Yeah. are still in the game at this moment. including the one I'm holding, which is what should have been in Kirstie's box. Yes. They should just ask the banker.

So the choice is how much yours, David? Okay, I'll go for the second option, then we'll reshuffle and we'll go to the... Again, you can hear the cuts that have gone in a few times. I'm very pleased you'll play on, because this sum of money will remain in the game. It was the quarter of a million. Wow.

Like, what a moment for the priest to get that as well. Wow. The game was entirely unmemorable from that. That was Lucifer right there. But like... That's how you do it. Yeah, that's awesome. It's this very British approach of we're not going to cover this up.

We're not going to reshoot it or anything like that. We're going to show 700 games in that something goes wrong. I want to know so badly about the goings-on of like the instances of who wants to be a millionaire cheaters, where they like had to do all this analysis to figure out. Oh, there's three separate documentaries on that. And a whole series. Like if you want to watch a fiction dramatization of the guy who was coughing during the I watched one of the documentaries.

Which he still denies. Yeah, that's so interesting to me. Yeah, the whole thing. But there's a dramatization of it. Wow. Which does feel like a bit like once the channel has won in court. Like the man has had his reputation, if you believe him, unfairly ruined. Sure.

It is then a bit much for the channel to go, also, we're going to turn this into a drama. We win, we win. All right. So back to Bridge of Truth. Back to Bridge of Lies. Bridge of Lies. Well, look at me. being optimistic.

It's a put on bridge of spies. Oh. That was the UK version. Nice, shiny floor. Big, like, tactical options, clock ticking down, everything like that. I would now like to show you

what Game Show Network did on their budget with 20 minutes. And just, just like, I'm not trying to insult anyone who worked on the show. They did the best they could with what was clearly

a very low budget. It's always, like, there's always so many comment of people working at all stages. Usually it bubbles up to how much money someone is willing to spend

at the top. And this is on the budget. And this is on. Whichever exec said, Americans aren't that smart, just make it stupid. I think I showed you this on the Patreon last time. Only... Only this crash zoom.

Only this crash zoom. I just want you to pay attention to this crash zoom. And like, no fault to him. No fault, but that's a difficult shot to do. But we're doing it once. We're doing it what? Could you not have taken a second angle where he starts without the half-second Richter-scort?

print a camera. That's embarrassing for the presenter. He can present. And it's not his fault. It's literally the producer is saying, yeah, let's keep going. Yeah, it's the producer's job for not to go in his ear and go to one and for him to land on zero. Like a bungee line. Like if it doesn't land on zero or if the camera goes

we miss that. Yeah. Take a second angle off the first shot of your first episode. It's the same thing as when people do TikToks to sounds and they need to sync up. Sometimes you have to retake it. Yeah. Sometimes you have to retake it. That's fine. Has a man ever been? been more of a presenter.

Yeah, this guy is a cartoon's medically depiction of a presenter. The suit is perfectly pressed. The hair is perfectly quaffly. I'm suit wordsayer here. Literally, yeah. My name is hostess McDonald's. Again, brackets, complimentary.

He's doing the job he's paid for. I'm going to... Beautiful to... I'm going to Google something real quick because I need to look up who this host is because I have a... Okay. Firstly, the set looks a bit cheaper.

Yeah. Quite a bit cheaper. But it's in space. Yeah, it's in, put up a Starfield curtain in lieu of anything else. Like, okay, fine. Let's just go to game one. Here is the US equivalent of that nicely tactical game. If you make it all the way across, I will add a $300 bonus.

Nice. It's a very slim bridge. Dollars? Now, stepping on three wrong answers, that is going to end your turn and cuts your money in half. But if you get in trouble, your teammates can have to bank it, bud. So, there's no halving there. It's either three wrongs or not.

Yeah, and it's, is it truly just too... Yes, it's a 50-50 choice all the way. Oh, my God, okay. If you skip forward a little. This host, by the way, is a longtime soap opera actor. It was all my children. I was like, my mom used to watch some of these shows. American soap operas are a whole thing.

That's like the equivalent of going to Juilliard for this kind of career. Yeah, yeah. Being in Days of Our Lives. I don't know. There are definitely worse places you can be than in Days of Our Lives. I was a passions guy growing up. It had a witch. There was like a supernatural element to it.

We could also compare soap operas at some point because the British ones are much more down to earth. Next time we should do that because I would love to revisit some of the soap operas that I watched after school with my mom. British soap opera. Or is that a Patreon thing?

Do we just do a Patreon thing now on soap operas? Well, I don't, I want to research. I want to research. I want to research because there is Oh, there's a wonderful story about, there is also a wonderful video essay on it, but there's a story on the first trans character in basically any British series. Oh, wow. Certainly any British mainstream series.

Yeah. It was when I was a kid. Oh. And there was no fuss. Yeah. It was very minor fuss at all. Like Corrie or something? Yeah, it was Coronation Street.

It was Haile Cropper in Coronation Street. That's awesome. And, yeah, I'm sure there would have been a bit of fuss. but like as a kid it's like yeah there's so many things like that where it's like you look back and it's like oh this has been weaponized yeah it's not gonna say it was all sunshine rainbows she was played by a cis actress but like for the year the 90s it is now some kind of event that needs to be ignored that's just a plot line i um yeah i think it'd be really interesting to talk sometime about like the i feel like there's a very distinct tonal

spectrum of British soap operas that at no point reaches the melodrama of American from like Corey to EastEnders to Holyoops. So, complete lack of overlap. Yeah. Holly Oaks is starting to get up there. That's really, that's about as close as we get. Holly Oaks is like, I don't know, what's like, um, what's like the OC that kind of realm? That was for the younger ones.

We definitely should research this. Yeah, yeah. Let's put a bookmark in that. My question about this is, do they change topics every question? And no, they change topic every bridge. Oh, okay. No, no, and the British one, yeah, but just the way they have this written, I was like, oh, is it going to be Texas teams and then something else? No, it is Texas? It is Texas, it is the Cowboys or the Cowboys in Texas?

Impossible to know. That's it. That's the whole game three times and then the grand final. That's the whole. Like, I think maybe there's a choice of three later on, maybe a choice of four, but there's none of that tactical stuff. Oh, if she fails three, she just doesn't finish the bridge. The money's cutting half. And that's it. That's the whole thing.

Yeah. And the whole show lasts 20 minutes. God, this is just, Rangers. Rancheros? Okay. That's a big, I will say. It's a big jump between them. She's going to actually do, like, parkour.

But again, they do the best with what they've got available. And if you're in Britain, for deal or no deal, you don't bring in models, you bring in the folks' families. It turns into this really lovely show where they all know each other and they're all. They have cute little moments, you know. this far to get to the Dallas Mavericks. Yeah. Okay, Mavericks. I just want to see what these are. We could just skip through. Yeah. Wings or the Hawks are the Atlanta team. Yep. And the... Silly Flyers. Yeah, so it's the other one. The other one.

Exit. The Rockets are. Oh, the Houston Rockets. Yeah. I'm not a sports person. Yeah. I'm not an American person. And I knew every one of those... What? Okay, guys. Yes. So... Immediately the desserts, I was like, what are... I've never heard of A scambo wanklstein. Cullen Skirk? Is that what it was? Cullen Skink. It's quite nice. It's a fish soup.

Amazing. I probably had it. I had a friend named Colin and Bill Shkirk. I think he's a right skink. So that is what I've brought for you. Absolutely joy. Exit. Because I think they also cast differently as well.

Like American game shows cast for, are casting around Hollywood for people who would like to be actors. That makes sense. And British game shows. cast for. Yeah, you look like someone that the people at home can relate to as well. Yeah, I really think the fun, I mean, obviously there's the money involved, but a lot of these shows, it is, you know, you're making 500 pounds maybe or something. A lot of those shows. Tax free, though. Tax free. I just remember so many of those shows being like, oh, did you hear Eddie's

brother's dad's sibling? He just won. And it was like, oh man, huge event for Nailsworth. Also, worth noting that Game Show Network is like kind of a hard channel to watch, at least Oh, like access one? It was like one of those like, it was like Channel 900 if you had like. Yeah. And then I also only think of it as like reruns. Reruns, yeah, at like 2pm on a weekday. Some of the outtake and clip shows in Britain, like the early ones when when television contracts

were a lot stronger than they are now, because no one, very few people, people get residuals now. You have to negotiate. You have to have a real good agent and a real good reason to get residuals these days. Yeah, I mean, I think a similar thing in actually working Hollywood, like it's, like things have started being super locked down. Yeah. Clip shows like the clip shows, like it'll be all right in the night, Antisbroom was, like the British ones. The British equivalent of whatever the goofs and gath shows were in America, they would pay residuals because they're using a clip from a show in which someone should get residuals, and therefore, they get residuals. So if you were in a show that just completely died, like, maybe even got pulled halfway through

the season or something, but you had a really funny mess up in there, you might actually get more money from the clip show getting repeated each year, and you go, oh, that's a nice, that's a nice little check. Do you know of an American show that is goofs and gaffs from TV and not like home video? Because the only thing I can think of is the soup, which would sometimes... I don't know of one, no. You must have had one. It's so fun, but I can see that.

Which funny, the ones I always think of are, I'm sure they operate in a completely different way, but the like BBC 3 at 1am through 4 a.m. The top 150 funniest moments in Only Tools and Horse. You know, like, VH1s, I love the Blank Decade, I guess, kind of is like that. You must have had an outtake show, surely. What is the name of the most popular one in the UK? I did a whole video on its title sequence once. It'll be all right on the night. There must be a US version of that.

It's such an obvious format. And there's not all there. Because we saw American clips on the British version, so there must be a live. I wonder if there's... But I think it's different internationally because they're not necessarily operating. Maybe. Okay. So apparently...

Well, this has to be extremely old. There was a show in the US called TV bloopers and practical jokes, but it was in the 1980s... Yeah, that's when all right on the night started. Yeah, with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon. Oh, that's it. It's Dick Clark's TV bloopers. That was it.

Oh, okay. That's such a funny... Well, the thing you forgot about it. This is what surprised me when I was writing that script years ago. is like, if you want to see bloopers, you just type that into YouTube now, and there's every clip you could possibly want it every form.

When that show first came out in the, I think, late 70s, early 80s, I can't remember. The concept of seeing television presenters mess up when it wasn't a live thing, was alien. Of course you're not going to see that. That's not real. We're actually going to air this stuff where people made mistakes.

Really? You're going to do that? I'll do anything. And the clips are like really quite mild and get a really big audience laugh because like the concept of I get to see people screw up is like, oh, really? It's humanizing and it's funny, it's contrast.

That's nice. I do like that. On the night? Whereas now, you know you mess up and someone's going to put that on YouTube immediately. Speaking of messing up. That's why we don't mess up. Yeah.

I think we're going to, we'll probably mess up on our Patreon at patreon.com slash Savboys. There's the same. I saw the clock ticking down to zero but we have enough content. I provided enough clips. Tom basically came with a package for us

that was content. And I said, I said this in our group chat. This is like the kindest gift anyone's ever given us. Yeah, an active. This is,

Tom, thank you so much for joining us. Tom, we'll be joining us on Sad Boys Nights where, one, we're going to look at that

bird calling boy, if you've seen him. Jordan hasn't, so that's going to be fun. I haven't seen bird calling boy. I've seen, I've seen Bird Calling Boy. There's something

that each of you haven't seen. I've not seen John Oliver. You haven't seen John Oliver on soap operas. You haven't seen Bird Calling Boy. So it's going to be a great time. And we'll probably talk about more game shows and outtakes and gaffes. Who knows? We'll have fun.

Thanks so much, Tom, for joining us. Thank you for inviting me over. And we end every episode of Sad Boys with a particular phrase. We love you. And we're sorry. Boom. Goochie girl. How you doing?

How you're moving girl? How's you dead looking that future girl? Future girl. Yeah, we're on now. Take my money. Go away. Oh, you want it. Go too rich for me.