ITV1 Saturday Night Round-Up

With Britain’s Got Talent having finished and The X Factor not due back for another couple of months, ITV1’s Saturday night schedule is at something of a loose end. This week saw the launch of three new series: Odd One In, Penn and Teller: Fool Us and The Marriage Ref; let’s just say that even Cheryl Cole would be glad to see Simon Cowell’s smug face on the box again.

The evening kicked off with Odd One In, a game show returning for a second series despite only the families of those involved having watched the first. The concept is more than a little simple: each round sees a line-up of 4-6 ‘ordinary’ people, and presenter Bradley Walsh then asks the teams (which comprise the home team of Jason Manford and Peter Andre, and the away team of 2 celebrity guests) which one of the people is, for example, Welsh. (Please note: This was a real question. Seriously.)

Surprisingly, Odd One In was not the mind-numbing disaster that I expected it to be; it did have some positives: the answers to the questions were interesting and, generally, difficult to predict, and… well, I suppose that’s it really. Everything that annoys me about modern game shows was present here, from the unnecessarily long pauses before the answers were revealed, to the fact that everyone seemed to be reading lines from a badly written script. In one round, a man was dressed as an egg (don’t ask…), to which Manford commented, with all the comic prowess of a wardrobe, that he had “The Eggs Factor”. Ho Ho, Jason you crack (!) me up!

Moving on.

Next came Penn and Teller: Fool Us. Again, the concept wouldn’t be too difficult for a sheep to get its head around, with magicians from all over the country performing tricks that they hope will fool Las Vegas sensations Penn and Teller. This was easily the most enjoyable of the three programmes but, at the same time, I had this nagging feeling throughout that it could have been much better. Yes, all of the magicians were impressive, and I wouldn’t even be able to begin to work out how they did what they did. However, none of them really blew my mind, despite the fact that, having just watched Odd One In, the standard required to do this wasn’t very high. They all performed tricks that have been around longer than Bruce Forsyth, with a woman being sawn in half and a ‘Was this your card?’ routine. Unfortunately, the I in ITV doesn’t stand for Imaginative.

And finally, onto The Marriage Ref, a show that only ITV could have made. It’s presented by Dermot O’Leary, a man who would be put to far better use as an action figure, possessing all the necessary qualities: three phrases, two suits, one expression and zero personality. Alongside him was a panel of three celebrity guests, who heard about disputes from ‘ordinary’ couples and then had to decide who was in the right. First things first, why is it called The Marriage Ref? There were three celebrities who all acted as marriage refs, so surely The Marriage Refs would be a more appropriate title? Or perhaps this was the intended title and the producers just got confused as to whether or not an apostrophe was needed.

The Marriage Ref(s) truly was as awful as it sounds, with the debates about ‘to do’ lists, immaturity and pickles (yes, pickles) providing little interest or amusement. The only good thing about the show was that it had Sarah Millican on the panel, who brought much-needed hilarity and wackiness to proceedings.

So that ends my ITV Saturday night round-up, and all I can say is that Casualty now seems like a more appealing prospect. And I’m not talking about the programme.

If you really want to endure the next episodes of all of these, then tune in Saturday from 7.15pm ITV1.

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.