Appropriately, for hard times, there is a growing tendency for old light-entertainment series to be recycled into new, with not much effort required for the transformation. Take a concept that did well enough in its heyday to invoke a VHS fuzz of nostalgia, give it a nod to the contemporary with a mildly ironic host and, as with a low-rent movie franchise with extra cardboard, glitter and camp, the theory is that you will be rewarded with an instant audience. From Catchphrase to The Crystal Maze, early-evening television now looks much as it did in the 90s. If Gladiators isn’t kicking Ninja Warrior UK off its big boulders by the end of 2018, I’ll eat my pugil stick.
As Blind Date (Channel 5) returns for a second series under the stewardship of Paul O’Grady – who lets one bunch of contestants bring their pet pooches on this weekend, perhaps because he got tired of writing a separate script for For the Love of Dogs – The Price Is Right (Channel 4, Saturday) is the latest old banger to get a new engine. Alan Carr is a fantastically entertaining host, seemingly born to raise the already very high spirits of the TV studio audience here; it is as if he’s been doing it for years. This new version will be its fifth incarnation, with Carr following in the slick footsteps of Leslie Crowther and Bruce Forsyth for a pilot that may well turn into a full series. Amazingly, it has only been off the air for 11 years. The last time we saw The Price Is Right, it was on ITV and being helmed by Joe Pasquale. I’m sorry to remind you of that difficult time.
It is a testament to the muddying of memory over the years that I thought there was more to the format than there is, which may be part of the reason that these nostalgic reboots are doing such brisk business. It is literally just people guessing how much something costs. It’s like flicking through a catalogue competitively. Sometimes it’s an electric can opener. Sometimes it’s a hot tub. Sometimes it’s just a bottle of washing-up liquid. Sometimes you guess 79p. Sometimes you guess £99. Gussy it up all you like, but that’s it.
It’s a question that can derail a politician’s career – not knowing the cost of a loaf of bread or a pint of milk in the run-up to an election is essentially pleading for your opponent to win – but is it really enough to sustain an hour of TV in this day and age? Oddly, sort of, just about, it is. It’s all on the right side of knowing. Carr camps it up, even by his standards, and his studio lovelies – “Alan’s Angels” – are so modern that they are allowed to wear trouser suits and long sleeves.
The audience, decked out in late-season Christmas hats, are clearly having a blast, and the innuendo, though gentle, is enough to please Chatty Man fans who would happily hoover up an early-evening edition. “That’s Zoe with her legs in the air … again,” he trills, before serving up a cheeky new context for “it’s better to give than receive”. And although the bonus rounds sound like nicknames given to Bullingdon Club recruits – Plinko is simply beastly when he’s blotto – I found myself genuinelyrooting for the man who won £2,000 for guessing that a family-sized packet of AA batteries cost less than £11.50.
It’s an absurdly simple and lazy idea for a “new” show, and I blame Alan Carr entirely for the fact that I will almost certainly watch it again.
Allow yourself to be jolted out of any traces of remaining festive holiday joy by the return of the excellent, brutal Spiral (BBC Four, Saturday). The French legal drama is back for a sixth series, its first appearance on British screens in almost two years, but be sure you’ve polished off the cranberry sauce before catching up with it. Laure is following in the footsteps of every troubled but talented female murder cop as she struggles with balancing the demands of motherhood and hunting the really bad, bad guys. Her baby, then, survived, but Laure is soon back to work – she never could resist a mutilated body.
The streets of Paris are happy to provide, as a male torso – and only the torso – is discovered in a sports bag. The race is on to identify the victim and find the rest of him. The group are hindered by newcomer Commander Beckriche, a by-the-book bureaucrat who is too afraid of tarnishing his reputation to take on the complexities of a case like this; I look forward to the mess he’s going to make as he tries to impose some authority on the team. Elsewhere, a severed head and a chase through an abattoir slop on the gore. It is a magnificent and tense drama that demands every second of attention, and rewards us by maintaining it.
