Hidden gems?
Posted: 04 Jul 2005, 21:12It rocks so hard that Virgin let you watch the v.india, v.japan and v.china channels on transatlantic flights. Are there ever any hidden gems there whihc people won't otherwise encounter and ought to be told about?
I'll start. v.china two days ago had a game show called Challenge 321 (not to be confused with repeats of 3-2-1 - with Dusty Bin - on Challenge TV here in the UK) which was pretty good. The closest thing I can compare it to is a show known in the UK as Takeshi's Castle (on Challenge TV) and in the US as MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, but it's not a direct comparison.
Four young male-female couples, one at a time, race down an assault course over a man-made lake. Falling in the water three times means they lose. The fastest couple to complete the course win. The clever bit is that the courses are pretty well-designed so that the two people normally do rather better by co-operating to get past the obstacles than they do by trying to clear them individually.
Course one had a suspended dangling/swinging thin log to walk down, followed by some distant posts which were far enough away from each other that you really had to stretch to jump from one to the next. (Or, when one member had completed these, they could go back and help their partner with a supplied pole.) After that there was a big rope net to climb over and then four floating logs which you had to jump between (and an optional plank at the other end so you could go back and help a partner). Fastest couple wins 1,000...er, presumably currency units.
Then they had a strange bonus round whereby one person stood on top of a trapdoor above the lake. They also had a big red button to press. A signal was given and they had to press the big red button exactly ten seconds later, based on their guessed timing, with a thin tolerance. Pressing too early (before 9.8 seconds) or too late (after 10.2 seconds) resulted in the player being dumped in the lake. The player was successful and won another 1,000 (yuan?) plus the chance to do it again but guessing 20 seconds instead of 10.
After that, they had a second obstacle course: a set of platforms at 45 degree angles which tested people's running speed and grip, a little wall, a gantry-like frame to climb down, another little wall, a big (maybe 12' tall?) floating rubber ball which bobbed on the water and invited people to fall off it, a fiendish collection of climbing rope and net which was easy in co-operation and very tricky indeed for the second person to climb onto, before the final - most spectacular - piece of apparatus. Imagine, if you will, a huge wooden half-pipe, twenty feet tall, maybe 25. The people had to run down one side and up the other. There were ropes and nets to help you on the way up but you had to get most of the way before you could get there.
So the four couples ran this second obstacle course and then the show ended abruptly. No prize, no second bonus round, just jump to the closing credits. Very strange. Not a bad show, though; six out of ten, I've definitely seen worse ways to fill half an hour.
There was also a 45-minute Japanese show (on, logically enough, v.japan) called TV Champion which featured a competition between four interior co-ordinators to see who could presumably makeover a room in the most attractive fashion. I guess there is a different theme of competition each week, though presumably the hosts of the show and the studio set (hardly used except at the end of the show - mostly pre-recorded lips of outside broadcast this time) remain the same from show to show. There was a very nice special effect at the end of the show where the audience in their seats splits into two to create a golden stairway between them that the winner climbs so that they may ascend the TV Champion throne. We also learn in the show that the Japanese for "interior co-ordinator" is something like [i]inte'ior co-ordinataa[/].
Anyway, it made a change from films
Chris
I'll start. v.china two days ago had a game show called Challenge 321 (not to be confused with repeats of 3-2-1 - with Dusty Bin - on Challenge TV here in the UK) which was pretty good. The closest thing I can compare it to is a show known in the UK as Takeshi's Castle (on Challenge TV) and in the US as MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, but it's not a direct comparison.
Four young male-female couples, one at a time, race down an assault course over a man-made lake. Falling in the water three times means they lose. The fastest couple to complete the course win. The clever bit is that the courses are pretty well-designed so that the two people normally do rather better by co-operating to get past the obstacles than they do by trying to clear them individually.
Course one had a suspended dangling/swinging thin log to walk down, followed by some distant posts which were far enough away from each other that you really had to stretch to jump from one to the next. (Or, when one member had completed these, they could go back and help their partner with a supplied pole.) After that there was a big rope net to climb over and then four floating logs which you had to jump between (and an optional plank at the other end so you could go back and help a partner). Fastest couple wins 1,000...er, presumably currency units.
Then they had a strange bonus round whereby one person stood on top of a trapdoor above the lake. They also had a big red button to press. A signal was given and they had to press the big red button exactly ten seconds later, based on their guessed timing, with a thin tolerance. Pressing too early (before 9.8 seconds) or too late (after 10.2 seconds) resulted in the player being dumped in the lake. The player was successful and won another 1,000 (yuan?) plus the chance to do it again but guessing 20 seconds instead of 10.
After that, they had a second obstacle course: a set of platforms at 45 degree angles which tested people's running speed and grip, a little wall, a gantry-like frame to climb down, another little wall, a big (maybe 12' tall?) floating rubber ball which bobbed on the water and invited people to fall off it, a fiendish collection of climbing rope and net which was easy in co-operation and very tricky indeed for the second person to climb onto, before the final - most spectacular - piece of apparatus. Imagine, if you will, a huge wooden half-pipe, twenty feet tall, maybe 25. The people had to run down one side and up the other. There were ropes and nets to help you on the way up but you had to get most of the way before you could get there.
So the four couples ran this second obstacle course and then the show ended abruptly. No prize, no second bonus round, just jump to the closing credits. Very strange. Not a bad show, though; six out of ten, I've definitely seen worse ways to fill half an hour.
There was also a 45-minute Japanese show (on, logically enough, v.japan) called TV Champion which featured a competition between four interior co-ordinators to see who could presumably makeover a room in the most attractive fashion. I guess there is a different theme of competition each week, though presumably the hosts of the show and the studio set (hardly used except at the end of the show - mostly pre-recorded lips of outside broadcast this time) remain the same from show to show. There was a very nice special effect at the end of the show where the audience in their seats splits into two to create a golden stairway between them that the winner climbs so that they may ascend the TV Champion throne. We also learn in the show that the Japanese for "interior co-ordinator" is something like [i]inte'ior co-ordinataa[/].
Anyway, it made a change from films
Chris
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