4. The Generation Game
"Life is the name of the game, and I wanna play the game with you,. Life can be terribly tame, if you dont play the game with two, and I wanna play the game with you!" See, I bet that brought the memories flooding back! The Generation Game was Saturday night family entertainment at its absolute best. Hosted by larger than life personalities (Bruce Forsyth, Larry Grayson, Jim Davidson and Graham Norton), we saw four family teams competing in a variety of ridiculous tasks, hoping to progress through to the final, and take on the conveyor belt memory test. Cuddly toys, beautiful assistants and general mayhem ensued; you were guaranteed at least a guilty chuckle whenever you watched it. Contrast this with The Voice. It cost the BBC (and therefore us) £25 million for two years. Thats two years of Dull.I.Am tweeting, fears Tom Jones had died in his sleep, Jessie J wearing yet another ghastly catsuit, and the other guy, whoever he is. The winner of last year's contest managed to get her album to number 45 in the charts, woo-hoo - success! We clearly have no interest in yet more talent competitions; come on BBC, bring back The Generation Game!
Ideas For A Reboot: Clearly this show rides high on the merits of its presenter. Choosing one is certainly tricky with the current crop of BBC faces (Reggie Yates or John Barrowman would ruin it) but personally I think it's time it came back with a strong female presenter, something the BBC is disturbingly short of (go on, try and name even 1 that could do this in an entertaining, non-patronising way). Obviously new challenges and tasks would freshen things up. Oh, and here's an idea - no premium rate phone calls/competitions throughout it like every channel seems to be obsessed with!