The ongoing corona pandemic has obviously had a major impact on the entertainment business. Most of the big blockbuster movies have been pushed back to the autumn or next year (Disney’s remake of Mulan is the first “big movie” to return to the silver screen with an August debut). Several of anime shows have been halted and/or pushed back for a later release. Other ongoing shows and programs have seen production halted or radically altered. Some typical talks shows have gone pretty much digital with guests tuning in over Zoom or similar setups. These have of course have had various degree of success but you get used to the “new normal” and after a while ignore the varying degree of sound and camera quality.
A topical show like Have I Got News for You got into the groove after a few episodes – and you really hear when a joke bombes… QI actually moved forward their schedule and have began running their latest R-series (which began taping backing February). On Friday (26 June) their aired the first show recorded without any audience in accordance with the current regulations in the UK. While the show is basically the same, the guests are all in the same room and not having a dodgy web-camera to follow, it does change the feel of the show. From a fun comedy panel show to more a friendly chat among a few friends just telling stories with a few facts sprinkled in. Basically it was QI – Unplugged (for lack of better words), and it worked surprisingly well.
The chess community has obviously tried to make the best of the new situation, with a lot more high profiled online tournaments with sizeable prize pools. Where most sports has been halted chess has gotten both media coverage and a lot more viewers. Another more quirky thing that has caught the eye of sports fans craving entertainment is marbles. The youtube-channel Jelle’s Marble Runs that have created surprisingly exciting marble events for several years suddenly saw a surge of new fans, and surprising crossovers. From teaming up with the official Formula E to create a Marbula E series of events to catching the eye of John Oliver and his talk show (the show is now an official sponsor of the latest Marble League 2020.
Youtube is the home of several new shows trying to create entertainment in a lockdown environment. One that has a simple but effective concept is Who Said That? Hosted by the British comedian Mark Olver, each episode has 4 guests (mostly other British comedians) tuning in via their web cameras for this comedy panel show. Each guest take turn asking a question, the other text Olver their answer and is then read back to the question asker who will have to pair the answer with the right person. It is pretty simple, an episode lasts between 30-40 min and to be fair the humor hinges a fair bit on who fun the participants actually are. For me the guest so far (they have made 12 episodes, 1 new per week) have been a pretty good mix of som familiar faces and some completely unknown people, but always nice to expand your knowledge of comedic talents. I recommend you start by checking out the episodes featuring your favourite comedians, and the layout does get better after a few episodes (keeping the score displayed etc).
The final new youtube-channel I’d like to recommend you check out is basically three friends chatting along and playing a rather silly private game. No More Jockeys starts Tim Key, Alex Horne and Mark Watson as they play their own designed game over their respective web cameras. You really need to find these people funny to enjoy the show, it’s more like having a sneak peak at how comedians really are around their own friends and in a very relaxed situation. The game itself is actually pretty clever, but you really need to be creative to get this going, and I suspect there’s a fair bit of editing involved in trimming an episode down from all the usual drinking and chatting you suspect these people get up to. The rulers aren’t really well outlined, but basically each player in round gets to name a person and a category the belong in, and that means the names matching the category is no longer possible to play. And players can challenge a name if they believe it fits a already named category (if the wrongfully challenge they are out of the game), and if it does fit the player that got challenged is out. Example, saying Terrence Stamp, no more actors, or Gary Lineker, no more four letter words somewhere in their surname.
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