Jul 22, 2007
Overheard in a Soho coffee shop, soon
A few months ago, I made a televisual gold programme name generator which TV commissioning Editors (especially those from BBC3/Channel five/Sky three/ITV3) could use to create titles for their summer season of programming.
Now that the all-important autumn season is swift approaching, it’s time to plunge once again into the bottom of the programming barrel and see which tired old formats can be recycled with a new twist for the gaping sofa-dwelling hoardes.
After whole nanoseconds of analysis, I’ve discovered that the secret to this type of television planning is as follows:
a) find an established programme concept
b) keep the basic format, but substitute the focal aspect
Hey presto, new programmes! You’ve already got the sets, too (not that anyone uses sets anymore…), not to mention the ‘talent’.
Like a monkey with a typewriter, simply hit the big shiny button below and - hey presto - eventually you might find the highly derivative televisual concept the world’s been waiting for!
Your show pitch concept will appear in the box beneath. Simply copy, paste, get a prime-time slot scheduled and await your inevitable promotion. (NB: may not work in non-Firefox browsers)
“It’s like Life on Earth, only with Grannies”
“It’s like Newsnight, only fronted by a bear”
“It’s like Points of View, only with more nudity”
*shudder*
It’s like House, only with doctors.
I have a card-game design that does the same thing with movies. “It’s like Harry Potter meets Schindler’s List… on a submarine.”
(Yours doesn’t seem to work in Opera.)
It’s like The Good Life, only with immigrants
It’s like Strictly Come Dancing, only with dentists.
I can see it now, actually: Strictly Come Dentistry - celebrities learn rudimentary dental skills and prove their nascent talent in front of a live studio audience, in such challenges as “scale & polish”, “amalgam” and “root canal”.
“It’s like Coast, only with couples”…yup, put it on Five call it “shaggin round britain”
“It’s like Pop Idol, only with monkeys”
I’d watch that.
“It’s like What Not To Wear, only with wizards”
Too easy!
“It’s like Question Time, only with a race in the middle”
yep. that i’d like to see…
“It’s like Pop Idol, only with dogs”
Haven’t I seen that already?
@Clive - pup idol, no doubt?
My favourite so far is “It’s like Trade Secrets, only with gangsters.”
That would be a most revealing episode…
It’s like Dog Borstal, only with royals
‘It’s like Have I Got News For You?, only featuring the first uncensored erect penis on terrestrial telly’
I am, as they say, rolling on the floor whilst laughing. Not literally.
“It’s like Points of View, only with a twist at the end”
Wogan wrote all the letters? I knew it!