Holiday Showdown

Advantages: The reactions are priceless
Disadvantages: Personalities clashing quite dramatically

...strangers have to go on holiday with other!! Holiday Showdown is a must to watch, the basic premise for the show is that two families who don't know each other take turns to go away as a group on holiday to their preferred places. This is similar in some ways to Wife Swap but with whole family units centred on a holiday, the problem is that the families come from completely different end of the spectrum and this is the main catalyst for fireworks ...
...the recent episode where the holiday you do see the kids come out of there shells for example the daughter was a shy girl, and on the last night of the holiday she was singing on stage to a packed audience. There have also been some controversial happening that have reached the heights of being reported in the tabloids as well. Instances where the son of one family and the daughter of the other got romantically involved, watching this one I thought ... Read review

Advantages: Entertainment, some useful information,
Disadvantages: Engineered, unfair to the participants, selective editing.

...what they had created. Holiday Showdown is a tribute to 'engineered' reality. Without sounding indecisive, it is a miracle of Reality TV. For what it is, it does it very well, but for a programme on television, it stoops past decency and comes out the other side. The formula is simple, the first couple of series involved taking two very different families (same ingredients as ‘Wife Swap’; both programmes are made by RDF Media) and putting them ...
...opinions on what their perfect holiday should be. The aim of the game is to ‘sell’ their perfect holiday to the other family Normally the families can be quite narrow minded and uncompromising, there is normally quite a big social stereotype ‘gap’ between the families that nearly always ends in a row of fall out of some sort. Though the show does redeem itself on occasions, providing two families willing to open their minds and both evidently enjoying ... Read review

Advantages: Free to air
Disadvantages: ? any comments

...coverage of reality television, US movies as well. The on screen logo is present at all times and not removed during advertisements. In 1984 C4 was launched this was going to be called ITV2. CONTENT Examples of programmes: 3rd Rock from the sun, Airline, American Idol, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Footballers' wives, Extra Time, The Jeremy Kyle show, Judge Judy, Junior Eurovision Song Contest, Lip Service, Married with children, Montel, Nanny 911, The Oprah Show, Ricki Lake, Sally Jerry Raphael, Supernatural, X Factor. The channel has a website that is quite useful for programme reviews, TV listings etc...It also shows other ITV stations as well. The listing for today (Saturday 10 June) is as follows. 9.25 Emmerdale, 12.10 Coronation street, 14.35 Holiday showdown, 15.35 Celebrity Fit Club USA, 16.30 Airline USA, 17.00 Airline USA... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Bit of regional programming
Disadvantages: Not much regional programming

...unmovable, and led to the ITA deciding that all companies, large and small, should identify with their regions this way (this was to dog ATV for the rest of its lifetime and be the direct cause of the company's death). That was what ITV was so good at. It allowed each contractor to identify with it's own region whilst still presenting the audience with quality netwroked programmes - and not utter tripe such as Holiday Showdown, I'm a Celebrity etc... When the LWT name dissapeared from screens in London completely 2002, it was a very depressing moment in TV history. We may only have lost a name but that name was a stalwart to the ITV Network. At weekends you expected to be presented with programmes bearing the LWT name, but now that is no more. Here in the North-West we are very close to that happening, the only mention of the Granada name... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Mildly watchable
Disadvantages: Isn't this game show format running dry now?

...The Price Is Right is yet another ancient game show that Bruce Forsythe now presents, of course now renamed "Bruce's Price Is Right" so not to upset the poor old dear. The point is this... members of the audience get selected randomly to play in the show, where their first task is to, of course, name the right price for certain itmes. As with every other Bruce Forsythe game show, various plastic-looking bimbo girls wave their hands over the item (such as a hi-fi system, barbeque etc..), along with the male Ken (Barbie's man) lookalikes. Urghh. If they name the right price, they get into the next round which involved spinning a wheel in order to get the highest number of points... nothing too complicated there then. And if they get past THAT then here comes the Showcase Showdown. Waved under the contensant's nose is all the prizes... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful