Not even Freddie Flintoff can hit the target with a Bullseye game-show reboot

Tright here’s an actual magic to previous TV recreation exhibits that you just don’t actually get in fashionable productions. The glassy-eyed contestants, the barely-worth-it prizes, the marginally problematic hosts. Truly, possibly “magic” isn’t the precise phrase. Crapness? Yeah, crapness.

But it surely’s a comforting crapness, and one thing that outlined an period of British tv that’s been misplaced to time. That’s to not cease us making an attempt to succeed in again into that period, although, and drag that consolation kicking and screaming into the fashionable day with a soulless reboot that absolutely misses that time of the unique.

The most recent British establishment to get the Demolition Man remedy is Eighties traditional Bullseye, which is quickly to be up to date for contemporary audiences within the type of a Christmas particular, with Freddie Flintoff changing the late, nice Jim Bowen because the present’s host. It will likely be the primary large presenting gig for Flintoff since 2022, when he was significantly injured in a automotive crash whereas filming High Gear.

In case you haven’t seen the unique Bullseye, to start with, congratulations on not being 100 years previous. Take pleasure in these hips whereas they final.

Secondly, all it is advisable to know is that it was a quiz present the place contestants performed a sequence of darts-themed video games (together with, surprisingly sufficient, precise darts) to win wildly inconvenient prizes, on a set that was meant to invoke a sure sort of working-class English pub.

The set was a really specific shade of cigarette-stained wallpaper yellow, the contestants had been jittery and beige, and the entire affair had the vibe of a extremely miserable day down at your native. If that sounds horrible to you, then clearly you aren’t within the goal demographic, however again within the Eighties and Nineties that was the closest factor the English needed to a nationwide tradition.

My dad used to take me to that sort of pub on a regular basis once I was little. This was when you can nonetheless smoke indoors, they usually didn’t have issues like iPads and colouring books available to maintain youngsters distracted, in order that they weren’t precisely child-friendly. Nonetheless, I’ve fond recollections of sitting there, listening to my kinfolk get progressively extra drunk and discuss issues I didn’t actually perceive, whereas I attempted to get the pub’s one arcade machine (a glitchy Area Invaders cupboard) to work. It by no means did.

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That’s the vibe Bullseye was meant to invoke, and while you strip all of that away, what are you left with? A present about darts – possibly the least attention-grabbing recreation ever devised to entertain bored pubgoers. You’d have higher luck airing a present about fruit machines, or nervously tearing up a beer coaster.

The difficulty is that these kinds of pubs don’t actually exist anymore. The Americanisation of the UK has prolonged to our miserable ingesting holes, and remodeled them right into a parade of bars and gastropubs. Setting a recreation present in a correct English s***home in 2024 is like setting a present in a medieval dungeon. It’s a novelty, for certain, nevertheless it’s not precisely relatable.

If something, they need to subvert expectations and simply embrace this new age. Have the brand new Bullseye be set in a microbrewery. Make contestants sit on novelty stools, at a bar that solely sells IPAs and mocktails. Give Bully a person bun and a few hemp cargo pants (you most likely can’t name him “Bully” anymore although – I’m informed that’s a microaggression).

In any other case they danger certainly one of two issues taking place: both, very like our beloved watering holes, the present finally ends up with a shiny ITV sheen that runs completely opposite to the vibe of the unique and turns it into “simply one other garbage British recreation present”. Or, it tries to seize a few of that Eighties magic by leaning into the traditional aesthetic, and turns into a parody of itself.

For now it’s only a one-off, so I might see them making an attempt to do the latter, but when it finally ends up getting picked up for a full run, it’s prone to simply mix in with the remainder of our underwhelming tv output. It’s a disgrace, too – we was actually good at recreation exhibits on this nation, earlier than Bradley Walsh and Stephen Mulhern got here alongside and ruined all the pieces.

Possibly I’ll be proved unsuitable, although. Flintoff is charismatic sufficient, and in the event that they go into this with the intention of creating this reboot stand out from the gang they may actually rating a… gap in a single. Or one thing to that impact.