Broadcast of the series ran from September-November, though the scheduled 17th September start date was pushed back a week due to the death of the Queen. The nine episodes were followed by a Christmas Special. Please join me as I rank them all from worst to best...
Guest Panellists (in panel order): Lawrence Chaney, Jermaine Jenas, Desiree Burch, Alan Davies, Roman Kemp and Scarlett Moffatt.
As with the previous article that covered this "new" Blankety Blank, then if you're reading these for the research, the behind-the-scenes stuff, autobiography quotes, etc., then... skip this one and wait for the next article on the Les Dawson version. That's not to say that this article doesn't have the odd stats here and there, and there is the information on the viewing figures, but generally this is an "obligatory" article rather than something that really gets to dig in to the details.
Part of the reason is that it's simply beyond the nature of time to do a more in-depth article: any autobiographies that are likely to mention being on this version of the show are yet to be ghostwritten. Yet it's also down to the fact that it seems impossible to run a website that features articles on the original run of Blankety Blank then completely ignore it when the show gets resurrected and a new series comes along. To be frank, if it wasn't for that almost mandatory requirement, then I wouldn't even be watching this version of the show, much less writing an article about it.
This said, Bradley Walsh has settled in a bit more as the host during the second series, and it's a little bit easier to sit through than the first - in fact, not only do some episodes approach mediocrity, there's even one or two that are halfway watchable. However, Bradley is still so focussed on trying to make the show "funny", that not only is the non-joke about asking the contestants what prizes they would like to win still dragged out and beaten to death, but any slightly amusing moment is milked beyond its maximum lifespan. Bearing in mind that even genuinely amusing moments from the panellists were shot down in flames by Les Dawson, then here every remark from a contestant or panellist that's worthy of a half-smile has Bradley having to prop himself up on the set so he can keep standing.
There is a little more interaction this time, as the series, recorded in the first half of 2022 (as witnessed by a contestant saying "summer's comin' up") is now being made in the era of "Is COVID over or not?", meaning Brad can walk amongst them again. However, with the set still so massive they have to shout to speak to one another, it's never going to manage to replicate the fun of the panels of yore. Even the American version, Match Game, has come back with the panellists in nudging distance of one another.
As usual, the panellists on this edition are aimed at a younger demographic, with DJ Roman Kemp (son of Martin) particularly endemic of how various reality shows feed each other, and how Blankety Blank - not actually a reality show - is mining them for what passes in 2022 for its "celebrities". It's not that the original Blankety Blank didn't scrape the barrel on more than the odd occasion, but Kemp became the "digital presenter and social media correspondent" for The X-Factor, and then branched out into Celebrity Gogglebox and I'm A Celebrity..., a series which has a very tenuous grip on the meaning of its own title.
Other panellists include a comedienne, a drag queen, a former pro footballer and former panellist Scarlett Moffatt, leaving just Alan Davies as a guest people over 34 might have heard of. Such issues also call into account just how effectively I can review this new version of Blankety Blank considering I am, frankly, now something of an old fart. In covering the original run of Blankety Blank I can not only look at it from today's perspective, but have the benefit of having lived through the time when it originally aired, meaning there's a dual perspective on some of the "dodgier" elements that I can present. When it comes to this new stuff, I haven't really got a clue who half of the panellists are, and the show's not really made for my demographic, so my "take" on the show is arguably void.
Yet Bradley's "isn't everything hilarious?" routine attempts to work with the appeal of the show, ironically working against it. Being told you're "having a laugh" for 33 minutes every week is the equivalent of a particularly galling work Christmas Party. A show as fundamentally vacuous as Blankety Blank needs the host to work against it, to not only comedically undermine the whole thing, but also offer something else to offset the vapidity at its core. This version of the show does neither.
Guest Panellists: Stacey Dooley, Dion Dublin, Ed Gamble, Josh Widdicombe, Trisha Goddard and Chunkz.
While the ratings recorded by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) are - hopefully - interesting info for these articles, BARB isn't infallible. For this edition, they originally published that Blankety Blank was in the Strictly timeslot, and third in the ratings with 7.07 million viewers. I contacted the group, who realised they'd made a mistake, took the ratings down, then uploaded a corrected version a week later (4.35m, 21st place.) This "BARB can make mistakes" revelation is significant in our journey through the universe of Blankety Blank, as it'll come up again in the next article, a look at Les Dawson's series twelve.
One of the greatest blights on today's society is the inexplicable overuse of the word "literally", particularly when used for something that's not literal. For some reason it's a word that's found its way into the modern lexicon, with scores of people, especially the young, saying it for no reason whatsoever, multiple times a day. Literally. Here Bradley finds himself doing it, explaining that the winner of the competition "literally" goes on to the Supermatch. As opposed to symbolically or metaphorically going onto it.
It might seem like a small point, a bugbear, but it's indicative of the general decline of the English language in the modern world. It's also a symptom of the show's desire to appeal to the youth demographic, with this edition's Google search-breaking contestants including a YouTuber, "Chunkz". Chunkz (real name Amin Mohamed) has 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube, which, while far from the highest sub count on the platform, is, lest we forget, more than half the average audience of Blankety Blank in 2022.
Demographics suggest that 70% of subscribers to Chunkz are in the 18-34 age group, a viable target audience for a commercial channel like ITV. But as almost a third of the UK's population is over 54, it does seem odd that a non-commercial channel like BBC1 is increasingly moving away from such a large percentage of its market. And, despite going for such an audience, Blankety Blank barely makes a splash on social media, very rarely becoming a "trending topic" in the UK, even after it's just been on.
Such "old man" statistical ramblings are perhaps to avoid talking about an edition of the series that's more bland than irritating, something to have on in the background then forget you ever saw. Stacey Dooley writing down "genitals" is something that wouldn't have aired on the old show, but so be it. One final point of trivia is that, while the contestants having to play a tie-breaker no matter how they do in the Supermatches was commented on last time, it wasn't spotted that this part of the show is now titled the "Head To Head", and what was the "Head To Head" is now "The Grand Final".
It makes sense, in a way... the term "Head To Head" implies confrontation, not collaboration... but it's a pointless part of the show, as an extra round of what is the least interesting part of the game element is added, often unfairly... as here, where the contestant who didn't get a single point in their Supermatch goes through to the Grand Final against someone who scored the maximum 150 points in his. However, it's a wasted effort, as the contestant again fails, and goes home with nothing but her chequebook and pen. Literally.
Guest Panellists: Ashley Roberts, Ugo Monye, Rob Rinder, Judi Love, Reverend Richard Coles and Joe Swash.
More panellists that might be unfamiliar to the middle-aged on this edition are former rugby player Ugo Monye, Robert Rinder (the UK's version of Judge Judy) and Ashley Roberts, a former member of the Pussycat Dolls, who perverts might remember jiggling Helen Flanagan's breasts in a 2012 episode of I'm A Celebrity... Get My Agent To Get Me In There!.
More familiar faces for those who don't watch much modern television include Joe Swash, a man now associated with more reality TV and OK! Magazine articles than acting roles, but was an EastEnders regular from 2003-2008, back when people still used to watch it. Judi Love has now been in a few things, though crucially she can be recognised as "that panellist that was in it last year", while a guest for the middle-aged is former Communard Reverend Richard Coles. Bradley gets confused when a contestant says "Gen Z", and he's perhaps not alone.
One thing neglected to be mentioned last time out for this new version of the show is that it has reintroduced the "panellists wave at the camera during the opening credits" sequence. A much-loved part of the show that was sadly discarded way back in series nine, it's a welcome return, even if it does tie in to more of the show's arguably misguided "referencing the past of Blankety Blank for a show aimed at an audience who weren't even born when it was on" mentality.
Less successful is Bradley's regular habit of asking the panel if they've worked with each other before, causing the canned laughter machine to be dusted off whenever we get to hear about whichever reality TV show they've appeared on together. (In this case it was Joe Swash and Richard Coles on Celebrity Masterchef.) The laughter is a serious issue on the show, where there's not even a gasp of breath that isn't presented to viewers without hysterics from the studio audience.
It's not clear what the real source is - either it's dubbed on afterwards in post-production, or the episodes are recorded in front of the AGM of the Society for the Easily Amused. (The owner of the Official Ronald Lacey Site made me chuckle when I asked on Twatter if it was a canned laughter machine or they drugged the audience, replying: "They drug the canned laughter machine.")
With all this in mind, it's something of a breath of fresh air when a contestant cracks up when saying his dream prize is an "oil-filled radiator", and his offbeat manner sends gets a small appreciative reaction, but generally spreads a tumbleweed over the studio. But with a series where even the theme tune is clapped along with, it's an incredibly noisy experience, constant volume taking the place of any genuine wit, very much a Phil Spectorish Wall of Shite.
Guest Panellists: Motsi Mabuse, Matt Baker, Sophie Duker, Jimmy Carr, Saffron Barker and Bez.
One serious issue with this latest run of Blankety Blank is the questions. Not just that the questions are almost entirely devoid of any humour and it's now just a "missing word" game, but that in 2022 the clue very definitely isn't "in the question".
Whereas previous eras had seen very logical answers coded in, or maybe just one or two options, 2022 sees Bradley asking questions that amount to almost saying to the contestants: "This week's reality show panellist you've never heard of always said their favourite colour was [BLANK]." Although points get lost when the contestants give stupid answers, or the panellists give funny - sorry, "funny" - answers, both of which happen here, really they can be forgiven for low scores when the answer could almost be anything.
Here we have a farm animal eating homework, or a sandwich filling - questions which get, not unsurprisingly, multiple different answers from the panel. The sandwich question is related to Bez, and gets varied responses of ham and cheese, along with other wider answers. But while just a hypothetical question, there really is no intrinsic link between Bez and a sandwich filling, any more than any other panellist - unless, of course, the answer was a sandwich full of Es, which the BBC would never transmit.
This is actually one of the highest-scoring editions, with the contestants getting 11 out of 39 possible matches - yet 5 of those matches came from a contestant who was told of a man who was nicknamed "The King" because of his haircut... a rare instance of a question having an obvious answer. (Elvis, although had the episode been filmed nearer the broadcast date, then Charles may have muddied the waters a bit.)
To really make clear how big a problem this issue is, then for the six episodes before this, the "game you can play at home" saw the contestants get just 38 out of 248 potential matches, just over 15%. Such an astonishingly low rate that doesn't lead to humour, but leads to the suspicion that the "quiz" element is completely broken and needs to be fixed. (Oddly enough, the regular episodes after this one did see a big improvement, with 31 out of 85 possible matches.)
Guest Panellists: Anton du Beke, Kadeena Cox, Tom Allen, Brian Conley, Lady Leshurr and Alex Brooker.
The current world we live in is one where people really need to work things out. Right now there's so many debates about what people should and shouldn't laugh at, so much so that it leaves some confused. It'll figure itself out in time, but this is far more complex than the pejorative "political correctness" that began to reach public awareness in the '80s (though hadn't really entered the public lexicon in the UK until the early '90s) and was pretty much "let's stop doing sexist and racist gags", to put it in a very simplified summary.
The modern age of so-called "wokeness" is slightly more complicated, given that there are so many definitions of what "woke" actually is. Putting aside the fact that you need to sleep occasionally in order to rest your mind, then "woke" became a negative pejorative tool of the right almost as soon as the term reached public consciousness - so much so, in fact, that Rishi Sunak even used it in his first, unsuccessful, attempt to become Prime Minister in 2022. (Talking about the "lefty woke culture" that seems to want to "cancel our history, our values and our women", projecting a fear of "the other" is perhaps an unusual selling point for a man whose parents were immigrants from an Indian background and born in Africa, but such things are, it seems, the workings of the Conservative mind.)
This comes to the fore here where a contestant states that he's lost his pen, only for panellist Alex Brooker - who has arm and hand disabilities - to reply "Come on, Gareth, even I haven't managed to drop the pen." It gets a laugh from a section of the audience, but noticeably less than laughs elsewhere, almost as if the studio aren't sure whether they should be laughing at a joke about disability, even if the person cracking the joke is the one with said disability.
And so it is that a gag with a bit of edge is met with confusion, whereas the rest of the episode gets laughs from the generally quite feeble attempts at "humour". The same reaction also hangs around 20.9's Chris McCausland, with some of his jokes about his own blindness getting slightly mixed reactions. Am I saying that in 2023 we should be laughing at the disabled? No, that's not the point I'm making. In fact, I don't even know what point I'm making, only that the world of 2022/2023 is a very complicated place, and that some day maybe we'll figure it all out.
It's not all dead laughs, however. Brian Conley was always a good fit for Saturday night TV, his cheeky schoolboy style and corny gags - tempered with just the right amount of self-awareness - raise a smile. As is often the case, many of the other panellists are only ones you're likely to know if you're under 30, with one of them (para-sportswoman Kadeena Cox) not even born when the original version of the show ended. Yet having guests on to appeal to the Tik Tok generation is perhaps a sensible idea for a show courting a new audience, and not just middle-aged people who used to watch the original and have nothing better to do on a Saturday night. (Wait, what?)
One last point of trivia for this edition is that if you don't count unofficial charity specials or that episode of Gameshow Marathon (and who does?), then this was the 300th edition of Blankety Blank to be broadcast.
Guest Panellists: Lorraine Kelly, Richard Madeley, Suzi Ruffell, Jimmy Carr, Su Pollard and Big Narstie.
The topic of what is acceptable material for humour in 2022/2023 again comes to the fore here as Jimmy Carr is on the panel. Carr had received a large backlash in February 2022 for some of the content in his comedy special His Dark Material - perhaps surprising because it had been released on Netflix the previous December.
Whether or not His Dark Material is appropriate stuff for comedy is a long discussion for another time but the question here is: should someone who has their own 18 certificate comedy special joking about almost any subject you can think of be a contestant on a family quiz show airing (just) pre-watershed?
Jimmy received a lot of criticism on social media from his very first Blankety Blank appearance where viewers new to the show (or "Blank Casuals" as they're known) thought that he tried to take over too much. While this isn't usually particularly apparent - especially for older viewers who have seen episodes with Paul Daniels, Lennie Bennett and Frank Carson - there is an unfortunate moment here where Bradley Walsh is lowering his hand after pointing out to the panel, causing the cut in shots to look as if he's unconsciously making a "quiet down" gesture to one of Jimmy's interruptions. Which he may well have been. (Jimmy's other appearance in this run does see him taking over the hosting bit for a gag.)
As if often the case, Jimmy tries a bit too hard, albeit not in a lazy, schoolboyish "I've just said something offensive for the Hell of it" way that could fill 59 minutes on a streaming service. Su Pollard is also lively, which is odd as the younger generation the show is pitched to may have no idea who she is - back in 1987 when she was a household name she barely made a peep on the show. Yet both flounder in the "try hard and canned laughter will save it" philosophy of the new show when rapper Big Narstie manages to get more genuine smiles.
Lastly, Su and Lorraine Kelly claim to have been on Blankety Blank with Terry Wogan and Les Dawson - Su was actually on with Les, while Lorraine did a couple of Lily Savage episodes. As it's one of the show's "humorous" routines where they talk about how much better it was in the old days (well, they have a point...) it's likely that the "mistake" was deliberate, and pre-planned.