BrainTeaser

Well, although it's success may have been enough for Endemol to open up a UK studio in Bristol, Channel 5's BrainTeaser is nothing more than a cheap, tacky, artificial and overall boring game show that is nothing more than a gimmick to make the viewer try to call up it's phone-in hotline.

So, to begin, BrainTeaser is a UK version of a Dutch Endemol format called "Puzzle Time", which simply is a puzzle game show mixed in with a phone-in game. It Originally when it first broadcast on Channel 5 in August 2002, it aired in a lunchtime slot, and although it moved slots many times, it remained the same.

So, the concept is basically that contestants play these puzzle games that resolve spelling, guessing and overall using your brain to try and solve them all, hence the show's name. However, what makes it repetitive is that despite four contestants can play, only two can play at any one time, as the set size is so small.

From how I'm gonna describe things, this is gonna refer to when the show first aired, as the games changed over the years. The first three games that are played were "Scramble", where you unravel a word split up into pieces, "Crossfire", a virtual crossword game, and "Wordplay", where you try and form up a word with falling letters and buzz to try and guess what that word is. The same thing happens again with two more contestants after the commercials, and then it's onto the semi-final after the commercials and some phone-in stuff.

The two winning contestants of those rounds get to play "Clued Up", where you try and guess something which normally is related to modern pop culture (eg, a celebrity, cartoon character, place, etc.), and "Wordstorm", where you find the word with the given letters the player is given.

Then, the winning contestant of that plays the final round - "Pyramid", where you have to solve words of increasing length. Winning that? £3,000, or if you failed to complete it? Nothing at all. This is one instant of the show's low-budget - the artificial difficulty makes this game much harder than it looks.

The show's budget, as I said, is extremely low, even for Channel 5 game show standards. It really does show, the set is tiny, only two contestants played at a time, and the pay-off went exclusively through phone-in. Yes, I know by 2006 the show improved by allowing all 4 contestants to play at once as the set increased in size, but still.

Now onto presenters. The original dutch version had a rotating lineup of presenters who changed over the years. The UK version did the same, and when the show began, there were four presenters to expect: Craig Stevens, Alex Lovell, Jonny Gould, and Rachel Pierman. However, variety doesn't always mean "good". Everybody is as bland as stale bread and they talk FOREVER, which makes it a pain to even listen to their voices, and yes, even Alex Lovell, the only well-known host of the show, is the same as well. She has no character and no personality at all in this show, just the generic "female, mid-30's, blondie" cliché, especially when compared to other shows she's on. In a way, I feel bad for her for appearing on here, as she was so overworked after becoming sole presenter and joining BBC Points West that she barely had any free time, and technically, this ended her popularity due to something so awful and shocking, which you wouldn't believe would have been seen on a game show.

It's to do with the phone-in segments. They sound simple enough, you'd call up a 75p a minute hotline, and you'd get to talk to the presenter and try and solve the on-screen puzzle, which most of the time, was ether Scramble or Pyramid, sometimes themed to events or seasons, and the prize tended to be £1,000, a decent amount for these kind of segments. But that's when the artificial difficulty strikes back, which led to these segments rarely getting any winners at all. What would Endemol do if that happened? They'd make up winners, in one instance posing one of their production team members as one, which is illegal to do in the gameshow world, completely scamming the real callers, and this is what led to Channel 5 being fined £300,000 and the show getting cancelled in March 2007. Yes, shockingly this show lasted almost five years, because of the fact it was so cheap to produce and I can easily guess it would still be running to this day if the controversy didn't happen.

After this show ended, Channel 5 tried finding alternate shows in the show's former slot which also relied on phone-in stuff, like the Going for Gold reboot and Wordplay, which is basically just a copy of BrainTeaser but made by a different production company, and had different presenters. Channel 5 soon gave up, and the slot is now used for other shows.

So overall, BrainTeaser is a show that's best left forgotten compared to the other Endemol/Endemol Shine formats. If you do wanna see it, i'd say just watch it for nostalgia alone or laugh at how bad it is.

I think this is the best quiz show and daytime TV show on at the moment. I think its great that viewers can win prizes for just 75p (people seem to complain about this but the lotto does exactly the same yes). The presenter is great who has a perfect role on the show. The puzzles are good for anyone to do. The puzzled are much better than programmes such as who wants to be a millionaire as they are not too hard but also not too easy. overall I say a very good programme that I am addicted to. ------ ---------- -------- ------- ------- ----- ------ -------- ------ ----- ----- ------ --------- ------- ------ -- ------- ------- -------- ------ ----- ------

Okay, so the watchdog has indicated that Brainteaser cheats and cons its audience by having fake winners. Well there's a surprise. In a minute you will be telling me that women keep dog biscuits and remote controls in their handbags.

The answers are so obscure and the costs so high, shows like this are just money making products. The person who has said on IMDb that this is the best show on day time telly must have just one working channel, or work for the company that makes this pile of turgid arse-water.

Allegedly. Oh come on - for goodness sake, stop ringing in! Seriously, shows like this and ITVPlay - well there is no skill involved at all. At least spend your money buying something off SpeedAuction TV!