Sunday 20 April 2008

Beat the Star

Combining ITV's two biggest loves, "Celebrities" and Vernon Kay comes Beat the Star, a gameshow based on a member of the public taking on a "celebrity" in a series of challenges.

Filmed as if live, the programme begins full of promise, up until the first game of this week's show. Hammering nails into wood. Sadly, this pretty much sets the tone for the show. The only real highlight was the off road buggy time trial race which was over far too quickly. Things rapidly spiral down to an It's A Knockout level of games including one where the two players had to milk a cow as much as possible, leading to some of the most laughable shouts from the audience, "Go on, milk it!".

Beat the Star also uses a pointless scoring system, each game is worth progressively more points (Round 1 = 1pt, Round 2 = 2pts, etc.) meaning unless one player is really useless, it will all come down to the final round. I foolishly expected them to win me back with a brilliant final round and what did they give me? A penalty shootout. The nail hammering round felt like The Eliminator from Gladiators in comparison.
This week's star, Amir Kahn, also demonstrated to us a masterclass of arrogance and idiocy as he was too scared to stand on top of a telegraph pole and in the only mental game of the show he was asked to name pictures of celebrities, and after seeing the face of Daniel Radcliffe he exclaimed with glee to Vernon, "Harry Potter".

Ultimately, with only about 15 mins of decent games in a 1h15m programme it's not worth tuning in next week.


Beat the Star
Sundays, 6:45pm, ITV1

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