The Gameshow of recession

A shiny new game show for the recession


Daniel Carey

IT’S one of those programmes that you don’t mean to watch, that you rarely (except maybe within the safe confines of a newspaper column) admit to watching and that you always vow never to watch again if it is inflicted on you before you get a chance to say no. But if ever you do stumble upon ‘Winning Streak’ – which is all-too-easily done given that it cuts into the normal main evening news time on a Saturday night – you’ll find it’s impossible to turn away. It’s just too awful not to watch.
Last Saturday evening, in the course of a visit to my grandmother, it happened to come on – and I was hooked. Granny, Mom and our theretofore animated conversation about the awfulness of the Government and the even greater awfulness of the recession (I’m guessing; what else do people talk about these days?) were curtly abandoned in favour of the 2009 version of this hit comedy.
My last memory of ‘Winning Streak’ was of Derek Mooney or Marty Whelan flirting their way through the half hour (possibly more) with giggling (and usually middle-aged) women hanging on their every word. It then consisted of an endless series of games in which the contestants took part in a bid to win money. They had to pick numbers and place names, go in search of treasure, press shiny buttons, choose famous landmarks, do triple somersaults around the set (maybe my memory of that last one is embellished by the excitement of the recollection).
Now, it’s changed entirely. Now, instead of flirtatious Marty and Derek we have dashing Aidan (Power) and Kathryn (Thomas, of ‘No Frontiers’ fame), who bring a new level of slickness and coolness to the programme, which has also changed its name to – wait for it – ‘Winning Streak Dream Ticket’. Now the buttons are even shinier, the backing music more cringe-inducing and the games less taxing on the brain than they used to be, which in itself is quite a feat of imagination.
It strikes me though – and maybe it’s just me – that the programme-makers and producers in RTÉ overlooked a couple of things when giving ‘Europe’s richest game show’ a makeover. Firstly, there’s something a little incongruous about having two fairly striking and talented young people presenting a show which, by its nature, simply isn’t meant to be cool. It’s a game show; people enter the competition in the hope of winning money, supporters with gaudy banners and loud cheering voices fill the audience seats in the expectation of getting a cut of the winnings of the person they’re shouting for, viewers watch it so that…hmmm, actually I can’t think of any valid reason for watching it, apart from meaning to watch the news.
The other key thing is that it seems like a strange response to the recession by the State broadcaster. While jobs and programmes that actually had some social/theatrical/intellectual merit are being axed all over RTÉ, it doubles the number of presenters on a game show. Surely one of the shiny buttons could simply have been labelled ‘autopilot’.