Colm O'Regan: Challenge is Saorview's most curious channel addition yet
Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Pic: Denis Minihane.
‘Challenge’: I didn’t spot it when it first appeared. But then, the collection of channels that appear on Saorview is always a bit of a happy mystery.
Saorview is like a party where someone turns up that no one knows but they all think he must have come with someone else.
Every so often you turn on the telly and there’s a new one. A TG4 children’s channel, great! How long has Sky News been there? Another TV3 one arrived a while ago. TV3 Four.
I remember when a new TV channel arriving would have been a episode all to itself. Now they just turn up with a bag of cans and say they’re a friend of Brian's.
There were always the lesser-watched ones in the upper reaches. Oireachtas TV is a stalwart although it is a little quieter now since the went off the year.
It’s like how I dreamed it would be when I wanted Cork Multichannel all those years ago. But with no ads for Smash.
And nothing could be more Cork Multichannel than what you find on Challenge at 11pm.
In general, Challenge is a channel for people who don’t think there are enough episodes of The Chase and Tipping Point on TV.
I have never watched the same episode of either twice. I did some research and apparently, there are enough episodes of Tipping Point and The Chase already recorded to keep humanity going until the year 3145.
In fact, should society collapse, an automated broadcast will continue from a Norwegian ice vault until contact is made from space.
But that’s not what caught my eye. It’s what’s on later in the night. After . Bullseye.
I never knew what it was before. For me, it was just a Peter Kay routine about how people living 300 miles from the sea nearly won a speed boat.
But what a time capsule it is. Episode after episode of the 1980s game show.
When Jim Bowen - who looks like Pope Francis’s Lancashire cousin - chats to the guests, their jobs are quiet bits of history.
There is a very low number of HR managers, and no brand champions or digital marketing consultants. Lots of trades, typists and machinists. It remains still one of the best ideas in a quiz.
The whole show hinges on darts. There are more men in slacks and short-sleeved polo shirts than you could wave a short pointy stick at. And some women in slacks and polo shirts too, playing darts.
The darts 'drive the narrative' as they say these days. Even though the ‘brains’ answer the questions.
The money is not bad at all. You can make hundreds. Hundreds which Jim counts out from a wad of cash in his suit pocket like a bloke down in Wetherfield Market.
In later seasons, he counted more complicated amounts during the break. He’d even round it to the nearest five. There are no delays of any sort.
Modern games of skill have these ludicrous waits to see if the answer is right. There’s no time in Bullseye. There are arrows to throw.
The prizes are another signpost of the times. Everyone laughs at the speedboat.
But don’t forget to bat an eyelid at the smaller consumables: An Atari or “kiddies computer game” as Jim calls it.
A Fridge Freezer! Now you’d see a fridge freezer as a burden. We HAVE a fridge freezer. We’ll have to put this one on Adverts.
But back then it might have been actually filling a six by two foot space in a kitchen.
How about a radio alarm clock?! It wakes you up with t’radio on!
I want to go back to 1980s gameshows. As Jim might say: Look at what I could have won.
