Or should I say they made the Gadget Show "World Tour" instead and it's not quite as good.
I thought I'd give it a few weeks for it to bed in. I didn't want to be all knee-jerk reaction or pre-judging it. But it's been a few weeks and I'm afraid it's just not quite working for me.
I have a couple of big issues with the new format. The first is the dumping of three of the presenters in favour of keeping just two of them.
One of the things that worked with the 5-person team was that you had a mix of personalities. There was crazy and shouty and considered and gently spoken. It meant they could tailor the presenters to the situation.
But the two that are there now - Polly and Jason - are very similar on screen and they're both "up" and not a little bit shouty. It makes the whole thing very samey and when they get them to do something that would have suited some of the other presenters (Jon in particular) it just ends up feeling... awkward.
Another issue is that the whole point of this is that it's the Gadget Show World Tour, but what does that actually mean?
So they've basically been to:
- Japan
- Monaco (& the med)
- California
- New York
- The UAE (& other bits of the Middle East)
And this week they're going to be in Britain. (I'm writing this the week before so the last episode will have aired by the time I post it - and apparently that is it - a 6 week show where the Gadget Show of old used to bring a ray of sunshine into my week for half a year at a stretch).
As a world tour that's pretty main stream and, tbh, reads a bit more like a set of possible holiday destinations. And that's what each episode has felt like - like travel programs showing whacky things for you to do and with a few random gadget tests thrown in for good measure.
The basic reasons for going on a "world tour" just aren't at all clear. Now the first episode actually held some promise that it might work. When they went to Japan they went to see the latest version of Asimo and also in each episode there are little bits of possible future tech.
And if that was the purpose of the program - going to see future ideas and the very latest gadgets before they hit the streets, expanding up on the little segments they used to have where they'd go see some weird robots or similar, then it would be okay. The trouble is those are still only small segments.
Instead it's like they've tried to keep the same format for the old show, it's just now they're doing it in another country instead of in a studio. Why exactly?
However, the challenges, which came to form a big part of the show, have basically collapsed. Oh they still present some stuff as challenges, but the competitive element has had to die and they generally feel small, rushed and simple. In most cases we basically just get Jase trying out some whacky thing you could do on holiday with Polly acting as a cheerleading squad from the side-lines.
It all feels like a wasted opportunity.
And don't get me started on the weird bits where they seem to be interviewing Polly & Jase about what they're showing us. Those are totally daft - they break the flow, are often tonally the opposite of what you're watching and seem like a sticking plaster because they later realised Polly & Jase running about and shouting doesn't actually tell you anything about how good / bad the watch / 3D TV / Coffee Maker is.
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