Channel Ten have again decided to play with the TAYG schedule and run the final two episodes of Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation in one week – this week.
On Wednesday at 8pm, the teams are joined by Deborah Hutton, Matt Lucas and Christie Whelan for the ‘Gone With The Wind’ Special, which was originally designated as the season finale.
At 7:30pm Thursday, Ten will air what could be the final episode, with Carl Cox, Bob Franklin and Veronic Milsom all as special guests.
This week the pre-intro scene made a comeback, with Shaun asking who had the quickest draw in Hollywood while dressed as a doctor – obviously!
It was all about the wild west this week, with the teams, set and Shaun all dressed the part. Shaun was not sure who he was, but Yul Brynner from The Magnificent Seven was the best guess. At least we now know how Shaun looks bald!
The teams were Calamity Jane and John Wayne for the BB (Amanda and Matt Preston), The Man with No Name and Lili von Shtupp/Madeline Kahn for Gen X (Charlie and Kate Langebrook) and the Milky Bar Kid and Seth Bullock as Gen Y (Josh and Josh Earl)
First up was Howdy Partner! Every successful person had a loyal partner which the teams had to guess, but in Shaun’s case, Stuart the Meercat had quit. In Nobody’s Business, the aim was to determine the TV show from the fictional business. Toasting bread was too modern, so toasting flapjacks was used instead as a timer in ‘As Quick As’.
In the magic window, the choices were all horses from the wild west:
The Your Gen topic was Hats! Finally, the end game was ‘Which Generation Is Best At… Finding a Needle in a Haystack’. It almost looked hopeless, but Josh Thomas found one eventually, winning the 1987 Worst Score Par 3 Licolla Classic, donated by Robert Tobias.
Shaun will be one of the presenters at this year’s Australian Television awards night, the Logies. Most likely it will be presenting one or two awards, like he has in the last few years, rather than full hosting duties like in 2001.
The bad news is Shaun himself is not up for any awards, and TAYG is only up for one – Most Outstanding Light Entertainment Program.
The awards will be on April 15.
When will shows learn not to have Shaun on live? Well, it’s good for us, as usually it’s a lot funnier. On Ten Breakfast the other week, Shaun was meant to debate the generation divide, but ended up reorganising the studio and being generally hilariously disruptive.
Watch it here, starts at about 1minute in.
In a show many writers have described in the programme listing, the teams were joined by Rachel Berger (BB), Craig Lowndes (Gen X) and Katlin Stacey (Gen Y). Shaun was challenged on his lack of circumcision, so he promised a new bris segment.
First up was Ad-hoc, and even though we’re subjected to them all time, only one frame from each ad was shown and the teams had to guess them. A new game was Vita Alla Voce, identifying the voice actor from the cartoon character. Josh didn’t know who Mel Blanc was!
The teams donned their googles for As Quick As, and this time, Shaun set the toaster to raisin toast mode, so the round was even quicker!
The magic window buttons were Amanda, Charlie, Josh (actually a photo of Angela Lansbury) and Shaun (actually a photo of George Clooney).
The Your Gen topic was Soap! For the final round, was Which Generation is Best at… Origami. No team really succeeded with the large paper folding, so the Baby Boomers won due to Amanda’s thinking chimp impersonation. They won the Golden Dunlop Volley Trophy donated by Gerrard Fouvrelle and Sunny Munn.
Shaun certainly wants to know, and we’ll find out soon with the season 4 première episode of Who Do You Think You Are?
Delving into a family past he was never told much about, Shaun goes to Turkey to discover that his great-great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side had a brush with one of the most famous women of the 18th Century, Florence Nightingale.
But it’s the things he learns about his father’s family, originating from Malta, which are the most surprising and bring his relationship to his father to a new level.
In some unaired information, Shaun also found that part of his family tree ended up in Perth. He great, great, great-grandfather had seen out his last years in Perth, when the colony of WA was only 50 years old.
The episode airs Tuesday March 27th at 7:30pm on SBS.
Production has wrapped for TAYG 2012, and there’s only four episodes left to air – but the season finale is a doosy.
Matt Lucas will join the Gen X team in the last episode, which is themed “Gone with the Wind”. Matt actually changed his schedule to be on the show, despite having never seen an episode! He is, however, a big admirer of Shaun’s, ever since seeing The Micallef P(r)ogram(me).
Charlie was quoted by TV Tonight as he was thrilled to have Matt on the show and on his team. “I’ve been very lucky with quite a few familiar faces in the old Gen X seat,” he said.
A few would have noticed Shaun eating bananas at various times on recent episode of TAYG. According to TV Week, Shaun is losing a bit of weight for an upcoming, secret dramatic role for Channel Ten.
Shaun says he has “a project coming up that I can’t talk about, where the person I’m acting with is stick thin, and in my normal state I’d look too big against them.” So far he’s lost 9 kg, so watch him chisel up as the season continues.
In a separate article on TV Tonight, Shaun revealed the new drama came out of an idea from himself and Jason Stephens, and will star Kat Stewart. He won’t be writing it though, preferring to concentrate on the acting side. Shooting looks like running from late August up until the end of the year, making 2012 another busy one for Shaun.
TV Week has guessed that the secret role is linked to a telemovie about Julian Assange. What do you think?
The patients were already prepped and anesthetised this week, with Barry Crocker (BB), Chris Cheney from The Living End (Gen X) and comedian Felicity Ward (Gen Y). Shaun was genuinely impressed with Barry’s folio of work, and Felicity was a bit annoyed being on the cusp of Gen X, so she swapped with Chris.
First up was “Chicken or Egg”, determining which came first of two similar things. Chris and Felicity swapped back for Better Read Than Dead, a new game involving identifying the book from a paragraph from it.
The teams had to answer as many questions as possible during As Quick As, until the toast popped from the toaster.
Some lame-brain had painted the magic window shut, so the choices were from the Dulux Colour Chart: Tapestry Beige, Mauve Higgins, Garlic Suede or Andrew Bolt Curd.
BB chose Garlic Suede, which was Singing Telegram. Tim Campbell sang messages to a celebrity or couple, which the team had to identify.
Gen Y picked Tapestry Beige, playing Where In The World. Josh and Felicity had to identify TV Shows and indicate on an inflatable globe where they were set.
Gen X decided on Mauve Higgins – it was Trust Me! Human Spider was the game, and Chris was the victim. For every question he got right, he won a real spider. For every question wrong, the ingredients for an ice-cream spider were dumped on Chris. Only one question wrong, meant Chris
The Your Gen topic, strangely, was Wood. The tree from outside Boo Radley’s house presented the end game envelope, announcing the challenge as Which Generation is Best at Decorating a Panel Van.
BB won, mainly because of one symbol (but probably because of Barry), getting the 1986 Ladies Touch Footy Trophy, donated by Audra Noting Stawell.
To be or not to be… that is… the… question? It was a Shakespeare themed episode, and Shaun was dressed as Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III).
Amanda and HG Nelson were Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (BB), Charlie and Claudia Karvan were Marc Antony and Cleopatra (Gen X) and Josh and Josh Lawson were Romeo and Romeo (Gen Y). Both Josh’s thought the other were coming as Juliet.
First up was Wil.I.Am, where the teams had to identify the movies and the Shakespeare play they were based on. In Sounds Like History, garbled versions of headlines from history had to be deciphered. (I noticed a mistake in one question – Pink Floyd reformed for Live8 in 2005, not Live Aid in 1985)
For As Quick As, the teams had to answer questions before a fencing tournament completed.
As there is much conjecture on if Shakespeare actually wrote his own plays, the four buttons were all possibles ghostwriters: Mao Zedong, Pauletta Washington, Crosby Stills Nash, and Selena Gomeza.
The Your Gen topic was Quills!
Finally, to prove the theory that one million monkeys using on a million typewriters would write the complete works of Shakespeare, the teams had to type the famous words from Hamlet.
And it was Gen Y who won the 2002 Hunter Region Senior Chess runner up trophy, donated by Matthew Koutnick.