Take Off
Contents |
Host
Bradley Walsh and Holly Willoughby
Broadcast
Hungry Bear Media for BBC One, 24 December 2019 to 24 August 2021 (Pilot + 4 episodes in 1 seires)
Synopsis
A family entertainment show, where there are special guests, contests for prizes, and anything could happen. Bradley Walsh and Holly Willoughby host.
Holly Willoughby and Bradley Walsh.
The team want to fly 26 people to Lapland for Christmas. To fill their plane (literally mocked up on the studio gallery), Bradley Walsh and Holly Willoughby play some games. Some of them were familiar ideas wrapped in tinsel. Re-pack your suitcase so it fits to an arbitrary target, remember and reproduce a sequence of lights, a traditional buzzer quiz.
Others were more inventive: Holly and Bradley visit a family at home and set them tasks. Star guest Jamie Cullum sings songs to describe classic Christmas films, and there's an "awwww" moment as Holly surprises a charity worker with tickets.
The grinch wants to steal your place on the plane!
The strength of Take Off was its stars, Bradley and Holly are familiar faces (though rarely on the BBC) doing what they do best. They knew when to make something of the "plane to Lapland" theme, and when to put it in the background to let each segment shine on its own.
Take Off is clearly from the same well as Saturday Night Takeaway, a light entertainment show we can dip in and out of through the hour.
Theme music
Marc Sylvan and Victoria Horn
Trivia
Billed in some sources as Take Off with Bradley and Holly.
The first series was filmed in March 2020 with the intention of airing it while the Olympics were on. Due to the Olympics being cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the fact that the pandemic would have meant that it would have been inappropriate to air the show while flying was discouraged, the show was again planned for against the Olympics, in July and August 2021. However, the show was actually knocked back by a week again, after a repeat of The Hit List had to be interrupted due to the resumption of interrupted men's football, and had to wait several weeks for Euro 2020 to finish for a slot to come free.
