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Contents 1 The Week of the Year 2024 1.1 Haven't we seen this show before? 1.2 ITV's new ideas 1.3 A bad year for... 1.4 Simple ideas, well executed 1.5 This is Channel Four 1.6 Radio stars 1.7 Yes, we've definitely seen these ideas before 1.8 The Most-Seen Game Shows of 2024 1.8.1 Weekly figures 1.9 The Roll of Honour 1.10 Coming attractions

The Week of the Year 2024

So, 2024 comes to an end, and what have we got to show for it?

Fewer new game shows than at any time in the past couple of decades. We've been incredibly lucky to live through an absolute explosion in competition formats; the past three decades have seen quizzes and games and reality programmes of all shapes, all sizes, right through the television landscape. And, quite quickly, the pipe of new formats has dried up.

Some of it is because of restricted budgets; commercial channels are preferring big-impact and bingeable dramas. Some of it is because of fashion: the hottest thing in 2014 is really passé and stale in 2024. Some of it is because commissioners have chosen not to take risks, decided to play it safe, and safe television is rarely exciting television.

Let's look at the year in six archetypes. First of all:

Haven't we seen this show before?

The year began with an awful lot of familiar programmes, reboots from back in the day.

Gladiators was the best of these revivals. The favourite show of the 1990s moved to BBC1, hosted by Bradley Walsh and his son Barney, and with a new cast of superfit athletes.

The Glads are the key to the programme – they've got to have muscle, brains, brawn, and be good at showbiz. From the first series, they're almost there – some of the characters were established (Legend as a bighead, Fury a ball of energy), some were more memorable for their athletic competence. It's also important to have great contestants, and this year's batch were more than capable of giving the residents a tough time.

Not everything was quite right – the soundtrack was just out-of-sync with the visual, the series needed about two more games in the rotation, and the arena's low height meant that The Wall was more The Fence. Still, viewers loved it, the second series begins in the new year, and it feels like a massive success story.

Jeopardy! had been a modest success in daytime during the 1990s, and after years of being bugged by the format owners, ITV recorded a pilot episode hosted by Richard Madeley. For some reason, they picked up the show for a full series; for some reason, they replaced Madeley with Stephen Fry – was Dame Sandi Toksvig washing her hair?

The show went out at 4pm, and it divided opinion. As a game, it's slow – 91 answers and questions across an ITV hour, which allows a little time for discussion and for the contestants to show off the breadth of their knowledge. This column preferred the pace to the vam-vam-vam speed of the North American show, but we understand why other viewers wanted something a bit faster.

We watched almost every episode, partly because some of our friends were on; towards the end of the four-week series, it began to feel like a chore. Anyway, ITV has recommissioned this show, apparently with an extra fifteen clues across the programme.

Wheel of Fortune (2) ran through the 90s, and a bit beyond it. ITV commissioned a Saturday night series. It wasn't quite right – the show preferred to show its puzzles rather than give any shots of the titular Wheel. Answers tended to the incomprehensible, they replaced the memorable theme music with some forgettable jingle. Each hour-long show is a drag, it feels like it's never going to move towards a conclusion. Graham Norton didn't feel particularly well-suited to this show.

Both Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! are owned by Sony, and they may have imposed onerous licensing restrictions on ITV – so onerous that it actively hurts the show. Anyway, a second series has apparently been made, so we'll have to see if it's any better.

ITV also made a revival of Password, and we really hat to rootle around to remind ourselves of the format. One-word clues, if you don't get it then your opponent has the next chance to give a clue. The simple game is stretched out as thinly as possible, and perhaps beyond breaking point – commissioned for a 45-minute slot, it eventually aired in a half-hour one.

They made a messy show – it's incredibly simple to let the captains walk on and not have the host standing in the middle of the shot, but apparently this was beyond the production team. A lot of faffing about, and a lot of unnecessary applause – the decision of whether to play or parse was greeted with wild and rapturous clapping leaving no room to appreciate genuinely good play. Nowt wrong with the format of Password, but it is best as a humble parlour game.

Late in the year, ITV had other ideas. Dress the Nation was a copy of Cooking With the Stars, but with the action moved to the clothing department, and still advertiser-funded by the same department store. There were revivals of You Bet! and Bullseye, and a new show called Pictionary that seems familiar from somewhere. We'll review these three in the new year.

ITV's new ideas

Not everything on ITV was borrowed from the game show archive (and, having spent 21 editions cataloguing the archive, this column knows an old format when we see it.) Some new primetime shows emerged.

The Fortune Hotel followed Stephen Mangan to a lovely hotel somewhere hot, where every day there was a game of Chase the Lady (And Avoid the Bumbling Fool). Here, The Lady was a fortune of over £200,000; the Bumbling Fool was a trip out of the game and straight home.

It's a show that invited comparisons with The Traitors, and didn't quite land as well as Claudia's prog; we were never going to get the high drama of Molly and Harry here. This is a bit of a shame, the challenges were better television and more obviously integral to the game, and a sunny beach in the Caribbean will always be attractive. We reckon that it's closer to Survivor, as the show quickly boiled down to a challenge of social strategy.

For this column, The Fortune Hotel was a slow-burn show that worked, albeit more as a proof-of-concept than a fully-formed hit. Would we watch another series? Very much so. Would we watch it in preference to The Traitors? Not a chance.

Six months later, Parents' Evening saw three celebrities and their parent – or child – join Romesh Ranganathan in a quiz. Parents set up the questions, children answer them. Bits of Who Dares Wins, elements of Wipeout, and some interesting questions for all ages. We were somewhat less enamoured of this programme, it meanders on until the quick-fire buzzer round, and then pithers out in a double-or-stick final challenge.

We reckoned that Parents' Evening will be best in short runs, an occasional treat for awkward spots in the schedule. But then we said the same thing about The 1% Club, which ran for three months during the spring and a further week just before Christmas.

A bad year for...

The second life of Saturday Night Takeaway came to an end in April. Ant and Dec had hosted an entertainment mainstay on and off since 2002, and almost every year since 2013. The show celebrated many of its best bits in the final series, and in an extra-long final episode. Nor was it a good year for SNT's spin-offs: a standalone series of Ring My Bell didn't get past a pilot, and Stephen Mulhern has retired In for a Penny after six series of high silliness and puny prizes.

Although elements like Singalong Live, The Happiest Minute of the Week, and Ding dong! That's my doorbell! have been off air for some months, this is nothing unusual. ITV's problem is going to be next spring, when we would expect to see these ideas and many more in a coherent entertainment package. Do they really expect a strung out Got Talent, and perhaps an extended Masked Singer, to replace this factory of ideas?

If there's one bright side, it's that Saturday Night Takeaway was able to end its run on its own terms, on something of a high, and leaving us wanting more. The door is always open for another revival.

Over at the Senior Eurovision Song Contest, we rather had the wool pulled over their eyes. For many of us, this year's contest was always going to be a bit of a let down after the 2023 event. The BBC had had a quarter of a century to think about how it would host; SVT were on their fourth contest since the turn of the century. Petra Merde is good, the script by Edward af Sillen hits familiar notes, the show was over-produced, and it felt like we'd seen the whole thing before.

For once, the best song won: "The code" covers a huge musical spread, from rap to opera with a pop sauce slathered on top, and just a few cheese shavings served on a rotating dinner plate. Nemo's song wowed the juries, impressed the viewing public, and came out with more marks than any other entry.

Just beneath the surface, a huge row was brewing. Insincere televotes made a mockery of the whole democratic experiment, and we wait to hear what steps the EBU will take to restore confidence in the broken system.

Joost Klein, the performer for AVROTROS, was removed from the contest after a complaint was made to the police against him; some months later, it emerged that there was no further action to take. The EBU, who directly employed the complainant and indirectly employed Klein, were quite clearly out of their depth. Changes have been made, and the conditions of entry have been clarified. The EBU wrote a report suggesting that it become more transparent with the public; although a summary of this report was published, the report itself remains secret.

Much of the problem is that the EBU is rubbish at communicating with ordinary people. And that is quite a remarkable failure, particularly as the EBU is made up of organisations that communicate with ordinary people every single hour of every single day. Chief scrutineer Martin Österdahl has become the lightning rod for fan discontent: he was loudly jeered at the Senior contest, and a planned segment with him at Junior was cut rather than spoil the mood. Mr. Österdahl remains with Eurovision Song Contest; we will see if his position in 2025 can be described as tenable.

Simple ideas, well executed

CBBC had another decent year, although the budget cuts are really beginning to show. Game On, Grandparents! came back for a second series, helping young people and their older relatives gang up on their common enemy (the children's parents) who think they spend too much time on screens.

There was also something creative: Style It Out, where young people design new fashions and make them from recycled bits of fabric and old clothes. Across the series, Style It Out proved to be bold, confident, and fearless. Young people were allowed to celebrate their creativity, and demonstrate who they really are.

Another channel with a small budget, BBC Alba, demonstrated that some ideas cross cultures and leap over the inch-high subtitles barrier. Dubhlain DIY asked its contestants to assemble some flat-pack furniture. All the bits are there, all the wood and the joints and those hexagonal screws. Instructions – not included. Worst construction at the end of each show is out of the contest, and the series winners get a small prize. The fun comes from each team's unique interpretation of the brief, and the myriad different ways they'll make a chair out of these components.

Over on BBC2, Bring the Drama demonstrated that television acting is a merciless business. Eight aspiring actors – of all ages – were put through their paces, auditioned for various productions, and benefited from constructive feedback by more established talent. Set in familiar BBC locations like Casualty and The East Enders, the show was gently encouraging without ever being fake.

The prize? An opportunity to progress your career, a showcase for various acting companies and agencies. No cash, no fame unless you really earn it.

BBC1 daytime has had a glut of fresh ideas recently – The Finish Line last year, Bridge of Lies before that, The Bidding Room has found its niche, and television has always had Pointless and Bargain Hunt. Perhaps it was inevitable that they'd take a year to consolidate – but they did manage to find space for one new format. The Answer Run is a simple this-or-that quiz, match the statement to the correct category. Plenty of quiz to keep us going, and Jason Manford elevates this prog from "decent" to "entertaining".

Satellite television had an unremarkable year. Pay channel KYTV gave us Smart TV, basically their existing format Never Mind the Buzzcocks transferred from music to telly. Another pay channel, Comedy Central, offered Out of Order (2), suspiciously similar to Paul O'Grady's Saturday Line-Up but less fun.

Free-to-view broadcaster UKTV made a series Battle in the Box, where pairs of comedians are put inside a Perspex box for a full day. They're given silly things to do; whoever does better in each challenge can win luxuries, like a chair, and some food. The tasks are simple enough that any eight-year-old can understand them and want to imitate them; the comedians are entertaining enough that the show is light and frothy. Completely didn't need pre-recorded Jimmy Carr as the nominal host.

This is Channel Four

Channel 4 felt the economic pinch more than most broadcasters: a couple of years ago, management felt they had to pay attention to the cabinet minister, and couldn't smile politely and say "oh do shut up you stupid old fool." Nadine Dorries' quixotic attempt to "privatise" Channel 4 – even though she could not demonstrate that she owned it – distracted and destabilised the whole channel. If it seems that Channel 4 is lurching without a plan, blame outside interference.

The result is that Channel 4's been almost entirely bereft of new game show ideas, and they've concentrated on successes like Bake Off and Pottery Throwdown, daytime mainstays like Countdown and Come Dine with Me, and last year's hot hit The Piano.

One major new commission for the main channel, Double the Money invited pairs to work hard and come up with some good ideas, to turn £250 into £20,000 across the summer. Teams with bad ideas will be rooted out; teams who miscalculate their margins are on shaky ground; teams who get unlucky with the weather can leave through no real fault of their own.

Although there's a bit of business plan, Double the Money is really a people show; by the second half of the series, we've got to know most of the teams, their strengths and weaknesses, and could root for our favourites in the final.

E4 had a spectacular idea, Josh Must Win. In the world of The Favourite, the most popular contestant as voted by the other players will win the top prize. Behind the scenes, a group of famous people try to put their thumb on the scales and make sure that the most unlikely player is able to come out of his shell and win the competition.

Josh Must Win had a subtle educational vibe. It was a worked example of how other television competitions and reality shows might be manipulated to paint someone in a good light. Sure, this show was light-hearted and everyone won, but other programmes might use some of the tactics to alter people's opinions in a negative way. Viewer, did you take this lesson into Love Island or Big Brother on ITV2?

Radio stars

An unusually large number of new game shows appeared on Radio 4 this year. Wing It was perhaps our favourite new show of all, a completely improvised set of challenges, with a couple of regular guests to provide extra fun for regular listeners.

Unspeakable was a decent listen, Phil Wang and Susie Dent discuss new words proposed by the celebrity panel, and talk about regional dialects and old words that have fallen out of fashion. Even though the series had more content than the pilot, we reckon it needed one more point of discussion somewhere in there.

We found One Person Found This Helpful to be completely unhelpful: although it pretends to be based on user reviews, it's really an excuse for grumpy old men to shout on network radio, and this sort of guff can be left to The Jimmy Young Prog with Jeremy Vine.

Elsewhere on Radio 2, Ten to the Top remains compelling listening. Just listen to the quiz, answer the questions, and let the professionals keep score. Vernon Kay will get properly excited when someone gets close to the maximum 65 points, and uses all his experience as a game show legend to make this mundane achievement sound like the most important thing on the planet. We never got the impression that Ken Bruce cared that much about the result of his little quiz.

Yes, we've definitely seen these ideas before

Some people pay good money for streaming services. Whatever the attraction is, it ain't gonna be game shows, because they're particularly derivative.

Amazon offered the bait-and-switch Hot Mess Summer, where a non-stop party stopped. The show's conceit was to trap people and get them to work behind a bar, rather than ordering from it. ITV2 repeated the idea on Bad Boyfriends, where blokes are flown out to change their ways on the orders of their girlfriends.

Paramount inflicted Dating Naked with Rylan on its unsuspecting subscribers. Haven't they suffered enough?

Netflix gave us Love is Blind, an over-constructed load of bobbins that claimed it was an "experiment", but perhaps the big experiment is just how much the producers can mislead the public and still pass their programme off as "reality". So far as this column is concerned, it is neither real nor a game.

All of the streamers had used these concepts before, they are international hits in some markets. Over here? Fell flatter than this column's singing: we had to hunt down mentions of these shows in the press, and online "chatter" felt like it had been placed there by a PR company.

Viewers are not well-served by regurgitated slop like these shows. They might work in some other markets with immature broadcasting sectors, or an over-dominant commercial player, but barely 1% of the viewing public cared about the biggest of these shows, and more people watched Popmaster TV than most of the streaming hot air.

Let's take a look at some more viewing figures.

The Most-Seen Game Shows of 2024

The top 25 game shows, as broadcast between 1 January and 9 December 2024. We can't give more recent ratings figures, as they weren't available when we compiled this feature. Once the full year's figures are published, probably in mid-January, we'll update this piece.

Channel	Programme Title	Shown	Rating ('000s)
ITV	I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! [launch]	17/11	10089
BBC1	Strictly Come Dancing	23/11	9130
BBC1	Gladiators [launch]	13/01	8365
BBC1	The Traitors [final]	26/01	8026
BBC1	Eurovision Song Contest [final]	11/05	7897
ITV	Britain's Got Talent [launch]	20/04	6970
Channel 4	The Great British Bake Off [final]	26/11	6746
BBC1	Race Across the World [final]	29/05	5988
ITV	Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway [launch]	24/02	5860
BBC1	Celebrity Race Across the World [launch]	14/08	5739
ITV	The Masked Singer [final]	17/02	5542
BBC1	Michael McIntyre's The Wheel	09/11	5350
ITV	The 1% Club	24/02	5176
BBC1	The Great British Sewing Bee [launch]	21/05	4811
BBC1	Have I Got News for You	07/06	4515
ITV	Dancing on Ice [launch]	14/01	4227
BBC1	Dragons' Den	08/02	4194
ITV	Wheel of Fortune [launch]	06/01	4163
BBC2	The Traitors: Uncloaked [final]	26/01	3967
ITV	Ant & Dec's Limitless Win [launch]	06/01	3831
BBC1	Alan Carr's Picture Slam	16/11	3824
BBC1	Would I Lie to You?	12/01	3793
ITV	Celebrity Big Brother [launch]	04/03	3773
BBC1	Masterchef	08/04	3460
ITV	The Chase	09/01	3414

We've marked series launch and final episodes.

Other shows getting more than three million: Celebrity Masterchef, The Weakest Link, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, The Voice, You Bet!, The Hit List, Masterchef The Professionals, and Only Connect.

Top show on the non-traditional channels was the Love Island launch show, which brought over 2.75 million to ITV2; the same channel's Love Island All Stars peaked at 2.4 million, and Big Brother at 1.4 mn. Popmaster TV had its best audience at 725,000, which is roughly the audience for the daily radio feature. BBC3 had rights to The Traitors from Australia and the USA, with half-a-million seeing the series. Top competition on any streaming platform was Is It Cake? on Netflix, the import registered 725,000 in early April.

One entry per title, however many channels it's been shown on. (Sewing Bee tried to sneak an extra entry with an episode on BBC2: we've removed it.) We're using BARB ratings figures, as placed in the public sphere by BARB or Thinkbox, for viewing within 7 days of initial transmission. Pre-release viewing is included (not that it makes a jot of difference).

Weekly figures

For boring rights reasons, we can't give a detailed breakdown by channel, but we can work out the weekly winners for all game shows, and for quizzes. Here's the week-by-week game show winners, awarded weekly on a week-by-game basis.

Week	Starts on	Top game show	Top quiz
1	01/01/24	The Traitors	Limitless Win
2	08/01/24	Gladiators	Limitless Win
3	15/01/24	The Traitors	Limitless Win
4	22/01/24	The Traitors	Limitless Win
5	29/01/24	Gladiators	Limitless Win
6	05/02/24	Gladiators	Limitless Win
7	12/02/24	Gladiators	The Chase [a]
8	19/02/24	Saturday Night Takeaway	The Wheel [a]
9	26/02/24	Gladiators	The Wheel
10	04/03/24	The 1% Club	The Wheel [a]
11	11/03/24	The Wheel	The Wheel
12	18/03/24	Gladiators	The Chase [a]
13	25/03/24	Gladiators	The Chase [a]
14	01/04/24	The 1% Club	The Chase [a] [b]
15	08/04/24	Race Across the World	The Chase [a] [b]
16	15/04/24	Got Talent	The Chase [a] [b]
17	22/04/24	Got Talent	The Chase [a] [b]
18	29/04/24	Got Talent	The Chase [a] [b]
19	06/05/24	Eurovision Song Contest	The Chase [b]
20	13/05/24	Race Across the World	The Chase [a] [b]
21	20/05/24	Race Across the World	The Wheel [a] [b]
22	27/05/24	Got Talent	The Chase [b]
23	03/06/24	Have I Got News for You	The Wheel [b]
24	10/06/24	Sewing Bee	The Chase
25	17/06/24	Sewing Bee	The Wheel
26	24/06/24	Sewing Bee	The Wheel
27	01/07/24	Sewing Bee	The Chase
28	08/07/24	Sewing Bee	The Chase
29	15/07/24	Sewing Bee	The Weakest Link
30	22/07/24	Sewing Bee	The Chase
31	29/07/24	The Chase [c]	The Chase [c]
32	05/08/24	The Chase [c]	The Chase [c]
33	12/08/24	Celebrity Race Across the World	The Chase
34	19/08/24	Celebrity Race Across the World	Only Connect [d]
35	26/08/24	Celebrity Race Across the World	The Chase
36	02/09/24	Celebrity Race Across the World	The Chase
37	09/09/24	Strictly Come Dancing	The Hit List
38	16/09/24	Strictly Come Dancing	The Hit List
39	23/09/24	Strictly Come Dancing	The Weakest Link
40	30/09/24	Strictly Come Dancing	The Weakest Link [b]
41	07/10/24	Strictly Come Dancing	The Wheel
42	14/10/24	Strictly Come Dancing	The Wheel
43	21/10/24	Strictly Come Dancing	The Wheel
44	28/10/24	Strictly Come Dancing	The Wheel
45	04/11/24	Strictly Come Dancing	The Wheel
46	11/11/24	I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!	The Wheel
47	18/11/24	I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!	The Wheel
48	25/11/24	Strictly Come Dancing	The Wheel
49	02/12/24	I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!	The Wheel
50	09/12/24
51	16/12/24
52	23/12/24
1	30/12/24

Top non-quiz game shows in weeks won by quizzes were:
week 11 – Dragons' Den
week 31 – The 1% Club (or Love Island)
week 32 – The 1% Club (or Cooking With the Stars)

[a] – If you class The 1% Club as a quiz, it won the quiz section.
[b] – If you reckon Have I Got News for You is a quiz, it won the quiz section.
[c] – Ten to the Top on Radio 2 has a daily audience somewhere around 2 million. If it held on to that audience during the Olympics, it would have been the most popular game show on broadcast media in these weeks.
[d] – Blankety Blank as a quiz? If you reckon it is, it won the quiz section. We will raise an eyebrow at you for this opinion.

The Roll of Honour

Who won game shows this year? Series champions are recorded for posterity: our congratulations to all.

Junior Bake Off – Tilly from Oxfordshire
Bake Off Crème de la Crème – The InterContinental London at the O2: Tanuj and Narayan
Senior Bake Off – Georgie Grasso

Only Connect – Thrifters (Will Chadwick, Sam Haywood, Jack Karimi)

Eurosong '24 – "Doomsday blues"; written by Bambie Ray Robinson, Olivia Cassy Brooking, Sam Matlock, Tyler Ryder; performed by Bambie Thug
Junior Eurovision (TG4) – Enya Cox Dempsey

Style It Out – Lyra

Young Masterchef – Famara Kurang
Masterchef – Brin Pirathapan
Celebrity Masterchef – Wynne Evans
Masterchef The Professionals – Dan Merriman

Love Island
(all-stars) – Molly Smith and Tom Clare
(summer) – Mimi and Josh

The Masked Singer – Danny Jones as Pirahna

Landscape Artist of the Year – Monica Popham
Portrait Artist of the Year – Brogan Bertie

Cân i Gymru – "Ti", written and performed by Sara Davies

Counterpoint – Annie Hodkinson

Dancing on Ice – Ryan Thomas and Amani Fancy

The Great Pottery Throw Down – Donna

RTÉ Dancing with the Stars – Jason Smyth and Karen Byrne
Strictly Come Dancing – Chris McCausland and Dianne Buswell
Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special – Tayce and Kai Widdrington

Celebrity Big Brother – David Potts (reality show professional)
Big Brother – Ali Bromley

Gladiators – Marie-Louise Nicolson, Finlay Anderson

Mastermind – Ruth Hart

University Challenge – Imperial London (Justin Lee, Adam Jones, captain Suraiya Haddad, Sourajit Debnath)

Home of the Year Ireland – Shane Murray and Marty Campbell, renovation of a 1920's terraced house in Dublin
Scotland – Anna McClelland and Harry Kinloch, a 1960s bungalow in Milngavie
Wales – Natasha and Gareth for Bryn Llewellyn in Bala

House of the Year (Northern Ireland) – Melrose House in Holywood, Co. Down, for Fiona and Jonathan

Scotland's Greatest Escape – The Broch at Borve Lodge Estate, on the Isle of Harris

Interior Design Masters – Roisin Quinn

Eurovision Song Contest – "The code", written by Benjamin Alasu, Lasse Midtsian Nymann, Linda Dale, Nemo Mettler, for SSR SRG, performed by Nemo
Junior Eurovision – "To my mom", written by Giga Kukhianidze, Maka Davitaia, for GBP, performed by Andria Putkaradze

Fighting Talk – Paul McNamee

Glow Up – Shania

The Fortune Hotel – Jo-Anne and Will

Around The Islands Quiz – Midlands (Stephen Maddock and Frankie Fanko)

Race Across the World – Alfie and Owen
Celebrity Race Across the World – Scott Mills and Sam Vaughan

Taskmaster (spring) – John Robins
(autumn) – Andy Zaltzman
(Junior) – Shenaya

Got Talent – Sydnie Christmas

Dubhlain DIY – Tormod and Isabel

Double the Money – Natalie & Jack

Countdown (June) – Arthur Page
(December) – Fiona Wood

Rostrum Camera – Ken Morse

Popmaster (tv) – Kuresh
(radio) – Dominic Burke

Sewing Bee – Luke Iveson

Game On, Grandparents! – Lenny and Terry

Eurovision Young Musicians – Leonhard Baumgartner (violin) representing ÖRF.

Brain of Brains – Karl Whelan
BBC Brain – Tim Hall

Cooking with the Stars – Ellie Simmonds

Dress the Nation – David Olaniyi

The Voice of Holland of This Territory – Ava Mannings

BBC New Comedy Award – Paul Hilleard

I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! – Danny Jones

The Rap Game – Layyah

Coming attractions

New Year's Day brings us Gladiators Celebrity Special (BBC1), and the first The Traitors (BBC1, continues Thu and Fri, and next week). The final for World's Strongest Man (Channel 5). S4C brings us Am Dro! Selebs and dating show Amour a Mynydd. Thursday brings us The Big Fat Quiz of Everything (C4).

Friday brings us a new series of The News Quiz (Radio 4), one-off Have I Got Sport for You (BBC1), and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (Channel 4). It's the final of Christmas University Challenge (BBC2).

Next Saturday brings us new series of The Masked Singer and Limitless Win (both ITV), and The Weakest Link Gladiators Special (BBC1), plus the first new Pointless Celebrities in what seems like forever (BBC1). On Sunday, The Great Pottery Throw Down returns to Channel 4, and famous people try to evade the spotlight in Celebrity Hunted (C4).

Weekdays bring us a new series of Junior Bake Off (C4), new episodes of Pictionary and Lingo (ITV), and fresh editions of Pointless (BBC1). There's another Celebrity Popmaster TV (More4, Tue), original Gladiators Jet and Hunter go on Antiques Road Trip (BBC2, Wed), and Dragons' Den is back for a bit more grondaing (BBC1, Thu).

Voting opens for the Bother's Bar / UKGameshows.com Poll of the Year 2024 on 2 January, where you the reader can tell this column precisely how wrong we are.

We'll be back on 12 January, and plan to give You Bet! the attention it deserves, and quite a bit more. Through the coming year, we wish you good health, happiness, peace, contentment, and may all the questions you face be ones you know the answers to.

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