That Puppet Game Show

TV review - Need a ratings boost? Call in the Muppets

The game show format is spectacularly revived with the help of some colourful old friends ...

'That Puppet Game Show' attracts 2.4m on BBC One

That Puppet Game Show debuted with 2.37m viewers on Saturday (August 10), overnight data suggests.

That Puppet Game Show review

Being from The Jim Henson Company - the team behind The Muppets - there was a lot riding on That Puppet Game Show and, on the whole I loved it, and it seems that other people do, too.

That Puppet Game Show (BBC1, Saturday) is yet another attempt to crack the Saturday evening family entertainment nut. That's Puppet, with a P, not with an M, though you could easily be mistaken; they share about 99% of their DNA with Kermit and co, and were made by the same company. But instead of a frog, this show is hosted by Dougie, a big-chinned fella with a hint of both Vernon Kay and Paddy McGuinness about him. And it's a game show. Two actual flesh'n'bone slebs (Jonathan Ross and Kathryn Jenkins, in the opener) compete against each other to win money for charidee.

Some of the games don't really work. Saucissong, for example - in which contestants have to remember which singing Scottish hotdog sang which bit of 500 Miles by the Proclaimers - quickly gets tedious. More about the name than the game, I'd say. Life's a Speech is better. It does all feel very 1987, but it's warm, funny at times, and the guests (so far) are game. It should become more interesting once you get to know the puppets' personalities a bit better. So far my favourite is an alcoholic armadillo called Ian.

Brian Henson: 'We try new, different and unique things'

The That Puppet Game Show co-producer on how his father got the Muppets on screen, and why London feels like home.

Meet the new star of Saturday night TV - a puppet

He's got Brucie's chin and Vernon Kay's voice - it's Dougie Colon and he's ready to take over your Saturday nights with That Puppet Game Show.

Radio Times review

Cracking Saturday night family telly is tough, and bringing in puppets - even Jim Henson puppets - might seem like a last resort. But That Puppet Game Show, in which two celebrities vie for a £10,000 charity prize on a game show presented and staffed entirely by puppets, is no cheap'n'flimsy weekend whimsy. Each puppet, from host Dougie Colon (think Vernon Kay by way of Peter Kay) to softly spoken but ballsy show producer Mancie O'Neill, has a "personality" to go with their distinctively wide, smooth Henson mouths. The celebrities, this week Jonathan Ross and Katherine Jenkins, are game. And the challenges, which are facilitated by small, bendy frankfurters in clothes, are more than likely to raise a laugh from the average sofa.

The dread word 'madcap' fell out of fashion decades ago, but virtually defines BBC1's current Saturday night line-up: That Puppet Game Show plus I Love My Country equals primetime nadir. That Puppet Game Show is by no means as hateful as I Love My Country. It's just pitiable, which somehow makes it worse.

The gameshow element, in which celebs ('everybody's sweetheart' Katherine Jenkins and 'king of TV' Jonathan Ross) do silly things for charity under the watchful eye of wacky felt-skinned host Dougie Colon, is bad enough. But the sketches interspersed among the games, following events 'behind the scenes' as the producers decide to sack one of the team, are simply excruciating in their naked attempt - and abject failure - to recapture the subversion and anarchy of The Muppet Show. No surprise that Jim Henson's son is involved but, on this evidence, a chip off the old block he is not. This makes Don't Scare the Hare look like Isles of Wonder.

That Puppet Game Show fails to fill the primetime slot

That Puppet Game Show represents the BBC's latest attempt to fill the coveted Saturday night primetime slot but only manages to tick some of the boxes required of it.

That Puppet Game Show, BBC One review

All the things that made The Muppet Show so great have been half-heartedly copied in a cheapskate fashion and paraded like a bad tribute act. That Puppet Game Show's awfulness is epitomised by the presenter, a bland, chinless wonder called Dougie Colon (pronounced "Cologne" and voiced by Vernon Kay). Somewhere, a little green frog is burying his head in despair.