John Leslie In Space

After finding no trace of it on the Internet a couple of years ago and then trying again this morning, I was ecstatic to see that someone had uploaded a load of Scavengers episodes to Youtube!

You might find this reaction strange when you watch the video, seeing as it's clearly hilariously terrible. The uploader describes it as "the William McGonagall of game shows", which I think is just about right - it was a science fiction Crystal Maze-ish thing that seemed to be vaguely aware of its own tackiness but then tried a bit too hard to take itself seriously anyway (even though you can see that Commander John Leslie can't keep a straight face during the introduction. They didn't even bother giving him a character - it really is just meant to be John Leslie in space).

As the voiceover at the start (played by Professor Plum or the forensics man from NCIS depending on where you live) implies, the idea of the game was for participants to run around in a set done up to look like a derelict spaceship, gather some metallic props for points, and avoid being killed by the traps that the Blue Peter presenter sent them into or the aliens' unconvincing laser guns. Despite the dreadfulness of it, I just couldn't tear myself away from watching - I used to love this when I was ten.

When I showed this to rakarr he said that the British love to fictionalize their game shows, and now that I think about it, I suppose we do, with things like this, Knightmare and that paintball game on in about 2000 which was made by someone who had clearly played a lot of Assault in Unreal Tournament. All three are also programmes in which contestants can 'die', come to think of it.

Sometimes they work, sometimes they're enjoyably tacky, but this doesn't quite reach even that level - according to its Wikipedia entry, "perhaps the most famous piece of dialogue in the whole show was when John said 'Ever heard my dog impression?' before shooting an alien, then curtly responded 'Woof, woof', not sounding like a dog at all." I think the lesson here is to not go so completely over the top with your set budget that you forget to hire anyone who can write or act.

The theme music's good, though.