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+--- Thread: 30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party (/showthread.php?tid=819)
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Brekkie - 02-01-2022
Obviously Gladiators/Blind Date/Family Fortunes was the staple ITV winter line up during this era but did they ever attempt to find a House Party style show of their own. The closest I suspect is The Brian Conley Show, which was excellent in it's own right but little remembered beyond "It's a Puppet!".
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - DJen1943 - 03-01-2022
Like most other programmes of this type it started off great but went on too long.
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - johnnyboy - 03-01-2022
soupie post_id=61312 time= user_id=1542 Wrote:Had forgotten how terrible it had really got in the final series. That running gag where the circus duo get their trick wrong and the audience is sprayed with fake blood is alarmingly grotesque- the 1990s were so strange. (Also I’m surprised Noel wanted to be associated with a running gag about parts of the show going wrong with fatal consequences….).
The gunging the kitten vote is also totally embarrassing. It’s only a bit of ‘fun’ etc, but I don’t hink TV shows would even consider a gag about animal cruelty these days (reminds me of David Renwick’s recent comments about how he regrets such stuff in OFITG).
I think NHP is still the epitome of a LE show which went on for too long. And like Blind Date and XF it continued because there was a complete dearth of anything waiting in the wings to replace it.
In comparison to now, the 1990s were strange but, IMO, it was a great time to be alive. I was in my 20s for most of it and most people look back on their 20s with nostalgia though.
I used to absolutely love this show. I thought the triumvirate of NHP, New Adventures of Superman, and Big Break was the perfect set-up for a night out in Newcastle (or Sheffield when I was at Uni).
I drifted away from it in around 96/97 because it had lost a lot of its vitality and didn't feel as fresh - of course, that is true of many pioneering shows.
When they changed the brilliant theme music, that was the last straw for me personally.
All that said though, when NHP was at its best, it and Noel were unbeatable.
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Steve Williams - 03-01-2022
Brekkie post_id=61320 time= user_id=976 Wrote:Obviously Gladiators/Blind Date/Family Fortunes was the staple ITV winter line up during this era but did they ever attempt to find a House Party style show of their own. The closest I suspect is The Brian Conley Show, which was excellent in it's own right but little remembered beyond "It's a Puppet!".
I suppose the nearest was the hugely unpopular Shane Richie Experience...
http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Love_Me_Do
Certainly Shane in his autobiography says they were influenced by the House Party, so in between the games there'd be bands and Shane singing and various other bits of business. But it didn't work at all, Shane was still a bit of a marmite entertainer (before 'stEnders he was still a bit too brash for some people), it was all a bit tacky and even Shane said it probably skewed too young and it was too frantic and overstuffed, it was a bit of a notorious flop. But as mentioned, they brought it back for a second series but renamed it Love Me Do and got rid of most of the fripperies and became a much straighter game show - but if anything that was even less successful because the first run had at least been a bit distinctive.
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - soupie - 03-01-2022
Also with Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush running from 1994, C4 were already doing a much brasher version of a NHP-type show in an LWT studio. With such innovation on BBC1 and C4 in that era, you can see why ITV struggled with anything fresh.
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Andrew - 03-01-2022
It’d be interesting if we ever did find out the truth behind the strange set used in Series 7, the half house/half metal poles look
Was it really because they didn’t have the budget to build a full ‘great house’ set or was it a very strange design decision
Looking back at those later series, it did seem very obsessed with throwing stuff over the audience, fake blood firing at 100mph, seagulls sat above the audience, and the strangest one, that Liam character smashing food in front of them so it’d spray all over them. Can you imagine the planning meeting ‘I’ve got an idea - we’ll get a big shepherds pie, and throw it at the audience, that’ll give us 2 minutes of content..’
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Brekkie - 03-01-2022
The Series 7 & 8 set decisions are just odd. I always assumed at the time it was down to budget cuts and a smaller studio but it seems they were still in TC1. I think they were heading in the right direction in S7 in brightening up the house, rather than having a mainly white/beige back drop, and adding a video wall, but the changes to the balcony especially just made it look really cheap.
S8 is even more baffling - again looks so much smaller but wasn't, and on the one hand they clearly tried to make it look much more upmarket, but on the other hand they had a giant inflateable toilet and a random nose with snot hanging out of it. Moving the door to the top of the stairs was just odd too, and as highlighted in the write up at nhp30.com they pretty much axed the celebs at the door for much of the series.
One thing reading that write up suggests to me was it's failure wasn't so much down to budget cuts which often became the narrative, but that they were spending the budget in the wrong places. Indeed it may have been a victim of having too big a budget - you often find shows are much more innovative when they have to account for every penny and often once money is being spent for the sake of it such shows can lose their way.
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Inspector Sands - 03-01-2022
Steve Williams post_id=61487 time= user_id=1326 Wrote:I suppose the nearest was the hugely unpopular Shane Richie Experience...I'm sure I remember hearing about a TV themed hotel at the Granada Studios Tour which had a room, possibly the honeymoon suite, called 'The Shane Richie Experience'
http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Love_Me_Do
Certainly Shane in his autobiography says they were influenced by the House Party, so in between the games there'd be bands and Shane singing and various other bits of business. But it didn't work at all, Shane was still a bit of a marmite entertainer (before 'stEnders he was still a bit too brash for some people), it was all a bit tacky and even Shane said it probably skewed too young and it was too frantic and overstuffed, it was a bit of a notorious flop. But as mentioned, they brought it back for a second series but renamed it Love Me Do and got rid of most of the fripperies and became a much straighter game show - but if anything that was even less successful because the first run had at least been a bit distinctive.
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Keith - 03-01-2022
Brekkie post_id=61503 time= user_id=976 Wrote:One thing reading that write up suggests to me was it's failure wasn't so much down to budget cuts which often became the narrative, but that they were spending the budget in the wrong places. Indeed it may have been a victim of having too big a budget - you often find shows are much more innovative when they have to account for every penny and often once money is being spent for the sake of it such shows can lose their way.It certainly seems like series 7 spent the money in the wrong places. The first Crinkley Bottom soap filmed on location to 'cinema standards' appears to have been fairly costly. Maybe if it had retained some of the village characters / actors from previous series it might have worked.
As for the set I'd forgotten how bad it initially looked, with it failing to look like either 'the great house' or a shiny floor studio. It looked a lot better once the wood beams replaced the metal scaffolding on the balcony, and the wooden panels/batons were added to the sides to make it fit in better.
I think with hindsight spending a bit more on the set and less on the soap would have been better. Presumably the second attempt at a soap 'The Bottoms' was cheaper due to being in the studio, and would have been better trying from the start.
Arguably for series 7 there was an opportunity to go for a significantly different set such as one used in the final series, after the great house was 'blown up' at the end of the previous series. Instead they went for half measures with a set that looked half compete.
I wonder if for series 8 the set design of having audience on the sides and Noel initially often looking at a giant toilet was someone wanting to make him see where the show was heading. It's reasonable to assume that going on strike during series 7 wouldn't have gone down well within the BBC. In some ways it was surprising it got one more series commissioned after Noel pulled that move.
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - buster - 04-01-2022
Thanks for all the kind comments about the site. The series 7 set is such a curious one, but we can assume it was number 1 on the list of Noel's grievances as it was fixed even before his walkout. As we said on the site it appears to push it a little too far - no one ever really believed it was a real house, but when you're not even bothering to mask the transition from set to studio and indeed then play it up at certain points with girders and lights and exposed metal work it requires a bit too much of a leap of the imagination. It also doesn't go anywhere, so you had the nonsense of people appearing by running up the balcony to wave and then going back down again. The audience seating was really bad too - the previous construction stripped back to metal bars and all painted dark red which looked really dark on camera.
It was undoubtedly an attempt to modernise the whole concept, it just seemed to badly misjudge what the programme (and viewers) required. (you could also ask if the reason for it changing was the house's destruction, why does it still look identical in the titles...but let's not go there...)
I don't mind the series 8 set as a reboot of the whole idea - it's colourful, it looks convincing in a way that the previous year didn't. But the audience is much smaller and sat in the wrong place, and the front door doesn't really work either (though they gave up using that pretty quickly).
I also quite liked the new series 6 theme, as a piece of music it's a nice tune and quite flexible. I think it just became symbolic though of people tuning in going "oh this has changed, that's changed, don't like it anymore". As other long-runners around this time found, you can get trapped in a cycle of trying to change things because they're tired and need refreshing but then it puts the people off who were still watching and enjoying it...
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Steve Williams - 04-01-2022
soupie post_id=61494 time= user_id=1542 Wrote:Also with Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush running from 1994, C4 were already doing a much brasher version of a NHP-type show in an LWT studio. With such innovation on BBC1 and C4 in that era, you can see why ITV struggled with anything fresh.
Well, indeed, one of the things that probably did for House Party in the long run was the success of Toothbrush, because House Party had been a real critical darling in its early days - as the site mentions, it got good reviews in the broadsheets and won BAFTAs and was regularly praised for its innovation and technical excellence - and then Toothbrush did all that House Party was doing but with much more wit and style, and that got all the kudos instead. Of course Evans was a huge House Party fan in the early days and regularly cited it as an influence, and I love the Evans NTV because there's so obviously mutual respect between the two of them.
And then when House Party ended its replacement was very much Toothbrush lite in the shape of Red Alert, which was of course a Ginger production and rehashed a lot of its ideas, but by that point loads of other shows had been influenced by it so it looked a bit old hat, much as Toothbrush had done to House Party.
Andrew post_id=61496 time= user_id=791 Wrote:Looking back at those later series, it did seem very obsessed with throwing stuff over the audience, fake blood firing at 100mph, seagulls sat above the audience, and the strangest one, that Liam character smashing food in front of them so it’d spray all over them. Can you imagine the planning meeting ‘I’ve got an idea - we’ll get a big shepherds pie, and throw it at the audience, that’ll give us 2 minutes of content..’
In 1996 I think the big inspiration would have been An Audience With Freddie Starr which had been on earlier in the year and featured him chucking food over the audience, which was considered very much the "highlight" of the whole thing. Even though it was a straight rip-off of the Can You Play Golf With X business on, yes, Don't Forget Your Toothbrush.
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Bluecortina - 04-01-2022
Steve Williams post_id=61664 time=1641301991 user_id=1326 Wrote:soupie post_id=61494 time= user_id=1542 Wrote:Also with Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush running from 1994, C4 were already doing a much brasher version of a NHP-type show in an LWT studio. With such innovation on BBC1 and C4 in that era, you can see why ITV struggled with anything fresh.
Well, indeed, one of the things that probably did for House Party in the long run was the success of Toothbrush, because House Party had been a real critical darling in its early days - as the site mentions, it got good reviews in the broadsheets and won BAFTAs and was regularly praised for its innovation and technical excellence - and then Toothbrush did all that House Party was doing but with much more wit and style, and that got all the kudos instead. Of course Evans was a huge House Party fan in the early days and regularly cited it as an influence, and I love the Evans NTV because there's so obviously mutual respect between the two of them.
And then when House Party ended its replacement was very much Toothbrush lite in the shape of Red Alert, which was of course a Ginger production and rehashed a lot of its ideas, but by that point loads of other shows had been influenced by it so it looked a bit old hat, much as Toothbrush had done to House Party.
Andrew post_id=61496 time= user_id=791 Wrote:Looking back at those later series, it did seem very obsessed with throwing stuff over the audience, fake blood firing at 100mph, seagulls sat above the audience, and the strangest one, that Liam character smashing food in front of them so it’d spray all over them. Can you imagine the planning meeting ‘I’ve got an idea - we’ll get a big shepherds pie, and throw it at the audience, that’ll give us 2 minutes of content..’
In 1996 I think the big inspiration would have been An Audience With Freddie Starr which had been on earlier in the year and featured him chucking food over the audience, which was considered very much the "highlight" of the whole thing. Even though it was a straight rip-off of the Can You Play Golf With X business on, yes, Don't Forget Your Toothbrush.
I think you're possibly referring to the incident where he threw live maggots over the audience? TLS weren't very pleased. I believe this was not as rehearsed and as a result the entire studio had to be fumigated for H&S reasons.
'Don't forget your toothbrush' was a disaster during the pre-transmission pilots of which I think there were two. I think there was serious concern over it ever making it on-air. Then they brought in William G Stewart who saved the whole thing and the rest is history as they say.
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Inspector Sands - 04-01-2022
Steve Williams post_id=61664 time= user_id=1326 Wrote:Well, indeed, one of the things that probably did for House Party in the long run was the success of Toothbrush, because House Party had been a real critical darling in its early days - as the site mentions, it got good reviews in the broadsheets and won BAFTAs and was regularly praised for its innovation and technical excellence - and then Toothbrush did all that House Party was doing but with much more wit and style, and that got all the kudos instead. Of course Evans was a huge House Party fan in the early days and regularly cited it as an influence, and I love the Evans NTV because there's so obviously mutual respect between the two of them.Oddly enough I was just watching the first episode of TFI Friday on the same YouTube channel as those Tube uploads and this NHP was the topic of the 'bar debate' feature in that first episode (a feature I presume didn't last very long)
(28' 39" in)
https://youtu.be/HNxb6bqQ5Tg?t=1719
That was in 1996, three years earlier, this is Noel on Evan's last show on GLR a few weeks after his NTV:
(35' 30")
https://youtu.be/ArdJvA7gaiY?t=2130
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Jon - 04-01-2022
House Party is really the only big LE show I can think of that was around in the 90s, that hasn’t had an official revival of some sort. Big Breakfast, TFI, The Crystal Maze, Gladiators, Blind Date, Stars in their Eyes and even the Gen Game have all had revivals. I guess with NHP you could argue that the format was never away from long with SNT being on air for most the time since it’s been gone but still.
Although perhaps you could say none of those shows have been run away successes. So why bother.
I think the only person who could do it justice is Stephen Mulhern, (I never used to be a fan), but I think that’s unlikely whilst SNT is still going and he’s very much an ITV face.
I think the other interesting thing is the Generation Game basically morphed into a House Party clone combined with some sort bizarre sketch show after NHP ended, even taking Mr Blobby.
30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party - Brekkie - 04-01-2022
Yes, very few people who could pull off a revival IMO, with Stephen being one of them. A broadcaster rather than a comedian IMO - someone competent but not necessarily cool, but can laugh at themselves.
There are only two other names that spring to mind for me - Andi Peters and Bradley Walsh. What I didn't realise was that both had had prominent roles during the original run, with Andi involved in the early series, even hosting segments when Noel was set up to star I'm them. Bradley was involved towards the end as a regular character and at the centre of a live Gotcha on Noel.