The Japanese version was so good but the version channel nine is doing is crap. Here’s why:
1) New people. Sure, you need some new people each week to hold interest but look at any “panel” show and you’ll see a few people that are there every week. Hole in the wall should have had this too. The Japanese version certainly had the same people appearing in more than one episode.
2) Crap host. I don’t know who this guy is but he’s not nearly as funny as he thinks he is. The smart arse comments just show how much of an idiot he is.
3) Bogus “rules”. The only rule in this game is, “get through the wall”. Now they’re taking points off of people for not standing in the correct position?!? What about walls that don’t have a clear “this is exactly how you should be standing” position? Why punish people for coming up with a better solution than the one the wall maker thought of?
4) Points don’t matter. Why have points if it is the last (and only the last) wall that determines the winner? Just do 2 last walls and let the one with the highest points win.
It’s such a shame because other than these problem the show is fine. It does feel a bit long and padded compared to the youtube clips of the Japanese show but it’s not a big deal (except when the host decides to give us one of his crappy monologues).
Oh and while I’m ranting against channel nine, ninemsn really sucks. I’ve got cable. It’s fast and it’s low latency but it takes well over 30 seconds to load each and every page on ninemsn because they use JS, which is served from a slow machine (direct.ninemsn.com.au). Redirecting this machine to /dev/null breaks the site. Turning off JS just gets you a big fat message saying “you must turn on JS to use this site”.
Their forums page (where they say that general feedback should go) contains a bunch of broken links and no way to get to actual forums. Brilliant.
