Note the presenters, the time the show is on, it's opening sequence and it's advert. You don't need me to tell you what Push the Button is all about, but I'm going to do it anyway because that's how a review works ya see?
Push the Button works like this. There are two teams (usually families), some strange games and the target is to win money, kind of like Family Fortunes meets the Crystal Maze in a blender, with lots of studio lighting and perma-grinning thrown in for good measure. Basic premise is that the families are given £100,000 at the start and the challenges take a certain amount of time to complete. In this time, the amount of money you have dwindles. Less time you take, more money you get. You can also take money off the other other family, which adds a healthy Machiavellian streak, disappointingly missing on most cheerful TV shows.
The families appear to have to be Northern with a sense of fun. It is a complete surprise for them when Ant and Dec travel up to their town to say they are on their show it is quite heart-warming seeing people's reactions to see Ant and/or Dec, like having a Cup-a-Soup after a long walk in the cold or seeing a person you hated at school working at McDonalds.
What follows is a bit of meeting the families filler, with establishing shots showing just how much they want to win and how it will "change-their-lives". Shot in black and white, naturally because that makes it mean more and wants us to care.
Each person in the two teams have a specific 'skill' that doesn't seem to have any relevance at all to the way the show works. For example, one says his 'skill' is tanning. Another is 'waxing' leading me to believe there would be a salon round in which Ant and Dec are stripped naked and the two teams compete to see who can "back, crack and sack" one of them fastest. Ant would be harder because he's got a fatter arse but Dec is hairier, possibly.
Meanwhile, Ronnie Corbett does the voiceover for some reason unbeknown to mankind, like he was being held hostage by the producers for their own amusement.
Of course, Ant and Dec are always entertaining in a lowest common denominator way. It's cliched but you just can't resist their Geordie charm and faces that don't age, looking like they've walked off the set of Byker Grove in 1990, via the medieval torture device the Rack to stretch them a bit.
Ultimately, there's something for everyone. For the elitists, you can laugh at people who don't know where Saint Basil's Cathedral is, or indeed what it is. For everyone else that isn't a complete bastard, it's a fun, cheery, good-natured show that will entertain on a Saturday night.
Dan
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