Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway | |
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| Format | Live entertainment |
| Run time | 60 minutes |
| Starring | Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly |
| Channel | ITV1 |
| Production company | ITV Productions |
| Airdates | 2002 – present |
| IMDb profile | |
Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway is a television programme shown in the UK on Saturday evenings on ITV1 (and repeated on ITV2). The show is in many ways a successor to the Saturday night television show Slap Bang, which aired a year before its successor began. It is presented by Ant & Dec.
Each show ends with the main event in which a contestant from the audience attempts to win every item advertised during a randomly-chosen programme from the preceding week.
On September 10, 2005, ITV had a programme listing the best 50 shows in ITV's 50 years being on air. Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway came 2nd, being beaten by Coronation Street. Launched in 2002, the series was unbeaten in its timeslot for three years until scheduled against Doctor Who on BBC One in March 2005.
A new series began on September 16, 2006 and ran for six weeks. No word yet has been published if there will be a Christmas Special this year and a seventh series is rumoured to begin transmitting in January 2007 to avoid a clash with Doctor Who.
The rest of the show includes items such as:
- 'Jiggy Bank'a member of the public rides a moving robotic pig like a rodeo. The harder they ride the more cash they will get. Maximum win: £5,000
- 'Beat The Boys' in which 2 celebrities try to beat ant and dec's time around an assault course, using different vehicles every week.
- 'Jim Didn't Fix It' in which audience members who had written to Jim'll Fix It in their youth, but never been lucky enough to fulfil their dreams, and having those dreams realised at last, 20+ years later.
- An item where Ant & Dec are presented with a challenge known as What's Next?, of which they have no prior knowledge, which is often embarrassing, but usually funny.
- 'Undercover', where Ant & Dec, wearing heavy disguises, ambush fellow celebrities (Simon Cowell being a famous, and popular, victim). When this item first began, they also fooled members of the public.
- 'Little Ant & Dec', a pair of small child "lookalikes", Little Ant (James Pallister) and Little Dec (Dylan McKenna-Redshaw), to whom Ant & Dec delegate various interviews on the flimsy pretext of "we couldn't be bothered" and the pint-sized interviewers ask all sorts of blunt questions (some of which they obviously fail to understand totally) and bamboozle some surprisingly straight answers out of their victims. Such victims include Kevin Costner and Sarah Michelle Gellar. At one time, there was a "Little Little Ant & Dec" where two even younger Ant & Dec lookalikes were on the show because Little Ant and Dec 'couldn't be bothered'.
- 'Ant v Dec', featured in the last series, in which they are given a week to learn a certain task and perform it live the next week. Challenges have included tightrope walking, escapology and ventriloquism. The best remembered challenge is the motorbike stunt jump, which was called off after Dec had a bad accident during his jump, which resulted in a broken right thumb and his left arm in a sling for a few weeks afterwards, which became a source of much mirth on the show in subsequent weeks. Indeed, Ant's puppet of Dec in the ventriloquism challenge came with its own sling. The winner of the challenge earned 1 point on the scoreboard (except for the week the accident occurred, where both Ant & Dec got a point since it was called off that week). In the end, Dec triumphed over Ant 6-5, winning the last challenge, the penalty shootout competition, to become overall winner. As a forfeit, Ant had to perform a bushtucker trial from I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!, and sing a specially written 'loser's song', "I Am A Loser", to the tune of "We Are The Champions". In the brand new series this part of the show is Ant v Dec: The Rematch. On the 21st October 2006 airing of the show the Ant vs Dec contest was tied at three wins each. It came down to a Mini-golf putt-off which Dec won. After Dec putted the winning ball, Ant's forfeit was to be locked in the stocks and have paint thrown at him by all the show's celebrity guests. Dec celebrated his second successful win by singing the Tina Turner song Simply The Best, and wearing a mock king's outfit.
- 'Opportunity Knocks', based on the Saturday night television programme "Opportunity Knocks", enables members of the audience who previously starred on the expired programme, to act their performances again.
