★★★★★ 0/5

The White Room

In the premiere of Seven's new game show, everybody was trying hard to get the laughs. Very, very hard...

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“If you are glued to the TV right now, you either have great taste, or ar the victim of a terrible prank,” said Tony Moclair.

I’m picking the second, Tony.

And I’d like to buy a vowel, please.

The White Room, Seven’s answer to Spicks and Specks and Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation and Good News Week has arrived following rapid promos and no previews. It’s simple format sees comedians divided into two teams answering television trivia questions and games to the two hosts, Tony Moclair and Julian Schiller.

The genre is one Seven has been hungry to become a player in since the demise of Todd McKenney’s You May Be Right and Celebrity Spelling Bee and Glenn Robbins’ Out of the Question. Andrew O’Keefe also dabbled briefly with a more variety-driven vehicle with This is Your Laugh.

Dwarfed by a huge white-filled studio, the panellists and guests included Dave Thornton, Felicity Ward, George McEncroe, Lawrence Mooney, Fifi Box and Luke Jacobz. All were trying hard to get the laughs in the premiere episode. Very hard…

Aiding and abetting the game play were television clips, mostly nostalgic, providing a visual support to the static studio presentation. While it wasn’t all Seven shows, much of the other footage appeared to be either ABC shows or YouTube quality clips of rival network shows. SBS didn’t appear to crack a look in at all, while Foxtel shows were only referenced for footage of international titles such as The Wonder Years and Blue Heelers (a Hallmark rather than a Seven logo here).

Like rival shows, games were built around singing, linking objects (wearing a blindfold, the panellists correctly felt their way around a bunch of bones must be the answer to Bones) and even interpreting a dodgy dance quartet.

So if Spicks and Specks can be so damned successful at an entire game show built around music, where’s the harm in another show around TV itself?

There were several problems here. The cold set is so big as to leave the players shouting at one another. Everybody felt the need to come up with a punchline. And 60 minutes is just far, far too long. Why do commercial networks always feel the need to stretch a 22 minute idea to 44? Generation gets away with it thanks to its acerbic host, who is brilliantly deriding the game at the same time as celebrating it. Were Micallef sincere it would be a whole different ball game.

The cast also seemed so busy amongst themselves to play to the studio audience.

The White Room has also taken a risk in casting largely unknowns in the show. But in the 7:30 slot it may have benefitted from a little star power and more development of its gameplay. Humility goes a long way in this genre, too.

The real key to the success of Spicks and Specks is its charming host and the good company of its players. You’d be happy to have them around for a dinner party and reminisce about music.

If I invited this lot around I reckon I’d be lucky to get a word in anywhere. And I actually like telly…

The White Room airs 7:30pm Thursdays on Seven.

101 Responses

  1. I didn’t seem to mind the show as much as other people. Even though I enjoyed it my list of complaints is a page long: horrible set that looks like a giant robot spider is emerging out the back of it, mostly unfunny cast, every round was exactly the same ‘name this show’, it was on Channel 7.

    Yet despite all that, despite myself, and despite the fact Lawrence Mooney was god awful, I didn’t have too bad of a time. I do know for a fact that if it was on the ABC and hosted by Tony Martin it would be my favourite show of all time.

  4. I’m picking the second, Tony.
    Cat noise … but justified. It was dud.
    And I’d like to buy a vowel, please.
    I do not understand this remark. Please explain.

    The Green Guide (which I must say I read and go, ‘I already know that. I was on TV Tonight a week ago) reported last Thursday that a pilot was filmed in 2005 with Chris Lilley as host. I think that would have been better than this. However, Lilley may be larger than life as a character actor, he comes across as shy as himself in interviews etc. Even if he was, he would be better than those two. I think the White Room needs to fixed and replaced by a show called White Out. It removes mistakes.

  5. 7 will get my timeshifted results when I get around to watching it, but this doesn’t bode well… I stopped watching Good News Week because it turned into punchline vs punchline vs punchline instead of the game itself…

    If 7 wants to celebrate tv they should bring back TV Burp.

  7. Judging from many Seven shows like Double Take, TV Burp and the most recent season of Thank God You’re Here, it is very clear that the network cannot do comedy.

  9. Airing YouTube clips of some TV shows makes me wonder do they have the rights to show the clips? Maybe it’s the reason they can’t source a better copy, I’ve seen this a number of times with some news stories, on HD it looks crap to have YouTube quality in 1080 HD.

  10. @Paull

    I agree, the name is just odd. I’m guessing that is might be a reference to white noise which is the static you see between channel broadcast frequencies but “White Room”, that’s just ridiculous. To me it sounds like some vague mysterious room tucked away in the White House in Washington.

  12. Andrew, original in tv world means not an adaption.

    the hosts were wrong, the jokes and editing was pretty bad, anf the segments had no thought put into them at all. i don’t think there was anything that wrong with the set. maybe people don’t get the whole “white room” part of it. but the regular panelists were not bad, i don’t mind dave thornton or felicity ward.

  13. Interesting that Seven claimed it was an “original” format in their pre-launch press release. What was “original” about it?

    But I didn’t hate this show, it was mildly entertaining but admittedly if there was anything better on I’d have probably given it a miss.

  14. I just felt that the name was inappropriate and may be seen as a reference to White supremecists.

    In terms of the format, well it’s really one of those hi and miss things, and for seven this has not been a hit.

  15. I thought this was pretty poor. Two hosts did not work. They all seemed to try too hard to make jokes, but failed to be funny. The segments were wofeul, that dance segment…WTF??? Lawrence Mooney was especially terrible.

    Set looks dodgy too, and way to big for a lot of nothing.
    It had its moments, but i say fail. I’m thinking positive and hope it gets axed or moved to late night and 30 Rock and Scrubs can fill the spot at 7.30 and 8pm. Please Seven!!!

  16. I completely forgot about this.

    I’m as big a tv fanatic as you’ll find and I don’t think I’ll be bothering though might give it a go next week if I remember.

    If it were on 2 or 10 it would be must see tv.

  18. Definitely the first thing they could do is cut it back to 30mins. They should have had this going from 7.30-8pm and had Scrubs from 8-8.30pm instead of the ridiculous timeslot of 10.30pm Sunday. I’m guessing it will just pull 1million viewers but will more than likely slip to about 700,000-800,000 next week. It seems like there wasn’t much effort or thought put into the show.

  19. I agree with your review and after viewing the pilot of the show for a survey company, I tuned in to see if it was any different and it wasn’t. The set is too big, the jokes are not funny, the dance routines were difficult to interpret and most of the guests were trying to hard to entertain.
    This clearly isn’t a TV genre Seven is good at so they should just give up.

  20. This review seems a little harsh to me… compared to Seven’s last attempts at something similar (You May Be Right and Out of the Question), this was definately better. It could do with a better host (Ed Kavalee?) and less of Dave Thornton, but I didn’t mind it.

  21. A show like this benefits from a host that builds good rapport with the guests i.e Adam Hills where as The White Room unnecessarily has two hosts. It was nostalgic to see snippets of old shows however I do agree that the set could be better. It’s too aesthetically jarring as opposed to Out Of The Question which had a nice set. It would have been better if the set was filled with TV memorabilia instead of being just white because minimalism only works in the correct context. It’s not only the concept but the overall atmosphere & the congeniality of participants that makes a show likable.

  22. It’s a bit of fun at 7.30…. It’s not bad, but will success will be proportionial to the guests… How many “TV experts” are there compared to music experts.?

    Agree the set is way over the top… as pointed out on the show it was done in Seven’s old South Melbourne studios (now 50% owned by Global)… That studio is huge, so the set is probably in proportion to that studio taking into account audience risers…

  23. I did not watch this, but why does the set look so kitschy? It looks like the interior of a space-ship decorated by John-Michael Howson. Reading this review I guess I was right to give it a miss.

  25. I quite couldn’t put my finger on it… sadly I got 3/4 of the questions right. I give it some breathing space, but with Seven’s history, I’d say it’ll be bumped to 10:30pm.

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