REVIEW: Saturday Night Takeaway - Extra Helping, Series 1 Review

 REVIEW: Saturday Night Takeaway - Extra Helping, Series 1 Review

With the current run of Saturday Night Takeaway having come to a close, it seems an ample time to take a look back at my thoughts on the first series of its ITV Hub spin-off, Extra Helping. 

With only ten minutes per episode, just how did Extra Helping compare to spin-offs of other popular ITV programmes? Well, let's find out...

Get Out Of Me Ear Harry And Jamie Redknapp Unseen

I wasn't expecting much from this new Saturday Night Takeaway ITV Hub spin-off, what with it only been ten minutes of length, but it surprisingly packed a fair bit of material into its very short runtime. It was great to get more of an insight into how the Get Out Of Me Ears are filmed, and the thought process behind it, as Ant and Dec explain some of the thinking behind what they get the celebrities to do.

The unseen footage from tonight's Get Out Of Me Ear also was very funny, and showed just how much material they must have that gets cut out of the finished product. The full english breakfast smoothie looked disgusting, and serving pizza on a football was certainly...unique.

I'm surprised they didn't keep Harry Redknapp arriving on a golf buggy in the finished cut, or the room with chickens, because they would have gone viral in minutes had they made the final item.

Pandas Unseen

Another great episode of the new ITV Hub spin-off. It was really interesting to get a production insight into the making of the panda segments of Saturday Night Takeaway, which began last year with a VT shot at London Zoo.

Here we get to meet the series producer, and hear Ant and Dec's take on the conception of the item, delving into their thoughts on why they enjoy filming this segment so much. I honestly think there are some funnier clips than in the main show here. I really laughed hard at that kid's impression of Boris Johnson for instance, and I chuckled at one of the male children declaring that one day they would be pregnant like their Mum.

Surprisingly one of the kids, it was revealed, had initially sussed that it was Ant and Dec in the panda costumes filming for Saturday Night Takeaway, but when the pandas spoke she backtracked and became convinced it was real!

It seems they were lucky there, as they came so very close to being rumbled.

Get Out Of Me Ear Davina McCall Unseen

An interesting fact given in this week's Extra Helping is that starring in a Get Out Of Me Ear was apparently an item on Davina McCall's bucket list, which makes it all the more bizarre to learn that she was very nervous during the shoot.

And you can see it on her face, during the unseen exclusive footage shown in this episode of the ITV Hub spin-off. She looks so very scared, and as a result it's even more impressive that she gave one of the show's funniest all-time VTs.

Whilst there was some very entertaining and memorable sequences in this Extra Helping - particular favourites being the mobile gym and the boxing glove on a stick - I think they made the right choice here in terms of what they kept for the main show. Some aspects such as the foot drum roll and the comedy slides about rock climbing and nicknames would have probably felt a little too similar to the footage that was already featured in the segment, and I'd say they picked the most hilarious to feature. Davina McCall really did seem like she was a great sport though, and it was impressive on Extra Helping to see just how much she appeared to ad lib during the shoot.

Audience Surprises And Drive-Thru Unseen

One of the most iconic elements from Saturday Night Takeaway is undoubtedly the audience surprises. There's an aspect of the audience being surprised in every episode of the show, so it's not much of a surprise to see an Extra Helping segment devoted to this very thing.

This episode brings a behind the scenes glimpse at the Takeaway studio, and Ant and Dec's reactions to seeing the virtual audience wall for the first time are great fun to witness. Their digs at their rivals, BBC's The Wall, are hilarious, making a very valid point that Danny Dyer doesn't have a wall on his light entertainment offering as big as Saturday Night Takeaway's.

Once again, it seems like there must have been a lot of funny moments from the undercover VT that did not make it to the final cut. My favourites here concerning the customers at the drive-thru were the woman with the fake eyelashes who wouldn't remove her 'eye wear', and the man who failed to recite the alphabet without Googling the answer. I'm glad this ITV Hub spin-off exists; without it we wouldn't be able to see these clips, and that would be a real shame, as they made me laugh for sure.

Cat Deeley And Chums Unseen

This was a really fun insight into perhaps one of the most anticipated Undercovers from this series of Saturday Night Takeaway, and the revival of an iconic Saturday morning sketch series. There were some very entertaining unseen moments concerning Cat Deeley signing books to forty year olds and elephant noises, but judging by what we were shown here I think they made the right call on which clips to show during the main programme.

Interesting also seeing behind the scenes on the new Chums set. It certainly seems as though a lot of work has gone into painstakingly recreating the original set, and it does sort of make a full-scale Chums revival appear almost inevitable. Perhaps we could get that instead of the film sketches for next year's Takeaway (NB: Last night's conclusion to Double Trouble seemed to suggest otherwise)?

Double Trouble Unseen

This one was a bit like an extension of It'll Be Alright On The Night, and it was great fun seeing some outtakes from the current Saturday Night Takeaway sketch series, Double Trouble. It seems like Prue Leith struggled considerably with learning her lines, and Dec's giggling was quite amusing to watch. I'm always amazed with the number of famous faces they manage to pack into those sketches. They're packed to the brim with all manners of celebrities, and it makes for an almost Where's Wally-esque game of trying to guess who will pop up next.

Get Out Of Me Ear Mo Farah Unseen

Mo Farah's Get Out Of Me Ear was perhaps one of the greatest segments in Saturday Night Takeaway history. So it was great to find that this week's Extra Helping was centred all around unseen moments from this extremely entertaining VT.

There are so many hilarious clips in this instalment of Extra Helping, that there are really too many to name. My favourites involved Mo's attempts to balance a tube of Pringles on his head, and that ridiculous scramble through the kids' tunnel which ended with Mo getting stuck less than halfway through.

The bottled sweat gag returns here, after the joke was broadcast with one of the other potential nannies on the main show, and it just doesn't stop being funny. Unlike the male nanny on the main programme who agreed to drinking the sweat, this female nanny just flat-out refuses, and you can hardly blame her, because the thought of drinking sweat truly is disgusting.

Mo Farah's nan deserves to be on every Get Out Of Me Ear from now on. The fact that her earpieces actually fell in the water and she improvised for the majority of the VT shows that she must be a very talented actor. She clearly doesn't need Ant and Dec in her ear to be funny, so get her on the next series, unscripted!

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What are your thoughts on Saturday Night Takeaway: Extra Helping? Let me know in the comments.