Beeb can bank on Mel and Sue to get back in the Game

Fair play to the BBC for the timing of the announcement of its plans to reboot The Generation Game. It came just hours after the live final of its disastrous talent show Pitch Battle had provided a fairly definitive answer to this obvious question: Has the BBC run out of ideas?

For what it’s worth, I think bringing back one of the finest light entertainment formats in TV history is a very smart move. I also think Mel and Sue are the ideal presenters – and not just because a couple of women landing a big-money gig might take a little heat out of the gender pay gap row.

If I was the BBC, I would now go into full-on mischievous mode and schedule the first episode to go up against C4’s Bake Off – with a cake icing round featuring Mary Berry. One thing’s for sure, Mel and Sue work best when they are a pair. Mel wasn’t dreadful on Pitch Battle by any means. She was fighting a losing battle from the start though. I never really understood the point of it. It was almost as if someone at the BBC had said: “Gareth Malone is good on those choir programmes. Let’s do a talent show with choirs and have him as a judge. People seem to like him and at the least it’ll fill a gap for six weeks.” It also seemed as if the BBC expected us to pretend that Last Choir Standing, with Nick Knowles and Myleene Klass, never happened. Yeah, right. I’ve been trying to do that since 2008. Certain memories just cannot be wiped.