Domino TV show really a no-go

Obviously someone in the US had seen Lego Masters and decided that making a show about adults playing with kids' toys was ratings dynamite.

So they just took out the word "Lego", replaced it with "domino" and away we go.

However, there is no way this show is going to return ratings anywhere near the levels of Lego Masters for one simple reason - it's not very good.

It's hosted by Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet - who must be hard up for cash to appear in this.

It features teams setting up dominos around a certain theme - such as baseball - and then knocking them over. It's a trend I thought well and truly died in the 1970s.

The biggest problem with the show is it's simply too hard to tell what's going. There are so many dominos set up in such a small space that it's effectively impossible to figure out what is happening.

The faux excitement delivered by Stonestreet and his co-hosts (why they need co-hosts on this show is beyond me) suggests something is happening.

But as to what that actually was, I couldn't tell.

It's been 10 years since Spicks and Specks aired as a series. Yes, I know there was a version in 2014, but no-one counts that as there was no Adam Hills, Myf Warhurst and Alan Brough.

Not surprisingly, that relaunch tanked and was axed the same year.

This time that trio have returned with a new series built on the back of several standalone themed episodes that rated well.

What remains to be seen, however, is if the weekly version rates just as well.

It's likely part of the appeal of the themed episodes was their relative rarity - the show hadn't been around for ages and who knew when it might return.

So people tuned in for a dose of nostalgia.

The unknown here is what happens when the show is on every week. Does that feeling of rarity disappear and people think "oh, well, it's on every week, I don't need to watch it this Sunday"?

Or, even worse, do they tune in and realise that the series actually hasn't aged all that well?

That's the feeling I was left with after seeing this first episode of the new series.

There is an attempt to update things via some odd game where Hills plants clues throughout the show and the teams have to guess the answer at the end (I didn't understand this at all).

But largely it's the same formula as a decade ago - felt like I was watching a repeat rather than something new.

There is some potential in this new series, but you'll have to get through this somewhat awkward first episode.

It focuses on a group of jurors in a murder trial who find the accused not guilty. Then, led by member Clara, they try and find out who did it.

Clara's actions in setting the plot in motion come across as really clunky and something an actual adult would never do.

It's also hard to understand her motivation - but there are enough interesting characters to make it worth persisting with this series.