Banzai

Banzai is one of the strangest programmes I have ever seen and I would love to see it make a return, it is stranger than Takeshi Castle and the two share a distinctively Oriental flavour. It is one of those shows best watched with a group of friends and is a great complement to drinking games as basically it is a series of wacky events on which you can place a bet. If you lose the bet of course you get to pay the penalty and down a drink. Alternatively you can just make it a competition. Some of the shows have really strange things you can wager on, one show had you able to bet on who would win in a swimming race, a character from the TV show ...  Read the complete review

Who'd have thought that a Japanese themed interactive betting show named after a tree would take off? Well obviously directers Peter Boyd Maclean and Simon Toyne did. The first time I saw Banzai advertised on E4 I thought it would just be a show taking the micky out of the Japanese language and culture, and to a certain extent it does. But no so much as to cause offence, well at least the Japanese people I know are not offended. Banzai is a show that takes general things and uses them as betting objects, although sometimes it takes very strange tasks (for example having Todd Bridges (Willis from Diff'rent Strokes) in a swimming race against a dog). ...  Read the complete review

Back in the early days of E4, us digital viewers had every right to feel a bit smug. Here was this strangely brilliant Japanese-styled gambling gameshow - and it was ours, all ours! Those analogue folk couldn't watch it - ha! - but we could get our mates round and win stacks of pound coins off them. Times change, though. Banzai got repeated on Channel 4, word spread... and now, inevitably, a new series has appeared. The only problem is - it's not that funny any more. True, there's still the odd good idea, but they're mostly rehashes of games from the first series. The last instalment featured a variant on the "which of these five body parts ...  Read the complete review

BRINGING OUT THE STUDENT IN ME! Banzai has achieved an incredible thing. it has managed,apart from recreating a japanese style show with fabulous graphics, to bring together many of the stunts and bets that used to take place in my student digs. I am still deeply nostalgic about the drunken exploits of those job free work free booze filled days! Exploding coke can roulette was many a time the cause of one of the mutlitude of suspicious marks on our rubbish landlord's carpet! TAKING MY ANTICS TO WORK Reviving the spirit of low budget gambling opportunities at work has been fabulous for me - you should do it! We've done Bin Buckaroo for example ...  Read the complete review

BANZAIIII!!!!!!! If there is any justice in the world (and I know there certainly isn't much) Banzai will soon be recognized as one of the funniest, most original, and most purely entertaining comedy shows to have appeared on British television in decades. Not a smug suburban sitcom, or a lame and derivitive sketch show, Banzai is something completely unique. It is a gambling show, where a series of bizarre and surreal real-life events take place onscreen and you as the viewer bet on the outcome. You might bet for example on a kind of Russian Roulette between members of Go West with eggs replacing bullets (which member will pick the raw egg from the five ...  Read the complete review