Hamish And Andy’s Gap Year

Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year, 8.30pm, Nine
Love it or hate it, tonight is the final in this series from New York.

The Game Plan – Grand Final Edition (Live) 8.30pm, ONE
In NRL states, Andrew Moore and Steve ‘Blocker’ Roach preview this weekend’s rugby league Grand Final between the NZ Warriors and Manly, and bring you the latest team selections and injury news. While in AFL states, The Game Plan is giving a detailed preview of the upcoming AFL Grand Final between the Cats and the Magpies. Anthony Hudson, Matthew Lloyd and Scott Cummings bring you the all important selection ins and outs.

Rush, 8.30pm, TEN
Michael Sandrelli has been a busy man since being fired from TR. Thanks to the squad’s head honcho Kerry, he’s now undercover, and his job is to bring down a family of cocaine importers.

The Marngrook Footy Show, 7.30pm , ABC2
Spectacular Grand Final showpiece with great footy legends including Gary Ayres, Michael O’Loughlin, and Gavin Wanganeen as well as fabulous Aussie music from Doc Neeson.

William and Mary, 8.30pm, 7TWO
A romantic drama about a couple dealing with birth, death and all the complicated things in between.

This Thursday night on Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year on Channel Nine, the victorious Sam Stosur joins the boys in the studio to relive her triumphant US Open victory over Serena Williams.

Also this week, Hamish and Andy’s unwavering attempt to take up Hillary Clinton’s barbecue invitation continues. The boys track down Australia’s US Ambassador, Kim Beazley, in Washington and quiz him on how they can alert Hillary to the fact that they are living in New York, and busting to take up her invite. With only a few more weeks left of their Gap Year time is running out!

In the meantime Hamish and Andy take a trip down to the Mexican border to pay a visit to Jay J. Armes, an international private investigator who runs his entire investigative business with two metal hooks instead of hands.

And in their biggest coup to date, Hamish and Andy get an invitation to visit the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, the home of NASA’s astronaut training and mission control for NASA space missions for more than 40 years.

Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year: Thursday, September 15, at 8.30pm on Nine

Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year’s Gap in ratings.

After a solid debut last week of over 1.4 million viewers, Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year dropped this week to 1,069,000 viewers – losing around 30% of the first show’s audience.

The lack of viewers for Gap Year allowed Ten’s The Renovators to gain its biggest audience of the series so far – 1,056,000 – only slightly short of Hamish & Andy. Last night’s episode though was only half an hour long, instead of the usual hour they all have been until now. In 16-39 and 18-45 demos, however, Hamish & Andy easily dominated its timeslot, well ahead of The Renovators. In 25-54’s the two shows were neck to neck, with just 1,000 separating the two – Hamish & Andy only just in front.

Over on Seven, Law and Order: LA only pulled 633,000 for its first episode at 8.30pm, and 454,000 for the second while Law & Order: SVU on Ten pulled 712,000 for its first episode at 9pm, then 495,000 for a repeat at 10pm – easily winning the battle of the Law & Order franchises for Thursday night.

So what will happen to Hamish & Andy next week? Will ratings decline further? Will they stabilise around a million or so, or will they recover and settle at perhaps 1.1 million?

Given that the competition was only half an hour of The Renovators, and two different Law & Order franchises, there may be some very nervous executives at Nine over Hamish & Andy. Sure the first show delivered the results, but the second is a huge drop, and typical trends of the way ratings go with new shows would suggest a further drop next week.

Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year airs on Nine Thursdays, 8.30pm.

Tonight, Nine premiered Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year.

After seeing their specials last year on Ten including the hilarious Caravan of Courage specials, there were expectations that the Gap Year series would be of similar calibre.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Gap Year opened in the style of a US Late Night show – complete with monologues, an in house band based on New York buskers and a set and props so low budget, you would expect to see on a low budget community TV production.

After several minutes of the show, laughs were hard to find. From the outset, it was clear that Gap Year would not even live up to close to what the 2010 Caravan of Courage specials delivered.

The first episode promised interviews with Taylor Swift and Neil Patrick Harris. The show had far too much talk from Hamish and Andy, and even resorted to an in house robot – R2 To Do – not funny? Craig Fergusson has a robot of sorts on his show (which airs nightly on ELEVEN).

In both interviews, Hamish and Andy dominated trying to make them funny rather than interviewing the guests. Taylor Swift honestly looked like she wanted to be somewhere else – and who could blame her.

As for Neil Patrick Harris, he was only on for a few minutes in the dying stages of the show. For someone who is on a major TV show and has hosted most award genres, it is embarrassing to see a talent treated this way.

As someone who has enjoyed Hamish and Andy on radio as well as their TV specials until now, Gap Year was nothing short of disappointing. Such a let down for guys who have so much to offer.

Frankly speaking Nine have another Ben Elton situation in their hands – and we all know what happened to that show – another which had so much promise yet delivered so little – and was off air well before planned.

Here, we were looking forward to Hamish and Andy’s latest TV offering but were left disappointed.

What happens with the show will depend on how ratings go – but if the first episode is anything to go by, they have alot to do to make the show a success.

Let’s see if Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year can be on air longer than Ben Elton’s Live on Planet Earth was earlier this year.

Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year will commence on the Nine Network on Thursday, July 28, at 8.30pm.

Announcing the timeslot on their Austereo radio show live from the United States today, Hamish and Andy said:

“We looked through all the emails and it appeared that a girl called Narelle had netball on Monday nights, Dennis generally Skyped his mother in London on Wednesday evenings, and a bloke called Johnno was pretty keen to hit the clubs Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

“With all that in mind, it just makes sense for the show to be on Thursday nights at 8.30pm. Channel Nine agreed that it would be a shame if Johnno missed it.”

Nine Network Director of Television, Michael Healy, said: “We are excited to see what the team will uncover as they make their way across the US and share their unique experiences.”