User Reviews

Saturday Mornings haven't been the same since SM:TV finished. Ant,Dec and Cat were the highlight of my week and it wasn't the same after they left. I actually cried when it ended, sad I know, but it was that good. Challenge Ant was great(that Geordie gas bag!), Eat My Goal was great, Wonky Donkey was great and Chums was the icing on the cake. The best Chums was the one where Ant supposedly had the disease where his eyes popped out of his head and all the celebrities made a song. Now all Saturday mornings have to offer is crap, crap and more crap. SM:TV Live needs to be brought back and soon. Someone needs to make a petition to have this show reinstated. So raise your glasses to SM:TV Live.

Saturday morning television was pretty much ruled in the 90's by Live and Kicking over on the BBC until Ant, Dec and Cat launched this breath of fresh air onto Saturday mornings. No longer, were the kids young enough to still be watching Saturday morning TV but too old for the endless boring cartoons L&K showed, bored. With the great games, sketches and general FUN such as Challenge Ant and Chums SM:TV revitalised the mornings.

For three years it was great, then disaster. Ant and Dec leave and Cat is left alone with all those ridiculous people who were fired from previous TV parts. The great show was ruined.

Now lets see a few years after the 'glory' times of SMTV what ITV and BBC can offer now? ITV show the plain boring 'Ministry of Mayhem' and the BBC, well lets just say the title of their answer says it all 'Dick and Dom in da bungalow', the names, the fact they include 'da' into the title already point to it being terrible. And after closer inspection? Well I saw 5 minutes before losing the will to live.

Bring back Ant and Dec's SM:TV Live!

"No-one told you comedy could ever be so lame, Every week so different and yet always just the same. We'll be Chums forever, We'll be jolly good Chums". (intro song for chums)

This show has really marked the childhood of many British children of its time. Ant and Dec have been around for a long time so i guess people really felt comfortable with them. Although I remember Live and Kicking with Emma Forbes and Andi Peters, SMTV really made me want to get out of bed early on a Saturday morning. Its legendary pokemon fights are unforgettable!

Everything they did was funny and original!

Ah, the good old days. Wonkey Donkey, Challenge Ant, Chums! Ant, Dec and Cat were the best. Ant and Dec leave, who do you get? Some bloke from Hollyoaks who got fired, frigging H and Claire from Steps and presenters you would forget about anyway. Brian Dowling was all right then he left. And losing Chums, their best sketches was a big mistake.

So thank you, Ant and Dec, SM:TV will be a great children's programme. From when it started till you left.

This fantastic show creates such a refreshing and welcome change to Saturday morning children's television. Although it's popularity has recently started to wane, when it was first launched it was immensely popular for nearly three years.

When it was first shown, it was fronted by comedy duo Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly. These two talented, young men are now much in demand following their success on this show. They are naturally witty and extremely likable, and yet still hold a slightly mischievous quality within their personalities, allowing them to identify with and appeal to children. Cat Deely who completed the trio, added a spark as the girl who was sometimes bullied by the boys, and other times she was there to outsmart them.

'SM:tv Live' took a different approach to entertaining children. The main reason behind it was that Ant and Dec used to dislike kid's TV presenters for being too patronising. They felt children did not like being talked down to. Although it may please the younger children to hear reassuring voices, the slightly older children would become bored of it. Such sections of the show demonstrated this, for example 'Challenge Ant' was battle between Ant and a child to see whether he could answer the child's questions correctly, or not. If Ant won, the child went home with nothing as well as a gloating victory dance from McPartlin himself, as was the slightly cruel, yet humorous twist.

However, it was not the first time Ant and Dec had presented a children's show. Similar ideas were used before on 'The Ant and Dec Show', yet came into a great deal of controversy. A section known as 'Beat The Barber' involved children either answering the questions right and getting rewarded, but if they lost, they also lost their hair. Complaints and pressure from the BBC meant that another series of 'The Ant and Dec Show' was never made, and also marked their parting with the BBC.

'SM:tv Live', three years after 'The Ant and Dec Show', is far more accepted by everybody, which, perhaps, represents a sign of the times in the post-politically correct British media.

Loved by children and adults alike, 'SM:tv Live' completely demolished the BBC's rivals of 'Live and Kicking' and, later, 'The Saturday Show'. While ITV on a Saturday morning was regularly pulling in 3 million viewers, the BBC struggled to get 1 million. This is an incredible achievement considering that 'Swap Shop', 'The Saturday Super Store', 'Going Live' and the early days of 'Live and Kicking' were far more popular than anything shown on ITV.

Since the departure of Ant, Dec and Cat, 'SM:tv Live' has lost some of its magic. Although Tess Daly, Brian Dowling et al do a reasonable job, there are some things that only the original three could pull off. For example, the days of Ant and Dec comically shouting at children for giving ludicrous answers on 'Wonkey Donkey' are no longer there. The children particularly enjoyed this section, as the presenters became more like cheeky older brothers, making them infinitely more accessible.

Nevertheless, this show represents a stimulating transformation from the subservient, children's television, which was long overdue for a face-lift.