Series / Spanish Archer

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It's quite surrealist and "Spanish"? What ho!


It's brash, ridiculous and the acts kept getting fewer


On cable, no surprise it got next to no viewers.

Brash, utterly ridiculous spoof of early Reality TV "talent" shows such as Opportunity Knocks and The Gong Show. Aired on L!VE TV in around 1994 (whoever remembers that?), this show was perhaps one of the cheapest shows around, yet great fun for tipsy cable viewers.

Bad Spanish speakers may say that an archer in Spanish^note arquero is "el bow", and a British idiom for firing someone is to 'give them the elbow'. Combine that to 'give them the Spanish archer", and you've got yourself a TV show... got all that?

In short, a Spanish archer called "El Bow" hosts this low-budget 30-minute spectacle. An act comes on, then one minute in El Bow gives the audience a chance to show their approval or disapproval. If the audience like the act, they complete the full three minutes given to them and are given a Seville orange, of course. If the audience hate it, El Bow fires an arrow at a cardboard cutout of a bull and the performer is given the Spanish Archer by a literal swinging elbow. At the end, the audience (or sometimes a panel of 'judges') vote for their favourite out of the ones they liked, who wins a small toy donkey.

Anyone could take part, as long as their act was pre-watershed. Needless to say the critics hated this, but it got a small but loyal cult following. Probably ripe for a reboot too.

This show contains the following tropes:

• The Alcoholic: Implied about El Bow by Pedro in one of his songs.

  Pedro: Sonny is an impressionist from the North East, / She loves skiing, she loves being on the piste. / El Bow does and so does me, / There's nothing we like better than a bit of après ski...

• Audience Participation: In episodes where the judges - called the Tres Sombreros on the show - weren't present, the audience voted themselves.
• Bumbling Sidekick: Pedro Paella, the Espexicañol guitarist who banters with El Bow.
• Catchphrase: El Bow's "A little question now to get you into the mood of Spain", followed by the quiz question.
• Fauxreigner: Played for laughs. El Bow has a surprisingly Welsh accent, and exaggerates it.
  • Exaggerated when El Bow is ill and replaced by Welshwoman Ruth Madoc.
• El Spanish "-o": For linguists, you'll need a bottle of el vino or three to appreciate this masterpiece of a Translation Train Wreck.
• Fake Guest Star: Sunny Sky, an impressionist from the North East who lived in London and did a gag on this show every week, was only ever a recurring contestant.
• Fun with Subtitles: Every act would have a comedy caption scroll across the screen.

  Sunny is actually wearing one of the latest wigs from the Pedro Paella collection... but she hasn't been to the Pedro school of comedy - she's actually quite funny!!

• Gender Bender: Downplayed. Ruth Madoc occasionally substitutes for Rhodri Williams when he's ill and can't play the Archer.
• Gratuitous Spanish: ¡Hola! Me llamo El Bow, I am the Spanish Archer...
• Hopeless Auditionees: Most of the show's contestants were only too happy to join in the ridiculousness.
• Minimalist Cast: Justified, as this show probably got marginally more applicants than it did viewers, but many former acts often popped up as members of the Tres Sombreros.
• Moon Logic Puzzle: El Bow would ask each act a question to "get you into the mood of Spain". Many of these, such as the one in Voiceover Translation, can come across as these.

  Archer: The Procesión de Humo in the village of Arnedillo commemorates events of 1888 when... what? (A) A smallpox epidemic struck the village; (B) The first crossdresser was unveiled; or (C) men's wife friends were invented by a local tailor?^note The contestant went for C. Surprisingly, it's A.

• Point-and-Laugh Show: All it really was is people doing ridiculous acts for a tipsy late-night audience on a very niche channel.
• No Budget: Troper dares you to take a look at the set and tell me it cost more than about 60p - or 60 pesetas.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Pedro's songs were based on application forms / Why did this show make that the norm?
• Silly Song: Pedro Paella would sing a comedy song about what contestants had filled in on their application forms.

  Pedro: Gary describes himself as a new wave punk / When he said that, he must have been drunk. / I'm a punk rocker too, it's easy to see. / Come on, El Bow, ¡let's have some anarchy!

• Spexico: The archer might be "Spanish", but the judges and his assistant, Pedro Paella, wear sombreros.
• Toros y Flamenco: El Bow shoots an arrow at a bull and flamenco dancers come on to fill the time between acts.
• Voiceover Translation: In a little side game before each performance, El Bow would mime saying something in Spanish, and a Spanish-speaking female voiceover would dub it in Spanish for the viewers. The act would be asked to guess the translation of what he was saying - well, trying to say.

  Mime: Compartir con hermanos, lo mío mío o el tuyo entrambos.

  Archer: Is it, (A) "What's mine is mine and yours is my own"; (B) "Think of yourself before anyone else"; or (C) "Rule 1: The boss is always right; Rule 2: If the boss is wrong, Rule 1 applies"?

  Contestant: B?

  Archer: ¡Noooo!^note It's A. It's wrong as well - it's supposed to be "yours between us".