I watched the Frogger TV show (so you don’t need to)

The Frogger TV show… sure is a thing that exists. It’s possible to watch it legally in Australia, but should you do so? (Spoiler: No)

Well, that was the shortest article I’ve ever written for this site, wasn’t it?

What?

You’re still here?

Oh, very well, I guess I do owe you a little more explanation than that.

As part of research for an article I’ve been writing, I had to check out the content available across a number of Australia’s free-to-air streaming services, including 7plus, the streaming service of Channel 7.

As you’d expect, it’s awash with Australian Idol, A Country Practice, The Chase Australia and so on. All fine and good if you’re keen on 7’s particular programming style — I’ll be honest here and say I don’t personally watch much free-to-air TV at all these days.

And that’s when I saw it.

So I kind of dimly knew that Frogger was being made into a TV show — maybe I blanked it out of my brain entirely, though it was only made in 2021 (and, apparently, filmed in Australia!). Which means, yes, it’s not a new thing. Still, I wasn’t expecting to see it, so it was new to me — and maybe also to you.

Of course, given my interest in retro gaming, I had to give it a look.

Frogger is one of the all-time early 1980s classics — though it’s not, as the show’s breathless intro would have you believe, the greatest video game of the era.

How bad could Frogger The TV show be?

Spoiler: Yes, that bad.

Frogger The TV Show: The Good Stuff

• • OK, I will admit the little 8-bit styled “maps” they have of each challenge are kind of cute. Some of them even look like they might make vaguely interesting Frogger remix levels to play, arcade style. But that’s not what Frogger The TV show is…

• They have the prize money in a golden fanny pack. Dear America: In other countries, that word has… different meanings. (Yes, this is a dumb joke, but I’m trying to get some kind of entertainment out of this thing, and that’s actually quite hard.)

Frogger The TV Show: The Not-So Good Stuff

• • So, in essence, you take Frogger — a fairly simple game about a Frog crossing a road to reach its swampy home, ideally picking up a luscious lady frog for some sweet spawning action… and you turn it into a low-rent version of Wipeout, by way of The Floor Is Lava. And that’s about it.

• • They don’t follow the rules of Frogger! There’s a gimmick where you have “lives”, but you only lose one if you fall in the water. Want to clamber all over the snout of a crocodile? Go for it, there’s no penalty there at all. If you’re going to make a show about Frogger, MAKE A SHOW ABOUT FROGGER.

• • The hosts think that they’re hilarious; a random Wayans and… some other guy. I’m sorry, I’m sure he has a name, but it’s just so dull and formulaic that I couldn’t even be bothered to look up who he is. They’re bland, but they’re trying that gimmick where they think that even the very basic “jokes” they’re telling are so hilarious simply because they laugh at them. Also rather obvious; they’re nowhere near the competitors, at least not on the episode I watched. Smart money says they recorded the lot in a green screen studio across one long day.

• They clearly spent some money on this, though! It’s weird, because they have different challenge arenas for each group of competitors, which means it’s instantly unfair as a differing challenge for each group, but also wholly unrepresentative of the game. Or indeed any version of the game; I can’t recall the level where the frog had to get the cracker in order to ride on the parrot, or the level with the gigantic farting frog boss. And no, I’m not making any of that up.

Ultimately, Frogger isn’t awful in the sense that it’s actively offensive; it’s just an offensive waste of time and money that’s already been done in a TV sense time and time again — and usually a lot better than this.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain, because you can watch it for the grand old price of nothing — except for having to sit through a few ads and Channel 7 promos — but just in case it wasn’t clear, I don’t feel that it’s really worth bothering.

Frogger the TV Show wasn’t enjoyable, but if you’ve enjoyed this, please consider supporting AlexReviewsTech with a tip using the button below!

Images: Peacock (I guess; the screenshots are from YouTube because the 7Plus app blocks that kind of thing, and I’m so bored with Frogger The TV show that I can’t even be bothered to circumvent that.)