Scripted poker on sports channel
Zap2it – TV news – ESPN’s ‘Tilt’ Finishes Casting
“Tilt” focuses on the drama both on the table and behind the scenes of the fictional World Poker Championship in Las Vegas. As was previously announced, Michael Madsen (“Reservoir Dogs”) plays Don Everest, nicknamed “The Matador,” the top player on the circuit. Todd Williams will play a young poker player gunning to take down the champ, while Kristin Lehman will play a woman named Miami who’s part of the plan to beat “The Matador.”
For some reason, I thought this was going to be a reality show following some poker players around tournaments. Whoops.
Good casting, but scripted poker always falls flat to me. ROUNDERS isn’t a bad movie, but that element of luck and risk that’s such an exciting part of gambling can’t be reproduced by a scriptwriter. Without the element of danger and surprise that comes with gambling, much of the excitement is drained dry. Scripted poker feels like cheating.
But I’ll give ‘em a chance.
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5. December 2004 at 14:16
SO ESPN is going the way of MTV and the Weather Channel then, by replacing the programmes it should be showing with tenuously-linked programming? Still, there already are a multitude of other ESPN channels, so they can just shift the, you know, sport to one of those… :)