Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway series review so far Series 17 Episode 1

Here’s my review of the 17^th Series of Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway so far

This series of Saturday Night Takeaway would be very different of course it would due to Covid, but that doesn’t mean Ant and Dec can’t still make people happy on a Saturday night, and it would be action-packed.  Here’s what’s happened in the 1^st episode of Series 17:

Saturday 20^th February 2021 – Episode 1

It started with a montage of Ant and Dec being stuck at home like everyone has been, but eventually their clocked turned to Sat 20^th Feb, and Dec saw a newspaper saying “Saturday Night Takeaway was back, then showed Ant and the titles rolled.

The first Guest announce of the series was Olly Alexander from It’s A Sin and he introduced Ant and Dec, and said please welcome Gary Barlow and Beverley Knight so they started the show with a song.

Then they said one part of the series that would be different for 2021 series is the virtual audience. And the fact they could see into the living rooms of 300 people each week.  They then said that this year for the first time ever, there would be a Takeaway rainbow that would start in the studio, and end somewhere in Britain, and if people were in a 2 mile radius of the rainbow and spotted it , they had to enter their details on the website, and later in the show Fleur East would be knocking on someone’s door to give them a Takeaway getaway which they can take any time over the next 2 years.

Their first surprise of the series was for a teacher who was retiring this year. She was outside thinking she was there for an ITV News broadcast, about them retiring, but she was actually there for a Takeaway surprise.

So first of all, they showed a VT of them sending a group message to ex-students of the teacher with certain tasks to do. The first one was on her last ever first day of school, one of her ex students came in with a delivery of flowers, but then the teacher asked where they had come from, and the card inside the flowers said “Thank you Miss”.

The next task was for another ex student to help her with the weekly shop, and the task was for them to tell her they were paying for their weekly shop, and he said “Thank You Miss”. 

Next, was for another 1 of them to take her on a limo drive.  Next was for a school surprise, which was to decorate the room she teached in, then when she came back after  halfterm,  she was surprised to see a different colour in her room, and on the whiteboard it said “Thank You Miss”. 

Then the last surprise was for the school Christmas party, and Santa came in and asked the teacher to sing a song.  It was later that Ant and Dec revealed that Santa was actually Jason Manford.

Then Ant and Dec asked a few of the current students if they could come up with some gift ideas for a special leaving present for their teacher,  and a couple of them came up with some sensible ones, the other ones were a little harder.  Ant and Dec said they has got them a static home to enjoy her retirement, and the gifts.

All this in part 1.

Then in Part 2,  they gave some takeaway getaways to some people in the virtual audience in a segment hey called “The Happiest Minute of the Week”. So Ant and Dec chose a few people they had heard had something either special, or kind.

Then their next segment was the return of Ant vs Dec. This game is where Stephen Mulhern sets the boys a series of challenges over the series, and the winner is the one with most points.

This first one was called “Going for Gold” and Stephen Mulhern came out dressed in gold, and the boys first game of this series was called Footy Putty.  It combined football with golf, and there were 3 holes and the one who got the ball in the hole in the least holes across the three holes was the winner. The winner of this game was Ant as he got it in 5 kicks, Dec got in in ten kicks.

Part 3 was funny as it had a segment called I’m a Celebrity…. Get out of Me Ear. This segment was all about Jamie and Harry Redknapp promising to say and do everything they say.  It was funny as it’s usually Ant and Dec who are supposed to laugh, but Jamie and Harry ended up laughing.

Part 4 involved: Fleur East revealing that the Takeaway rainbow was in Liverpool and specifically Aintree Racecourse, and she went to a person’s house to give them a Takeaway Getaway.

It was then time for Win the Ads. This would usually be done in the studio, but obviously the audience was virtual this year. So they had little Ant and Dec’s and they had to choose one person from the audience, and they chose a woman called

The aim of this game was that the person from home had 75 seconds due to not being in the studio to answer as many questions from the news this week, to win the contents of the ad breaks from The Bay.  For every question, they got right, they had to choose a number between 1 and 16.

They managed to answer 7 questions right, so they got 7 prizes. Now usually I he audience are in the studio, they’d be able to show people at home what they had already got, but because the person was watching at home,  everyone was in the same boat as no-one knew what the prizes were.  Ant and Dec then said the audience member at home, they had a decision to make whether to stick with prizes, or to gamble to try and win all 16.  She decided to gamble, so then for the first time we all got to see what she got. 

She’d already won:  Britbox subscription and TV, Sausage Party, kitchen appliances, Sofa set, a year’s supply of milk, mouthwash and toilet cleaner, so no holiday or car more importantly. Ant and Dec then asked her the question, and she got the answer right, so she got all 16 prizes.

The final part of the first show of the series was: The End of the Show Show. This is usually a singer or band who sing a song and Ant and Dec usually get involved as well.

The singer this week was Gary Barlow and his incredible Orchestra.  Except Ant had booked an edible orchestra which meant the orchestra was made up of fruit and veg. 

Here’s a couple of clips from the show:

In summary, I’d say that the first show of the series was still as good as usual, even though it was different.  I still think it’s a bit of escapism on a Saturday night for 90 minutes every Saturday night until April.  Read my follow-up blog for my review of Episode 2