7 Days (New Zealand game show)


7 Days is a New Zealand comedy gameshow similar in some ways to the British program Mock the Week, hosted by Jeremy Corbett and created by thedownlowconcept. Paul Ego and Dai Henwood usually appear on each episode, along with other comedians, who form teams and answer questions about stories from the last week.

Show format

At the start of each show, Jeremy Corbett announces a content warning, saying "the following show is for adults only and contains bad language that may offend some people". This is often followed by an opening joke based on an event in the past seven days. On some occasions, the content warning became the joke – including being said in a parody of Downfall, being missed out completely, and being texted while driving. While the show is normally screened at 9:30pm and originally 10pm, the episode on 21 October 2011 was screened at the earlier time of 7:30pm and as a result was a PGR rated show. The opening segment mentioned the show was PGR and then replaced a few swear words with cleaner equivalents such as fudge. The show was moved to the earlier time to coincide with the screening of the Rugby World Cup 2011 Bronze Final.
After the title card, Corbett introduces the leaders of each team, normally Paul Ego for Team 1 and Dai Henwood for Team 2, although one episode featured an all-Australian team replacing Dai Henwood's team. After the leader of each team is introduced, the leader introduces the rest of their team. Regular team members include Ben Hurley, Josh Thomson, Steve Wrigley, Jeremy Elwood, Urzila Carlson, Jesse Griffin, Madeleine Sami, Michele A'Court and Justine Smith. Special guest comedians appear on some episodes.
There are usually 5-7 games in each show, with "What's the Story" always being the first, and "Caption That" usually being last. After the teams guess the story, Corbett confirms the actual story before adding a joke of his own. In early episodes, Corbett also intervened if the joke made was in bad taste, or he became the butt of the joke, yelling "get out" and making the contestant pretend to leave.
Teams are allocated "points" at the end of the round based on numbers in the news. In earlier episodes, Corbett randomly allocated point to the teams based on their performance. The team winning the most rounds wins the episode, but this is not always the case.
An MVP was awarded in earlier episodes which was later removed. One of the panellists thanks New Zealand on Air to close the show.

Games

Games played include:
;What's the Story?
;Caption That
;My Kid Could Draw That
;Answers
;History
;Community News
;Slice of Seven
;Yes Minister
;Quote Me
;My Professional Opinion
;Show and Tell
;In my opinion/To be honest/On the bright side/All I want for Christmas
;Guest who?
;Yeah Nah
;AV Department
;Like Sex

Recurring panelists

Although Dai Henwood and Paul Ego are permanent members of each team respectively a number of recurring comedians make up the remaining positions on the panels each night. This group have all been in more than two episodes and includes Ben Hurley, Josh Thomson, Steve Wrigley, Jeremy Elwood, Urzila Carlson, Jesse Grffin, Madeleine Sami, Michele A'Court, Cal Wilson, Claire Hooper, Heath Franklin, James Acaster, Joseph Moore, Jesse Mulligan, Peter Helliar and Jay-Jay Feeney.

Episodes

Specials

Occasionally a special edition of 7 Days screens, breaking out of the shows traditional format. Examples of such specials are:
In addition, there are several "road" episodes where the show has been taken outside the Auckland studio to other centres on New Zealand, including Christchurch and Queenstown. Nearly all of these episodes feature the game 'Yes Minister' with the local mayor or another local figure as the "minister".