Show Discussion: The Switch

By | November 24, 2019
#hostholdingaquestioncard. Surely those arrows should be the other way round.

Weekdays, 3pm,
ITV

“It’s easy to get rich if you survive The Switch!” Thank goodness the words “rich” and “switch” rhyme, because “it’s easy to become moderately well off if you survive Whooping Cough” probably wouldn’t sell in quite the same way.

Comic and actor Sanjeev Bhaskar hosts four contestants trying to win a large amount of money. In each round, each contestant gets 45 seconds to build their bank by answering quickfire questions. However at the end of the round, everyone must face The Switch – three multiple choice questions each with one wrong answer. Pick a wrong ‘un and you get switched out of the game, unless someone else picks a different wrong answer to take your place by the end of the round. In the end, one person gets to play the Final Switch where they can win half of their bank, their bank, or DOUBLE their bank against the clock.

20 episodes to come. Might be fun. Might feel a bit dragged out at 60 minutes. It’s fun to see a new gameshow face though. Let us know what you think in the comments.

23 thoughts on “Show Discussion: The Switch

  1. John R

    Buy Rylan For Christmas starts Thursday at 8pm

    Based on the description it seems as if they’ve extended to an hour but only 3 pitches…hmm. I always liked them firing through them on the half as long daytime version and the underrated Brian Conley

    Maybe the prime time budget means the audience regular that would pay around 6 or 7 pounds can now spend the dizzying double figure heights of 12 to 13 pounds though!

    Reply
  2. JoshieF

    It’s a cute show! The way the Easy Money round is structured works well, with all the categories having a loose link.

    Whether or not the public will latch onto this, I don’t know. I just don’t see the public falling as deeply in love as they have with the current staple ITV shows.

    I’m definitely here for this format, though.

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    1. David B

      I had a bit of an issue with the link system, because the 4th player gets time to think of everything with the remaining answer in it. I guess it doesn’t affect the winning of the game, but still…

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      1. JoshieF

        That’s a valid point actually!

        On audition day, it was just all the answers starting in a letter, so it wasn’t an issue there. But with today’s questions, it definitely was. It makes the show better for viewing purposes, but is definitely unfair on whoever is furthest left.

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  3. David B

    Quite liked this – I’d watch this over Cash Trapped. Super swishy graphics package. Sanjeev seemed good, based on a sample of one. But the Easy Money round reeks of padding as it has hardly any influence on the game, and it’s a shame they couldn’t have used something like Jet Set’s first round instead to keep the ‘switch’ mechanic going.

    I do worry that the very very last Switch question could be a bit so-what if it’s too much of a 50-50 toss-up. There has to be some value in being the one to answer first.

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  4. Clive Of Legend

    Major gripe: It all looks so cheap! In this day and age, with all the technology available to us, buzzers indicated by the contestant’s tiny name turning a slightly different shade are simply unacceptable. And compared to ITV’s other daytime quizzes, a set consisting of one screen and a desk is just pathetic. I didn’t catch the name, but I’ll assume the music was a Marc Sylan special, based on the fact I’ve already forgotten everything about it.

    The format was basically fine, and I think with some halfway decent production values it could almost be exciting, but as it is it wasn’t a particularly involving 52 minutes. Get some moving podia in, have some neato lighting effects, I don’t know. I really expected more from Possessed at this point, their work in the past has always been fairly stylish so this feel like a massive leap backwards from them. Pity!

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    1. Tom H

      I have to agree it did look quite cheap in places – the resolution of the graphics on front of the desk was particularly poor and pixellated (which matters given you’re looking at them the whole time). There were a couple of other niggly things that mildly irritated me: the position of the clock graphic moving around during the final and the font on the wheel in Easy Money, which seemed to be Arial or something. I’ve already forgotten the music, which is credited to Glenn Hugill (coming up with the show clearly wasn’t enough) and Sitting Duck, who did the score for 5 Gold RIngs.

      The show certainly wasn’t terrible, but I didn’t love it either – the repetitious nature of the format meant that by the time we got to round 3, I was already a bit bored. A decent final, though.

      As for Sanjeev Bhaskar, he was fine and competent reading the questions – but surely the point of hiring a comedian is to have them deliver a few gags along the way? I didn’t hear a single joke – he seemed to be slightly nervous/playing it too straight, which was a missed opportunity. The producers also didn’t think through his sightline properly – so every time he delivered some more rules, he wasn’t looking at the camera or the contestants, which felt a bit student TV.

      Room for improvement.

      Reply
  5. Andrew Sullivan

    So, first episode broadcast, so I’ll give the rundown.

    4 contestants start the show and go through the first of three Easy Money rounds, which is pretty much another re-packaged Cashbuilder except for the Clue Wheel, which has spaces on it such as ‘Answers Begin With…’, ‘Answers End With…’, ‘Answers Contain…’ and so on (As an example, in the first Easy Money round, each contestant had questions relating to compass points. First one had all their answers contain ‘North’, second had ‘South’, third had ‘East’ and fourth had ‘West’) . Each contestant gets 45 seconds of quickfire questions for £100 a pop.

    The contestants are then shown 3 categories and are asked 3 toss-up questions on the buzzer. A correct answer allows you to either lock in a category that you like (or you think an opponent will struggle with), or switch one out that you don’t like for another one at random. After this is done, a question is asked on each category with 4 possible answers. More toss-up questions based on those categories are asked, a correct answer allowing you to pick one of the 4 answers, of which 3 are correct and 1 is wrong. After each contestant has an answer, the one with the wrong answer (signified by upward-pointing red chevrons, while correct answers have downward-pointing green chevrons) is switched out of the game and cannot answer in the next category question. The only way to get back into the game is if one of the other contestants picks the wrong answer, switching them out instead. After the 3 category questions are asked, the switched out contestant is eliminated from the game.

    Then there’s the second Easy Money round, this time for £200 a pop, 3 more toss-up questions to lock in or switch categories, and another 3 category questions with 3 possible answers, 2 correct and 1 wrong. Whoever is the switched out contestant is eliminated.

    Then there’s the third Easy Money round for £300 a pop, 3 more toss-up questions to lock in or switch categories, and another 3 category questions with 2 possible answers, 1 correct and 1 wrong with the switched out contestant eliminated.

    The remaining contestant faces The Final Switch to leave with some money. They are shown 3 more categories and have up to 3 toss-up questions to lock in or switch them. They then have 45 seconds to make up to 3 circuits, answering one question correctly in each category in order. Once round wins half their bank, twice round wins their bank and three times round wins double their bank.

    So that’s how the game works, basic quiz fare, I think you’ll agree. Although there is a LOT about this show that makes it look very cheap. The theme tune is god-awful, Sanjeev is a rather run-of-the-mill host, nothing really exceptional about him but he does a decent job and, for some reason, we need to see the contestants’ names twice. It’s on the front of the desk they all stand behind and they also have name badges on. I assume that’s so we know which contestant is who when in close-up.

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  6. Greg

    Well Sanjeev was a really good host. Is this his first gameshow?

    As for the show mmm can’t say I was disappointed or impressed it was just meh. Though it’s extremely hard to get 9 answers in 45 seconds in the final to double your winnings.

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    1. Daniel Williams

      Competing on one, no he was on the celebrity chase.

      Hosting, yes it is his first time hosting a gameshow. If this show doesn’t work out, can definitely see him getting more hosting gigs

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  7. Daniel Williams

    I liked it. It was entertaining, simple but there have been quite a few shows that are just over complicated, rather have simple.
    Sanjeev is a good host, good at reading the questions and is good at taking the mick out of the contestants but in a nice way.

    However, I thought that the discovering who has the correct answers in the switch rounds were too dragged out, those could have been shorter without affecting the format.

    Interestingly, the first episode is listed as episode 4 on itv hub so I guess it must have been the fourth episode recorded.

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  8. Brig Bother Post author

    Pretty much in agreement with most of the comments here – I think the game would actually be pretty good fun to have a go at. As a show however I’m not quite feeling it, the set was giving me a minor headache, although that might be because I’ve got a new TV and still need to muck about with the settings. The music (by “Glenn Hugill and Sitting Duck” – you grab those royalties, Glenn) was at best unmemorable and Bhaskar surprisingly dry – actually very good reading the questions, but didn’t seem comfortable at all with the daytime gameshow banter, dare I say… a bit dour?

    The biggest killer in the “will this/won’t be a hit” stakes is that there feels like too much procedure – it’s a gamey game, and gamey games are things we are fond of but you have to be really careful not to come across a bit Quizzlestick-y, and The Switch rounds do come across a little Quizzlestick-y.

    I appreciate the amount of questions and the effort to tie them all in with each other, though. Endgame feels like a big ask, but they were getting through 11-12 questions in the time so not impossible,m although how many people will bother trying to go for the double remains to be seen.

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  9. Kniwt

    The endgame was the best part, even if it’s likely to not see very many (any?) double-big-wins. The elimination rounds, however, were tedious at best and don’t seem to be worth the effort of using the Dark Arts to grab every day. If it just happened to be on, though, I probably wouldn’t turn it off — which isn’t exactly glowing praise.

    And a hearty second on the annoyingly low resolution of the front display. Really, folks … this is almost 2020; you can buy a better screen down at the corner market.

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  10. Brandon

    This has the same problem as Head Hunters. A good game, but wastes having a comedian as a host by not really giving him the time to be funny.

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  11. Kay

    Well, that happened.

    Really enjoyed filming it but god it was a slog of a format. Set looked decent in person but as a set? Oof.

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  12. Tom H

    Ratings:

    Mon – 1.24m
    Tues – 1.08m
    Weds – 968k

    Tenable last week was doing 1.3m.

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  13. Scousegirl

    Terribly unfair, having to rely on other contestants to get wrong answers!

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  14. Scousegirl

    A wrong answer today – a guinea was 21 shillings, not 20.. 20 made £1!

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    1. David B

      Originally, it was 20 shillings but – yes – it was later fixed at 21 shillings and that probably would’ve been the better answer to give, not that it mattered here.

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  15. Kester

    I caught this today and was…not very impressed. There’s little tension in it: it’s the same round three times without a real sense of escalation (even if the money amounts do go up a bit), and while the switching thing could have been tense – get one particular Q wrong and you’re out regardless of prior performance – it fails to disguise how little control the contestants really have over who ends up switched out, and so instead feels pretty arbitrary. This is especially noticeable in the head-to-head round where it seems like it’ll often be decided on the single initial buzzer question.

    Looks super-cheap too.

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  16. Scousegirl

    A misspelling again. Juliett – should be Juliet. I think this comes from people pronouncing it JuliETT instead of JULiet. Of course we don’t actually know what Shakespeare intended.

    Reply

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