Enjoy your flop!
ITV asks 500 Questions with major format deal https://t.co/PexcbwqDs4 via Broadcast Now
— Media News Today (@mn_today) November 27, 2015
4×60 episodes according to Broadcast. God knows how they’re going to spin that out.
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Will they get through more questions in 4 eps than we did in 5?
Eh, if they do get through five hundred questions in four ITV hours then it’s clear that they’ve at least slightly reformatted it to cut the crap; the core mechanic was basically sound and they’d have to be playing at quite a pace. Make this a big event over (e.g.) Easter weekend, perhaps make it the big ITV return of Chris Tarrant and it’s got a shot.
How I’d do it, in shorthand which won’t make sense unless you’ve seen the original: revise to rounds of 25 questions, each round contains eight pods of three questions on one subject as well as some funky final 25th question, you choose which pod to tackle next but can’t switch from pod to pod (so going 0/3 on a pod is always game over, but you have some flexibility to choose a favoured or less favoured pod if you finish one pod on 1-2 strikes or zero strikes), first two questions of a pod are always the regular format and third question is always one of the variety formats. You should be able to get through a pod in under a minute and the occasional use of the variety formats would keep the action from getting monotonous.
*At the very least* the opponent shouldn’t look like a fifth wheel. WHY AREN’T YOU DOING BETTER AT GETTING THEM OUT? ARE YOU AN IDIOT?
Four ITV hours (46-48mins) will roughly equal five US TV hours (41-42), so if they got through 370-ish questions in nine US hours it would have to be at least twice as fast in the UK.
Now I’m a betting man, if anyone thinks this is going to be the case come and have a chat.
For everyone’s convenience, the format on ABC (Disney) was:
* Playing: one Champion, answering the 500 Questions. One Challenger, whose goal is to defeat the Champion in this round of 50 questions.
* 50 questions in ten “pods” of five questions.
* Most questions are straight-up general knowledge. Player has ten seconds to give the right answer, wins $1000 if their first answer is right.
* The 25th Question is always general knowledge, and for a guaranteed $5000.
* Some are a list a la the Who Dares Wins tiebreak, first wrong answer loses.
* Some are triple-answer questions, for $3000.
* There may have been other special questions.
* The Champion is out if they get beaten on three successive questions.
* Should the Champ have two errors, the Challenger picks the final category.
* With the exception of Question 25, the Champion only banks money if they survive to the end of a round.
A quiz-me-quick along the lines of The People Versus 2.0? Not the way they played it.
With less faffing about, and a few early exits, I can see ITV using a bit more than 200 questions across the four shows. I can also see the presenting gig going to GMTV host Piers Morgan.
There was also the Top Ten Challenge – 15 seconds to give 5 answers from a list of 10, with the option to pass the question to the challenger.
So, I’ve just ‘sourced’ series 1 episode 4 of the original earlier. Maybe if the labelling on You Tube meant I found Series 1 Episode 1, rather than wading in at the 4th one, I may have had a slightly better idea of what was going on, but, half way through – I’d picked it up, so at least it’s moderately simple to follow..
I think this show has UK hit potential, but it’ll be dead on arrival if any of the two following are ignored by Wall To Wall/ITV Press office
1) It is NOT the new Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and should not be promoted as such
2) The wrong host.
It’s the second one that is bothering me. See, the obvious choice is just to import the US host, but the problem with Richard Quest is he has a grating gravelly booming voice, is holding a pen (for no reason) and is too much in the contestants face with his fingers when counting to three, is going to split the audience here.
This isn’t a show to blunt a new host with. Given you are looking at nudging 400 questions over the 4 shows.
Bradley Walsh is too entangled with The Chase. Phil Schofield can’t host every ITV shiny floor programme going. So that leaves Vernon Kay. Unless ITV would try and get Chris Tarrant back – and it’s Millionaire all over again.
Also, when I first saw the set, I laughed at the sheer hugeness of it all, but after a time it grew on me as I saw how it fitted in.
Hope that element makes it over the Atlantic next year. Need a massive studio for that though.
My studio inner geek says, it’ll have to be the George Lucas stage at Elstree, or the X Factor studio at Fountain in Wembley, to fit those LED screens in that style from the roof.
As long as Mulhern or Kay doesn’t present it, I’ll be happy…
Resident American here, and I absolutely hated the show. I thought it had some decent game mechanics, but the way they padded it out with the most inane, inconsequential discussion between questions absolutely infuriated me, especially for a show whose entire name and premise hinges on asking a lot of questions. This was most exemplified by the duel mechanics and the LUDICROUSLY stupid and pointless “strategy” talk that would ensue every time the contestants would face off. It was dumb the first time, and then every single time they’d have the exact same discussion. Picking whether you answer first or second is actually not particularly deep of a strategic decision, it turns out.
I was admittedly frustrated because when I first heard about it I was thinking, “Cool, a straight-to-business, high questions-per-minute quiz show on American tv!” and it emphatically was not. Maybe the UK producers can actually focus more on the core mechanic and make it watchable, I hope they do! But I’m still bitter.
… I didn’t realize I still had this pent up. I suppose after reading you all talk about shows it’s hard for me to see here across the ocean, I am jumping at the chance to give My Opinions.
It didn’t help that my housemates kept wanting to watch it given our limited tv options, and I couldn’t figure out a way to explain why I thought it was so terrible without coming off as some pedantic weirdo obsessed with game shows.
.. even though I am.
Personal opinion for a rehash? 10 blocks of 10 questions, one selected at a time, given 2 minutes to hit a target secretly set by the challenger from a selection – so the first block of 100 could have targets of 6,6,6,7,7,7,8,8,8,9. Otherwise, rules as are – first answer = money, otherwise = safety.
Too complex?
Interesting conundrum on December 19th- the last episode of SdR will be on at the same time as the special Das Spiel beginnt!(which I thought was fun to watch last year)
Well they’ll both be on catch up, but only one will be history in the making.
Mark Labbett’s joining The Chase Australia from 2016.