- ITV have announced Millionaire Hot Seat (alongside 19 new episodes of Millionaire), the fast paced ‘highly tactical’ version of the format with the stupid non-money tree money tree. It began in Italy and then sold to a handful of places, most notably Australia where it ran as a daily show for 2,500+ episodes before The Chase killed it. It didn’t last that long anywhere else. Whether or not you like it seems to depend on whether you can see past the obvious contrivances, it’s probably going in one of the 7:30pm slots on ITV next year. It is better than other Millionaire spin-offs Fastest Finger First and 50:50, to be fair.
- Neil Patrick Harris’ What’s In The Box? recorded for Netflix last weekend and reports we’ve read make it sound legen…wait for it…darily poor! As we undertand it it’s an arc-ed gameshow, couples answer questions to pick spaces off a board, some of which describe a prize in a box and if you uncover enough of them you get what’s in the box, but some spaces are bad and can mean losing prizes to others or even going home. Quote: “Not a total disaster, but very little to commend it other than the grandiose set and prizes. If the prizes hadn’t been sponsored I think there’s a chance they might can it rather than broadcast it to save the prize budget and write the whole lot off as a loss.”
- In happier Netflix news, they’ve announced US and European versions of Bother’s Bar favourite Physical 100, one of the shining lights of the South Korean Authority Voice Sets Tasks genre although they promised Physical 100: Asia 18 months ago and we’ve not heard anything about it since (Q4 this year apparently).
- And now Japan’s getting in on the act with Final Draft which appears to be… basically Physical 100 but with retired sportspeople who may or may not have retired on their own terms, battling it out for 30m Yen. That’s coming August 12th, so not long to wait.
Edit: Destination X going out Wednesdays and Thursdays from 30th July (there was an interview with Rob Brydon in The Telegraph last week that gave this date away, but now it’s confi… sorry, CONFIRMED), a similar schedule to this year’s other big will it/won’t it show “The” Genius Game. But hold! Wasn’t The Fortune Hotel set for Wednesday/Thursday nights as well? A clash of the reality format titans in store! It’s lucky nobody watches linear TV any more.