It’s the end game from Estate of Panic writ large!

Here’s something I wasn’t expecting to enjoy but turns out I do – a show currently airing in the States (having done various countries around the middle east) called Ton of Cash, being shown on VH1 in the US. It’s on the official site, although if you’re in the UK you’re going to have to use the dark arts to watch it.

In it, 14 debt-fuelled indivduals (hey! It’s Endemol so it was always likely to be deeply cynical) compete to win up to $1m in cold hard cash. But to do it they’re going to have to transport it over 300 miles from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Happily they have a big old tour bus with a trailer, but obviously just using that wouldn’t be very interesting.

So at various points in the trip they will have to transport it physically from point A to point B. The cash is bundled into $6,000 bricks. To begin each challenge the group selects from within itself a “financial adviser” – they will be leader and co-ordinate the effort. The object is move all the money from one point to the other within a time limit (a target time is apparently determined by the production team doing a trial run). The financial adviser has sole control as to when the game is stopped – at the “cashpoint” is a big clock and a button and when they hit the button the game is over, whether all the money has made it to the end or not. If they push the button before the target time runs out then they are safe from elimination, but any money not on the cashpoint is gone. If they go past the target then they automatically put themselves up for elimination and the team are penalised cash for every minute the game continues ($1k a minute for the first thirty minutes, $5k for the next 30, $50k thereafter). So the choice is stark: be brilliant, sacrifice a lot of cash for your own safety, or sacrfice a bit of cash and hope people will save you from elimination for being a swell guy.

Naturally of course there is usually a big obstacle standing between point A and point B and some decisions to be made. One episode gives the team a choice to take a half mile route across the lake or a 3.5 mile route on a bike – tools and objects are lying around to help but it’s up to the players to work out what is useful and how correctly to use it. One of the first few episodes even had broken cars they could use if the team had the werewithal to fix them.

So it’s basically Lemmings: The Reality Show, and certainly the main proof of concept works rather better than I thought. It’s quite Mole-esque, and whilst I was expecting carrying money every week to get a bit dull there so far (four episodes in) has been enough variation on the theme to keep it compelling.

The rest of the show doesn’t quite live up to the week’s main challenge, it’s US youth reality by numbers mainly, shouting, getting drunk, kissing. The “financial adviser” whether they are up for elimination or not must decide who else goes up to bring the total to three. Everyone votes for their favourite/most useful by depositing a $10k bundle into named cash boxes. The person with the most bundles is declared the “safe investment” and goes back to the team, the other two must take part in a “prove your worth” challenge, which are the sort of thing you’d see on a cheap version of Survivor (although the first one did have someone walking off into the sunset with briefcases attached to their arms and ankles which was actually quite amusing).

There’s something quite American Gothic and parable-ic about it all – the money is referred to as being a burden (and obviously the fewer people there are the bigger the burden everyone carries) and I quite like the rather country/bluesy number for the theme tune (Sing along: “Workin’ real hard just to get yourself paid, gotta move it or you lose it or they take it away, so you drag it, you haul it, you heave it, you lift it in a dash, man you’re gonna make a few friends but you take what you can that’s the plan, it’s a ton of cash.” I think). The rather likable host is American Football player Dhani Jones and unusually for this type of show there’s quite a lot of talking to the viewer on camera whilst the challenge is going on. He has the TJ Lavin thing of coming across more as older brother than patriach.

Fairly good selection of contestants too, but I won’t spoil.

Anyway, someone has stuck the some up on Youtube. Good luck in finding the rest:

Given that it managed to rate more than ITV’s entire output last night, I wonder if they’ve given any thought to a Sage-less series of The Krypton Factor?

You could totally strip a celebrity version over Christmas (four heats and a final) as a prelude/companion to a proper civilian series, a bit like Masterchef. And before anyone gets sniffy, the original had loads of celebrity specials (they just don’t show them on Challenge).

Although you’d have to bring back the intelligence test, obviously.

Noel Edmonds announced on This Morning that Deal or No Deal will be going live for a fortnight in due course. They’ve probably nicked this from The Million Pound Drop, etc.

I don’t know how it’s going to work – two weeks of randoms or will they continue from where they left off their last recording break?

Edit: Sounds like randoms.