Did anyone watch Daybreak this morning? Of course you didn’t. However (according to a friend of mine who DID watch it), apparently there was some rather intriguing news few have picked up on – Jonathan Ross (who has recently been associated with Endemol) is apparently working on a UK version of The Golden Cage for the BBC.

We’ve mentioned TGC a few times at the bar already as it’s a bit of a curio, but if you’re new: The Golden Cage is originally a Dutch show (in fact it’s the idea that begat Big Brother but didn’t get turned into its own show until John de Mol launched his own TV channel a few years ago) where a number of people live the life of luxury in a villa. When you’ve had enough you leave. Last person standing wins the villa and a significant cash prize – “how much freedom are you willing to give up for ultimate freedom?” The show was meant to last indefinitely, but poor ratings and a change of channel (after de Mol’s Tien network shut down) led to them modifying the format to find a winner and end the show. The show made the news for inter-contestant bullying, but despite the fact the show did fairly well amongst the Dutch youth it was never really captured the nation’s imagination in the way Big Brother did.

It will be interesting to see how they adapt it for the UK audience. I suspect they won’t ask for a €10,000 deposit to dissaude people walking before six months or was it two years? I forget), and will they make it indefinite, or will it just be Big Brother under a different title?

Even The History Channel is getting in on the act, with Histerical with Marcus Brigstocke which looks like its filming a pilot next week. It’s like Annually Retentive never happened.

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in when Famous and Fearless is happening, you can get tickets for shows beginning 3rd January. I’m a little bit surprised Claire Balding’s co-hosting this with Chris Evans.

I’m so annoyed there have been so few new shows to go and see recently, I’m booking to go and see Pointless being filmed at the end of January. So you can have an EXCLUSIVE GLIMPSE of how they’ve watered down the premise for series four. Only joking, Pointless is brillopants, obviously.

According to reports (i.e. someone posting on a forum) on Digital Spy, the next run of The Million Pound Drop – Live will be from  Wednesday 15th December to Saturday 18th at the interesting time of 8pm, a timeslot that will probably give it two hundred million thousand viewers until the Endemol Question Writing Cretins come up with a question like “what day is Christmas? Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday” and then everyone on the internet complains because actually most of those answers are right because it doesn’t ask for which year and then the show gets axed.

Then The Million Dollar (Money) Drop starts on Fox in the US the following week.

I totally forgot to mention Deal or No Deal‘s Fifth Birthday of the Third Or Fourth Week of Broadcast Week this week on the Board of Excitement, so to make up for it I absolutely promise to do the Deal or No Deal app review tomorrow.

In the meantime, I have mainly been playing Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood on the XBox 360, and one of its multiplayer modes is absolutely ripe to be turned into something for TV. Basically, eight people in a crowded town, you have to try and assassinate another specific player from which you’re given a photo, meanwhile someone else is trying to assassinate you. More points given for the more subtle you act in killing someone off, points off for killing a wrong person. Good fun. You could make that into a sort of competitive version of Run For Money.

Did anyone watch Mission Millenium (sic) today? I intend to watch a recording of it this evening.