8pm, BBC1

New lottery vehicle for the ever popular Nick Knowles which Nasty Nigel Lythgoe has already bought the rights to for a US version. A couple answer questions and pick envelopes and try and win £100,000.

In my head, they keep picking pairs of envelopes answering a question and discarding the higher or lower amount depending if they get it right or wrong 24 times. I’m not convinced that’s going to be brilliant, but then I’ve probably got the format wrong. Anyway, we shall see.

I’m out this evening but please feel free to comment in my absence, I will watch and give my opinions after I’ve had a chance to watch it.

Edit: Right then.

• A couple come out, they’re guaranteed to win something but the question is what will it be?
• Nick Knowles produces 24 envelopes from *very swish* envelope dispensing table, with holders that rise up and down and everything. The contestants pick four.
• The distribution of cash in the envelopes is random, but the computer knows what is where and when it asks the four-choiced questions, applies the answers accordingly, the most correct answer being worth the most cash, the least correct answer being worth the lowest.
• Questions are of the highest/fastest/oldest/most types as favoured by The Million Pound Drop. The contestants select an answer by eliminating the other three. Knowles reveals the amounts in the eliminated envelopes and also reveals what the correct answer is. If they’ve picked the correct answer then it’s relatively easy for the couple to infer what’s in the envelope they have left. If they’re wrong it’s much more difficult as they aren’t shown where the answer they picked  lies on the money scale. The chosen envelope is kept value unseen on the table in front of them.
• Repeat five more times until they have six envelopes in front of them.
• In the final round the six envelopes are whittled down to one in a method that’s quite difficult to get your head around. A question is asked with six answers (again in the same numerical style). Now the cash amounts are reversed, so the biggest amount is in the answer furthest away from the correct answer, and the lowest amount is the correct answer. The couple pick one answer of the six and the computer reveals which envelope that answer relates to. The couple hand it to Nick, Nick reveals the amount and it’s thrown in the bin. Repeat with one fewer answer each time.
• I was doing fine with this right up until the last question last night asking which had more people in it out of Spelbound and Diversity. Well, I had no clue what was going on and seemingly neither did Knowles or the girls who didn’t seem to know whether the answer they were picking was the one they wanted or the one they wanted to eliminate. It all seemed a bit messy.
• I think there’s quite a good quiz game here actually apart from right at the end. But the mystery regarding the Secret Fortune felt like a bit of a damp squib. If a couple go through the main game with no correct answers they’re certainly not going to have a certain envelope they will be rooting for during the end game. I think the disribution is a bit off, there should be more lower numbers to make the higher numbers look more exciting and add to the idea of jeopardy, there’s too many amounts grouped around the lovely but unexciting sorts of money which make for a lovely but unexciting show I think. But better than I had it in my head.

7:20pm, ITV1

They’re back and they’re live and they’re hoping to push all of your buttons. Two families try and hold on to £100,000 in daft games of skill, knowledge and nerve whilst Ant and Dec try not to laugh too hard at their failures. This second series apparently has home viewer element, Ant vs Dec, a celebrity challenge (place your bets as to which jungle celebrity it will be) and more, presumably. So it’s basically now Saturday Night Takeaway mk three then, but SNT was fun and I thought the first series of this had some quite good games in it.

I’m out this evening and will watch when I get back. You, however, are free to comment as you see fit.

Edit: Right, back now.

• When it comes to live, Ant and Dec are the best in the business but with lots going on, the direction was a bit sloppy in places I thought, not helped by the pair seemingly not knowing where they should be all the time.
• As anyone who has watched Schlag den Raab will tell you, asking people to guess things from culture given clues can be a lengthy experience unless you make things very obvious and so whilst the Catchphrase inspired Top of the Props was quite a fun idea it was probably always going to go to time. And whose idea was it to have a round which would leave people on £82,000? Base five people, base five!
• I have no problems with Spot the Bald or the Dancing on Ice challenge, although along with The Accumulator I miss the time trial aspect – there’s not really all that much pushing the button to stop countdowns in Push the Button these days.
• The People vs DAVE was a bit of a damp squib. It lacked energy despite the big prizes being given away, and was it me or did the yellow look like light green? This didn’t seem to happen later on.
• The Accumulator does away with the pesky cash countdown idea and allows the families to gamble the money they have left on three different questions – what the designated Happy Hundred section of the audience think about something, whether a celebrity can do something (footballer Alan Shearer in this case which was nicely unexpected), and a mini-Ant vs Dec challenge, with up to £5,000, up to £10k and as much as you like being the betting limits. Very Final Jeopardy. On the one hand this works decently well and evidently to time, on the other I miss the fraught final games of the previous series.
• With cleverer betting it could have finished with a tie last night. What would have happened then?
• Members of the Happy Hundred tried to guess before the show what the winning total would be, closest wins £5,000. Meh.
• DAVE has had a facelift, and now just one member of the family has to remember the sequences making it much harder – 10% of the prize fund for three notes, 25% for five, 50% for seven and all of it for nine. Unusually but in a good way I think for this sort of show this is an old school bonus game, the penalty for getting it wrong isn’t to lose everything it’s just that your run stops right there and then.
• Evidently they need to toughen up DAVE’s buttons, what the guy did seemed completely reasonable so goodness knows how it read it as something else.
• The winners get to stay on and the four families ready to take part in next week’s episode are shown on webcam, and one of them is apparently randomly selected to take part in the next episode (there was a bit of confusion here as two feeds lit up when Dec pushed the button and then one darkened. Good stuff.) I wonder if there is any mileage in giving these waiting families some sort of role in the main show.
• The pacing was fine. they fit quite a lot into that 75 minutes.
• As it is they’ve got good game ideas but there’s still something missing from the overall package. Regrettably I can’t put my finger on what exactly that is.