You’ve already read them so I won’t bother linking to any of them but the reports are suggesting ITV are in the early days of developing Deal or No Deal, with Stephen Mulhern being lined-up to host (they wanted Ant and Dec but the Banker called and offered them Stephen on an Ant and Dec/Vernon board etc etc.)

Obviously we go back with DoND a long way, we were writing about foreign versions of it before our version even started all those years ago, and of course for many years many of us were F5-ing like crazy following the live commentaries other people were providing here whilst in the office on an evening, and pointed out quite a bad security flaw. It’s a shame I never got to visit The Dream Factory in person, but it was still thrilling seeing it at Alexandra Palace as part of its farewell closing tour. I’m a lapsed fan, but at its peak it really was absolutely extraordinary – probably the first studio show of its kind where you watched people having to live with the consequences of their actions in frequently inglorious detail.

So I think it’s quite important to temper expectations a bit. For a start, this is *probably* going in weekly primetime. How many weekly primetime versions of it around the world have succeeded in the last few years? Only one really, and it’s the granddaddy, Miljoenenjacht with its €5m top prize. ITV are not about to put up a £5m top prize, they struggle to give away a tenner on Limitless Win. I fully expect them to up the top prize to £1m – but here’s the horrible little secret – upping the prize money does not necessarily make the game more interesting, it just means you’re going to hit the mean “£100,000, that’ll do” point much quicker. And they will have to reach that point because these are big prizes and they will have a budget – traditionally big budget versions have much more generous bankers, because they don’t want to be giving away £500k+ a game. Whatsmore UK players are unlikely to have the same mindset towards risk as their US counterparts especially during The Cost Of Living Crisis (TM), and no gamble (whatever it is we’re saying instead of “gamble” now), no game.

They could do it like a daily version – but these haven’t done that well recently either – They bought it back in France as COVID programming – not on any more. They bought it back as a daily show in the Netherlands in 2021 – not on any more. They are once again about to bring back Affari Tuoi on Italian TV, very much the granddaddy of the format as we know it in the UK, but they seem to do roughly every six months after it gets axed so not sure what to read into that really.

I think Stephen will be an OK host – I certainly think audiences (especially younger ones) are happier with him these days, and he’s certainly good with people which will be vital. I just think ITV have to be really really really careful with how this is pitched to the audience, it is certainly not a guarantee that people will care that it’s back once it’s back. Personally I think it might be a few years too soon. We will see.

There’s a really interesting chat on the Discord right now (thanks to @setsunael) about how Les 12 Coups de Midi, France’s premiere lunchtime quiz, has irked the internet with the idea that the current champion is getting easier questions in elimination duels than his competitors, because long running-champions encourage long-time viewers. Here is an article on the matter, and here is a fun Twitter thread looking at it, draw your own conclusions.

But he bought up something else interesting I had no idea about – the Spanish show Boom! which you may remember for a team called Los Lobos winning over €6.5m after a two year winning streak, a combination of daily prizes and a €4.1m “bote” (jackpot) win which had been accumulating for more than two years previously, was axed last week by Antena 3 after a timeslot move.

Setsunael explains:

Los Lobos aren’t happy. There was also €4m currently in the bote. The show ran for eight years.

Christmas cash-in time!

Just 18 months after they stopped showing it.

I am, as ever, happy to try and offer thrilling consumer advice – has anyone seen any other exciting Christmas cash-in items?

To cash in on the new series beginning on Saturday night, Barnstorm have released the The Wheel app for iOS (and presumably Android very soon). Like a lot of modern gameshow apps, it’s quite aggressive in trying to persuade you to buy into the microtransactions, but where Barnstorm shines is that there’s usually a local multiplayer “play the show” option, and that is still here, and it’s a fairly accurate representation of the show (the shot selections are very good, but it doesn’t look like the experts ever get their question wrong out of selection so no chance of a double red, the experts are no help most of the time, and the ending if you don’t get the final question right is…quite off). The first half of the vid demonstrates that, the second half is a demonstration of the one-player “social” game, basically using lifelines and spending money and opening safes. It’s free to play, so draw your own conclusions.

God you wait ages for a post and then something breaks so you do two at once: Japanese adventure Tag show Run For Money is coming to Netflix from November 15th. I don’t know if they’re subbed old episodes or new episodes or what, but we got really into this years and years ago.

You may remember a US adaptation called Cha$e hosted by Trey Farley ages ago, this looks like the real deal.

I’m mainly annoyed nobody bothered to do a UK pilot set at Alton Towers.