Saturday, 7:15pm,
ITV1

Or to give it its full name Win Win With People’s Postcode Lottery, this is certainly quite interesting from a broadcast perspective. They’ve mainly funded it. It’s claiming to be the Most Interactive (pre-recorded) Show Ever, and it’s guaranteeing to give away £1,000,000 to a player at the end of the series (against Strictly)… and it could be you!

A lot to unpack. Let’s start with Mel and Sue who are lovely but fronting a big shiny floor Saturday night show feels like a bit of a choice. The game is based around survey questions which I’ve always found a bit irritating. And the INTERACTIVITY involves logging into the Win Win website and having done this Friday morning it involves work (Put your mobile number in, wait for a PIN code, wait to press a button to have it resent as the first one hadn’t arrived ten minutes later, input PIN code, select a new or same PIN code, re-enter new PIN code, decide whether to take the People’s Postcode Lottery’s offer of free entry into October draws, decide on which marketing things you want one of Mel and Sue always tells the truth the other always lies style, fill out all your registration details that may or may not include your blood type and how many cousins you’ve got and then finally, FINALLY you’re ready to play). I’ll be fascinated to find out how many people coming to the first episode cold will actually bother to finish, and how much downtime they’ll be wasting at the top of the show for people to do this before getting into any meat. And God help them if there are tech issues.

However Hello Dolly might be many things but they’re not idiots, and the Postcode Lottery has been highly successful in sponsoring shows across Europe – probably most notably the Netherlands where it’s been sponsoring big primetime gameshows like Miljoenenjacht (Hunt the Millions – the original Deal or No Deal) and Een Tegen 100 for two decades now. Seeing as they’ve largely funded this it will be interesting to see how much they get out of it, You Bet didn’t do great numbers last week and in a few weeks it’ll be on directly against Strictly. If 50-, 100-thousand new players sign up is that good? I don’t know. 5-10% audience conversion rate feels quite high.

We’ll see! Anyway let us know what you think in the comments.

I was tipped off about a new quiz podcast the other week, Here’s What You Do which launches properly today. It is the brainchild of James Smales (who helped developed Bother’s Bar favourite The Answer Trap amongst other things), Dave Maguire (game designer for things like entertainment shows like Celebrity Juice) and their non-TV mate John.

Always happy to give this sort of thing the time of day, especially when someone who helped develop Bother’s Bar favourite The Answer Trap is involved and rather helpfully having listened to the first episode I thought it was good fun and it’s the sort of thing I’m happy to recommend to you. The premise is that these three people come up with quiz formats which they play with each other, some serious, some silly, then at the end they each decide whose they thought was the best.

I won’t spoil too much, but the first episode features a multiple choice quiz where the multiple choices double each time (which goes precisely as far as the joke needs to work), a quiz that involves using chips and an increasingly difficult list quiz.

They’ve got six episodes in the can with new eps going out every Wednesday, I’ve no idea how successful it will be (it’s basically starting from a standing start) but I’m interested to see how it develops.

Some might suggest sharing a podcast title with something that already exists and is popular might be a strategic error but we’ll see. Here’s a Linktree link with all the links to subscribe to it.

Here’s also a teaser clip for episode one:

Sundays and Mondays 9pm,
Tuesdays 9:30pm
Channel 4

From the people who bought you The Traitors and, er, Rise and Fall, comes new reality game The Inheritance, where 13 people vie for the fortune of The Deceased (played by Elizabeth Hurley) by competing in devious tasks she’s left in video messages, whilst Rob Rinder acts as the executor. One of the key things is that they must decide between them who gets the money, which is bound to lead to arguments!!!

The other thing they’d like you to know about the show is that it is camp. I can’t help but feel that something that sets out to be camp is less fun than something that just ends up falling into it, but we’ll see.

But is it any good? They certainly seem to have properly gone for it. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Saturdays, 8pm,
ITV

“Hang on Brig, this is just an extension of the brand, shouldn’t you just be pointing to the previous You Bet show discussion page and leaving it there?”

Possibly. Possibly. I was as prepared to write this off as much as anyone, the two “specials” being a fabulously aggravating, poorly directed, poorly formatted watch.

But. But but but but. We were alerted to the On Tour pre-titles in the ITV Press Centre and this actually looks… quite fun? Certainly much looser than the studio one (people have noticed tonal simularities with In For A Penny) – if you don’t want to invite comparisons with the original then making it completely differently might be quite smart. It looks like if you succeed at your challenge you win £5,000, and I believe the best celeb bettor also wins £5,000 for charity, but there’s been no mention of any forfeits (although that looks like Holly Willoughby on a rollercoaster so they might not have been completely removed). I don’t even know if they’ve even kept the audience betting – each episode was recorded over two days, they could have just had whoever was around going to a website on their phone or something.

We might be getting overexcited about a show that sounds like it’s basically the best bits of shows that are a bit like You Bet! but aren’t You Bet! from the past twenty years, and there will still be the nagging feeling that the editing and direction will still have been designed to irritate everyone over the age of 25. But for now I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Let us know what you think in the comments.