Show Discussion: One & Six Zeros

By | March 12, 2022

Sundays, 6pm,
Channel 4

Dara O’Briain invites teams of three to try and win a million quid by answering seven seven-answer multiple choice questions to keep the pot in play, knocking a zero off for each incorrect answer. As an added fillip, at points during the game the team must reduce their number, hoping to keep the brainiest on for the final questions. And for some reason the set looks like a sort of art gallery.

It’s an unusual timeslot for a big money quiz and Dara’s not an obvious choice of host for the channel – maybe these things combined will make people sit-up and take notice. Whether they’ll stay taking notice when the prize money hits £10,000 I don’t know. Let’s see, shall we?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

20 thoughts on “Show Discussion: One & Six Zeros

  1. David Howell

    It’s the pre-DoND Miljoenenjacht endgame mechanic return that nobody even thought to ask for, now expanded into an entire show!

    I’m guessing the game with the longest time before a wrong answer will be aired first, and the rest will be £1k and £10k wins that have major viewer bleed.

    Reply
    1. Brandon

      I assume all will become clear when watching it, but I don’t see why they’ve made it a wrong answer knocks off a 0 rather than a right answer adding one on. It’s got the Million Pound Drop problem where even a 100k win will feel disappointing.

      Reply
  2. Henry R

    10 minutes in and I can see why Channel 4 have put this in this slot.

    One and a half questions in the first half is not great. The show looks incredibly cheap too.

    Reply
  3. Brekkie

    Tune in late and they appear to be playing for a 5 and 5 zeros. Looks like 6 or 7 questions over the hour with 7 multiple choice options.

    Reply
  4. Cliff

    Excellent gameplay, but terribly slow playing of that game.

    Typical Channel 4 quiz show production values, ie it looks a bit Sky TV in the 90s.

    They really could do this in half the time, and the show would be four times better.

    Reply
  5. Daniel W

    I like the format, it’s clean but only seven questions in a hour just drags it out longer than it should be.
    This would work as a half hour show but making it a hour, just seems like they wanted something to fill the hour
    Bigger doesn’t always mean better

    Reply
  6. Brig Bother Post author

    An appreciably clever game that nobody is going to go out of their way to tune in for.

    A team of three face seven questions to win a million quid. Each question has a number of multiple choices equal to the amount of digits of the amount of units still in play. If they get a question wrong a 0 is knocked off the amount of units. If the team don’t like a question, they can swap it out for a fresh one but doing so decreases the prize in play by decreasing the coin being played for (i.e. instead of 1,000,000 £1s, it’d become 1,000,000 50ps, 20ps, 10ps, 5ps, 2ps, pennies). After question three and question five the team have to decide which one of them to remove. Whatever they have left after they’ve answered seven questions is what they go home with.

    This leads to some quite interesting decisions as the game progresses, after a few questions they can effectively guarantee themselves a minimum prize and possibly a very big one if they guess and get the questions right. The tricky thing is by passing there’s no guarantee the question that comes up is something anyone will know so there’s a big risk of putting yourself in an even worse position monetarily than you were previously. It’s quite smart in that it’s not an immediately obvious thing to think about but not really a tough thing to grasp either.

    I quite liked the way the booth was used to provide commentary from the eliminated players, and the limited chat with Dara during the questions themselves. I thought the black and white montage as they walked off was a bit much though, they haven’t died! There is nothing memorable about the music, the set is… there. The graphics are OK – they’ve clearly borrowed the question graphic from Tipping Point.

    There are seven answered questions in the hour.

    Ultimately too low-key to pick up an audience I suspect and I think C4 knows this (although it was interesting Dara was talking at the top of the show as if it was already a daily show). I didn’t hate it, but felt like the sort of mildly clever ten-a-penny quiz format you’d get on Dutch TV 10-15 years ago but without much of the energy.

    Reply
  7. Brekkie

    Haven’t they got another £1m gameshow with Claudia Winkleman commissioned for C4 too? Imagine that will get a better slot.

    Reply
  8. Michael S. Collins

    It’s very, very slow. The questions are basic. And most of the drama seems to come from people going “I know this answer, wait, I need to second guess this for a few minutes.” Top moment in episode 1 was the mum saying she knew an answer because she’d seen it on the news, only to be asked if she was sure of that!

    The basic mechanism of the quiz has legs but this does not need an hour. It’d be like if Tipping Point had one contestant and still took an hour.

    Reply
  9. Whoknows

    Late to watching this one but gosh, proper low quality stuff. The whole programme rests on one of the most hideous graphics I’ve ever seen. Horrible set, lazy format. If each of the seven numbers had related to a round rather than just one question maybe this would have been something worth pursuing but as it is it’s just more evidence of C4’s entertainment commissioners not really having any clue about primetime quiz. Another horrible show from Mighty Productions too.

    Reply
  10. Brig Bother Post author

    I only caught (i.e. remembered) the backend of this last night, and it did have a contestant who thought a toucan was a kind of cat, so that’s a thing.

    Reply
  11. Michael S. Collins

    Another moment in Episode 2 which I paraphrase…

    (Who won a BAFTA award in 2020…)
    Contestant 1 – I know this answer! I watched those BAFTAs.
    Contestant 2 – Are you sure? Think again.
    Contestant 1 – Pretty sure.
    Contestant 2 – Hmm, I think we need to go for this other choice.
    Contestant I – Ok. I must have been wrong.
    (it’s the wrong answer. The answer was the one Contestant 1 had mentioned.)
    Contestant 1 – Oh I knew that one.

    When people start deliberately acting against their own interests and knowledge for the sake of “good TV”…

    Reply
  12. Brig Bother Post author

    First ep consolidated to 860k which feels like a pretty good number for C4 at 6 on a Sunday, but does need to be taken in the context that Crufts before it did a mill and after more than double.

    Reply

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