Streaming on Amazon Prime from 10th November
Brian Cox (not that one) invites nine couples to try and win a million pounds completing missions around the world, the completion of each one ending up with a briefcase with a question in it – get the question right, bank the money, travel to the next mission. Fail and it’s game over. On paper looks a bit like a modern revamp of The Phone but with an award winning Shakesperian actor in charge rather than Emmett Scanlan off of Hollyoaks.
It’s an unusual use of the James Bond IP, but we bloody love a good adventure game show and it feels like a while since the last good one happened. Let us know what you think in the comments.
Big fan of the Bond films but this hasn’t grabbed me at all. The production values are top notch, but the challenges have been so pedestrian and the overall show has been so slooooooow that it makes you wonder how long the series would be if you cut out all the walking.
It also feels really odd how the teams are tearing across the world but don’t have any bags/luggage with them.
I’m two episodes in.
My initial thoughts were that it is absolutely spectacularly shot (and I love the colour grading throughout) but for something James Bond-esque, not especially exciting – I wonder if opening in a rather foggy Scottish Highlands is the best way to entice a crowd who want thrills and intrigue.
I also thought the tasks should feel more failable seeing as they take up quite a lot of the proceedings, so I was pleased to see some sort of time pressure element once level 2 started.
Where it works a better as a show is viewing it as a study of character and mettle, I think, all the contestants seem quite likable so far (I was absolutely prepared to dislike the Cockney geezers but I found myself rooting for them by the end of ep 1), the questions are quite well pitched – not all that difficult once you think through them but certainly would send you into a panic on initial viewing. If the answer to that stolen French painting *was* hidden around the apartment which I thought would have been clever then there definitely needed to be a shot of it there, not just Brian Cox reading it. Measuring the snake and weighing the tarantula were surprisingly entertaining bits of television.
I suspect we’ll never find out which missionny bits are set-up and which are natural, especially asking members of the public for lifts, and if there were alternate solutions to getting up to the second floor or how much an off-camera producer was going “no you can’t do that”, that sort of thing.
I like it. We’ll see how well they can pull off lots of teams in lots of places as the episodes progress.
Also I laughed at the clearly debranded 6×4 Stream Deck Brian Cox is using.
Finished it, had largely a great time with it, felt like a good adventure series with a quiz element. Enjoyed the bits where it looked like the answer reveals cost more than the value of the prize. The whole thing looks brilliant.
Having said the tasks should feel more fallible, the bit where they did fail felt a bit crap, although it was interesting that it was the only real quick test of skill in the entire show, and it looked extremely tough – I get it’s for a lot of money, but if everyone fails there you’ve got a damp squib of an episode.
I hope the Controller’s more of a dick next series. I hope the casting is just as good – really liked all of the main teams.
Just finished it. The production values are *insane* (and each “stage” was filmed in a separate block for each team) and I did find myself just wondering how they did everything rather than being invested in the actual show.
Laser rifle was probably a bit of a mistake in hindsight (especially when you get rid of the two most likeable teams in the cast with it) and it would be interesting to find out what the endgame was, because there were certainly an implication it was London.
Enjoyed the opening pair of episodes for series two, jumping off the Goldeneye dam is quite a way to open, enjoyed the ‘there’s an easy platform hidden around the side’ trick, Alex in episode two a casting producer’s dream, being all ‘I’m super intelligent… I’ll just stuck these wires anywhere oh it doesn’t work’, great stuff.
I’m not sure I’m sold on Brian Cox having a more gameshow host role, and I hope they’ve kept one of the best things from S1 in the absolutely ridiculous right/wrong answer reveals going forward.
I’m almost at the end of Road 2 A Million. It’s been fun, but I also think it’s felt less… Bondy? than the first run.
I think they’ve frontloaded most of the stunning bits, which I kind of get, but I kind of miss the way the first one was shot, its grading, its locations, doing crazy things like getting a battleship to reveal whether an answer is right or wrong. It’s perfectly entertaining, but it feels less of a spectacle. Less obvious nods to Bond.