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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.
The Traitors influence is certainly there, but it’s not pitched as well. Rinder is barely used, and for some reason all of the footage of The Deceased appeared to have audio sync issues.
Other than that – it’s workable. The games are straight out of the Traitors, and the jury process is quite fun.
It’s no The Traitors though.
I was busy last night so will be catching up this evening, but from beyond the grave I’m hearing 540k. Which sounds like it’s dead on arrival. We’ll have to see how it progresses though.
It is unsurprisingly Traitors inspired. Rob Rinder doesn’t feel as strong a presenter as Winkleman, Brydon and dare I say even Mangan so far.
It’s trying very hard to be camp. It does have something that makes me want to watch the first 3 episodes. But out of curiosity rather than desire.
Alright – I’ve watched episode one now – we were going to watch tonight’s episode two but got a tip-off on a missing cat after five minutes, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.
Overall I think there’s some *interesting* things going on here. Liz Hurley? Fun. The challenge? It’s a decent challenge! IF it was on De Mol you’d call it a 7/10er – lots of different bits, all quite difficult, but nobody can see everything so there’s room for things to happen. The main problem is that it would be one of three challenges on a standard Mole episode, and those challenges would have more of a punchline – still let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Although please throw out the talking heads every thirty seconds.
I think the Division Ceremony (STOP CALLING THINGS IN GAMESHOWS ‘CEREMONIES’ WE’RE NOT AMERICAN) is where it falls down a bit and that’s a pity because it’s about twenty minutes and it’s not helped by a cast who are not initially very likable – the Destination X problem. Deciding who deserves the money is an interesting question because of the way the task was divided up but right now I don’t really have anyone to root for and there’s no real jeopardy for putting yourself up so it’s just people talking over each other. I think this will change later on, but right now the first episode does a pretty terrible job of selling what the ultimate point that the game is inevitably building up to is, and with no real idea you’re placing a lot of trust that the viewer has enjoyed the process and they’re going to be happy to see it all over again with the same people the next day. We *know* there’s a £100k final prize at the end, but only because the “this series” trailer at the end announced it, along with people getting disinherited.
And splitting the money sets up a lot of quite interesting gameplay possibilites – is it nice to be nice? Will not having any money in the bank come back and hurt you? Interesting questions with potentially interesting strategic possibilities! But frankly it’s not worthy of a “who isn’t coming down to breakfast” cliffhanger is it? It’s barely Lingo money. It might get interesting if the winner is telling them they’ve given them £X of cash but the only time they find out what they’ve actually been given is when they get to open their own box when they win or if they get eliminated.
You’d hope Rob Rinder would be in it more.
So on the basis of episode one it’s sort of there but it’s sort of not very lovable. Probably deserves better than its initial overnight, but I also get if people didn’t like it.
I don’t know if it’s a hit in streaming, but it looks like it’s dead on linear, 460k last night. It does get Bake Off tonight though which ought to lift it, if only because the ten minutes after Bake Off will likely be so much higher it will single-handedly pull the average up.
Episode two: that two minute recap felt loooong. Splitting the money not very dramatic. Oh *now* Rinder comes out with “not having much money might get you kicked off”.
Another decent task! I can’t work out what’s gone on with the money though – the graphics seemed to suggest 6 sheep = £3,600, 10 chickens = £2,000, 5 pigs = £8,000 and 40 bags of manure = £800, I make that £14,200 but for no clear reason they’ve earned £12,000.
The Division Ceremony really isn’t hitting like a Round Table does.
The money splitting still doesn’t hit like “who will come down for breakfast”, but knowing the takes and people’s reasons makes this bit a bit more interesting. Also I approve of how much gettable strategy has come out of two episodes – if there’s an obvious alliance, do you try and join it, do you try and keep them out of all future money splits, and if that’s happening, could it be in the best interests of that alliance to sabotage the tasks? Will it be even possible to completely freeze people out and is that actually desireable? It has the stylings of The Traitors and that will probably end up working against it in terms of easy comparisons because it seems a bit cleverer than that.
The game has layers. It just doesn’t have viewers.
I’m definitely sold enough on Episode 3 to give it another week.
This might end up being a bit “cognoscenti only” unfortunately, 433k last night, and that was with Bake Off getting 3.1m before it. Even people being slow to turn over couldn’t lift it!
I love Liz no matter what.
In other news: Mister Doc’s YouTube channel has sadly, yet unsurprisingly, been terminated.
One of the last videos he uploaded was an episode of Challenge’s version of Sale of the Century, featuring Millionaire £218k loser Duncan Bickley and future Mastermind champ Jesse Honey. And Cheggers, of course.
Oh that’s a pity, some great stuff on there.
Yep – he also uploaded Jeremy Paxman’s first episode of University Challenge, plus all ten episodes of The 21st Question. (I still reckon the most notable moment from that show was the question “Where in Wales is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?”, which naturally Gethin had no trouble pronouncing.)
Episode three and it’s getting messy, I thought there might have been more of a treasure hunt clue solving element to the task, but it still works as a limited bandwidth communication one.
I was pondering if and how there’s something in the format that stops it becoming a procession, the in-crowd just eliminating everyone else which *might* become a problem, but right now it looks like they’ve sabotaged that themselves. I think having so many people up for elimination makes the money feel less meaningful, but we’ll see.
First ep consolidated to over a million according to Thinkbox – perhaps don’t write it off just yet. Numbers for eps two and three won’t be known until next week.
This format is more broken than Rise and Fall was and that was very broken.
From the way the money is divvied up to the way people are eliminated. I think it would be a better show is the people with the most money were at risk.
Hannah and Emma might as well not bother now. They are getting booted next and certainly won’t be given any more money so why help others win. I would be sabotaging if I was them.
I’m eight episodes in, the conclusion I’ve come to is that I quite like it, but it’s too stodgy really, quite clever, has some interesting things to say, task design is good, but outside of Liz saying “Hello Darlings” twice an episode it’s quite heavy going which is a bit surprising given how it was marketed.
I’ve mainly quite enjoyed everybody being two-faced and sneaky and saying in their confessionals they’re being two-faced and sneaky and then complaining that everybody else is being two-faced and sneaky.
I do think the procession of the in crowd getting all the money and freezing people out *can be* a problem – no real issue with it as a strategy (it makes perfect sense), but I don’t really think compounding the misery of everyone else is making it more entertaining, perhaps cut the never-had-a-chancers faster.
Thinkbox suggests the second week’s numbers are *a little bit* up week on week, all over 800k.
Wk 3 Thinkbox numbers roughly the same as previous, although a bigger uplift from Bake Off where the Tuesday ep did 900k.
Final overnight just over 650k, I’m told.
It’s probably not done enough for another go, but they can probably point to a shallow but positive trend if they did fancy it. If anything I’d be fascinated to see how they set it up – I was expecting Liz to jump out of the boot with a “Hello Darlings! I’ve been alive all along!” yesterday but apparently not, perhaps The Deceased really liked making videos.
Each season has a new deceased (played by a British celebrity) with rob rinder as the unifying executor.