First fortnight Tues and Weds, 9pm,
Then Tues 9pm,
ITV1 and ITVX
Well, not sure what anybody’s expecting with this, it’s been a non-hit in the several places it’s been tried and actually was originally down to go out last year, but for whatever reason was pushed back to 2026.
Fourteen people have fourteen days to climb to the top of a mountain in New Zealand, each initially carrying an equal share of the £200k prize fund. If people can’t hack it, the money they’re carrying is lost as well. At various points the mysterious Mountain Keeper will instruct them to do some sort of jumped-up Go Ape-style traversal task, and at periodic camps they’ll need to vote each other out. If they run out of time they all win nothing, so there’s an element of strategy in being popular and not being too weak. “£200k divided by 14, £14,285.71, that’s an unusual amount for people to be carrying isn’t it?” Yes. And that headline figure will not be given away. In fact making it to the end won’t guarantee anyone gets the £14,285.71 they’ve been lugging all the way if other versions are anything to go by, for reasons you can spoil for yourself if you want.
Ben Shephard is at least a believable host of this having done charity mountain climbs before and being quite a sporty guy so no issues there. Whether this will outperform how the format tends to do internationally remains to be seen – hey it sort of did with Destination X. Let us know what you think in the comments.