The best thing about afternoon recordings is that because I have to wait for the off-peak trains to start I can shoot off to Westfields and give you some IMMEDIATE REACTION.
- The show is sponsored by Cadbury’s and their Spots vs Stripes thing, whatever that actually is. In the queue outside BBC Televsion Centre hi-octane people were challenging people to do things for chocolate. Which is sort of a good idea, but probably not in 24 degree temperatures.
- The set is similar to international versions – big circle in the middle (not surrounded by 60 lights, surrounded by 12 circles which are occasionally used as a sort of clock and occasionally not), big marquee up the back but different is a large screen on both sides of the stage, and a sofa area on both sides of the stage.
- The host is Darren McMullan who more astute readers will recognise as the mixed-accent host of the Australian version (and also current US reality show Love in the Wild). In the main I thought he was really good, like a party host, although I think he was better ad libbing, the jokes on the autocue tried a bit hard I think.
- The two team captains are Caroline Flack and Joe Swash. Listening to them backstage behind me it seems quite clear they’ve got a good relationship going and this comes out on stage as well. Joe Swash being a bit thick is the show’s running joke but he takes it well and gives back what he gets. Caroline Flack is a woman in a show with two male leads. Mild innuendo happens. We love The Flack.
- The game then – five female friends + Joe take on five male friends + Caroline. Teams introduced by VT. The teams compete in six challenges, the winning team plays two more to determine how much money, if any, they will win.
- The games are all in the MITW style – they’re introduced with a blueprint-esque film (although they’re never referred to as blueprints) with a US male voiceover who you will recognize but not know the name of – does films but isn’t Redd Pepper, more Disney. The description can feature a joke and/or mild innuendo.
- For each of the first six events each team member can play only once, apart from Joe or Caroline who will double up in a two-player game. In each game you will have one minute to score as many points as you can, after the sixth game the team with the most points are the winners.
- There’s little real discernable balance with the scoring mechanism – some games have a low realistic maximum (transfer oranges between your knees into a target area), others relatively high (one person wears a helmet with a pin on it, team mate throws balloons, burst as many as you can in a minute. Four pyramids of six cans, knock as many over as you can by elastic band in a minute). Edit: Some games have the two teams playing simultaneously, sometimes one after the other. Unusually I thought, the team that’s behind going into a game will go first, and the other team are welcome to watch and pick up tips.
- Similar to the international versions, McMullan offers a running conspiratorial commentary, although you can’t hear this in the audience.
- Speaking of hearing things, the clock music for this show is terrific, very electronic and disco inspired.
- If I haven’t got this across properly yet I’ll spell it out for you – this show has a very different voice to international versions. It’s more Double Dare than The Cube, albeit without the mess, and it does that by way of Shane Ritchie-era Win Lose or Draw. It is unlikely you will see the host throwing an orange at Joe Swash in the US show (and even less likely he’ll throw one back!), or indeed one contestant throwing an orange at another contestant in a last second act of hilariously backfiring sabotage. It’s also unlikely the host will get a surprise load of table tennis balls dropped onto him in a throw to an ad break – his surprise was palpable.
- Despite the messing about there is a decent and proper game here and an adjudicator looks at the tape to make sure it’s all proper and correct. The contestant gets to see a slow motion replay of some of their performance (but again sometimes this will be sort of a joke – not always the contestant’s best performance and sometimes something funny that happened before or after the game).
- The team with the most points after six games goes on to the final two games.
- Te first game is a Cash Builder game – the team are spotted £5,000 to begin and for each point they score during the game minute £1,000 gets added to the prize pool.
- But to win it for the team one person must successfully complete the end game – this is one of the more traditional MTWI games (hanging six coathangers off each other today, called Down to the Wire). This is all or nothing and they get only one chance to complete it. If they win then the streamer cannons shoot.
- That’s it really. It’s a very different take on the original idea and I think it works well. I daresay in fact it’s probably had more thought put into it as a show than the original ever did. It starts on ITV2 at the end of August.
Here’s something I don’t think will make the edit of the show I went to – Darren does a link to the break saying he’s going to have a siesta. He lies on a pillow. Joe Swash goes to kick the pillow away, unfortunately Joe Swash slips on a bit of orange.
It was funny.
Sounds interesting, I look forward to seeing the finished product. I thought the Aussie host was excellent from watching clips of the AU version so definitely a good pick there.
For each challenge, do both teams compete at the same time simultaneously, or one after the other? If it’s one after the other, does that mean the show drags and could be a bit boring on TV?
Apart from that, I predict this will be a HUGE HIT for ITV2. It sounds excellent! 😀
Yes sorry should have mentioned – sometimes simultaneously, sometimes one after the other – depends on the size of the game.
I hope it will do well for ITV2, I enjoyed it from the audience!
I think on today’s show:
1st game was simultaneous.
2nd game was one team than the other.
3rd game was one team than the other.
4th game was simultaneous.
5th game was one team than the other.
6th game was simultaneous.
+ the two final rounds, so that’s 11 minutes of action by my reckoning. It might be something to beat it around the head with, but I thought the inbetween stuff was quite entertaining. It certainly shouldn’t come across as ponderous, at any rate.
Thanks. Good that they’re having a mixture of the two methods.
By the way, was there any swearing or adult comedy? What timeslot do you think they are going to put it in?
There was plenty of innuendo (especially towards Caroline Flack, you know, being female) otherwise someone got called a “twat” at one point and I think there might have been one instance of “shit”.
I think it’s being aimed at an 8pm slot.
Some shows just work so much better for lower stakes and with a less “high tension” presentation, and this is one.
The show that started as a rip-off spoiler tactic against The Cube in the US has become its perfect companion show in the UK. Amazing.
What sort of scores might be expected in the cash builder game? Would said game vary by episode, do you think?
I think you’re looking at £5-10k extra. Although there was certainly plenty of opportunity for more in the episode I saw filmed.
Well, that actually sounds rather interesting. Didn’t know you could make MTWI interesting.
Millions of people around the world find MTWI very interesting. It’s much more successful than The Cube globally!
Millions of people around the world haven’t had The Cube to compare it to, nor do they know it even exists.
The interesting thing is how you know the original version of something tends to be the best? Well for Minute To Win It, everyone else’s versions seem to have something the original lacks.
I don’t think the original is a terrible show by any means (or at least, it became not a terrible show), but I ceretainly would never go out of my way to watch it. And neither did anyone else, which is why they’ve stopped making it.
The German viewers had their say when The Cube aired their 2 hour special in April. The ratings was no where near compared to what The Pefect Minute achived in the same timeslot.
I too will be looking forward to see how it will work for ITV2. It should be an ideal show to pair with Celeb Juice.
in Italy we’re going to have both Minute and Cube, we’ll see.
The Cube got in first and hence I see this failing on ITV2, especially as it’s not the sort of show you expect on ITV2 or indeed any of the digital off-shoots of the main channels.
I don’t think this will get compared to The Cube that much really, they’ve gone for a very different styling and completely different tone. It’s like someone thought “The Cube exists, what can we do to differentiate this?” and actually acted upon it.
I don’t know how many viewers it would need on ITV2 to be considered a success, but I think it will appeal to a larger group of people than you might think.
Is there a lot of Cadbury’s product placement? Notice them saying “this task sponsored by Cadbury’s…” or “Thanks to Cadbury’s for donating this evening’s prize fund…” etc.
No, almost none actually, it was pretty much all reserved for the warm up. Plenty of chocolate for the audience though.
I guess it would be similar to Sage and The Krypton Factor – so basically sponsorship, with possibly the brand integrated into the titles.
What would be an ITV2 success? A commissioned show getting above half-a-million viewers. Failure would be falling below the shows on UKTV Dave and CBBC, less than 300,000 viewers.
I agree with Travis, this feels like a one-two with Celebrity Juice. Or a lead-in to The Only Way is Essex.
Well I have had more than one source suggest 30th August, which is a Tuesday.
Sounds like an American fan of MTWI might see this and say “I like what you’ve done with it.”.
Over here, MTWI started out as something of an ersatz version of “The Cube”. But the show’s producers were smart, and listened to comments made on various blogs. The show evolved into something more like “Beat The Clock” on steroids. Its ratings are steady, but NBC is no longer as desperate for ratings now that they have “America’s Got Talent” and “The Voice”. However, if there’s no NFL football this autumn, then we’ll probably see MTWI pressed into service as a one of several stopgaps.
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