7pm and 9:15pm Saturday and variously across the week, ITV1
Well here we are then, months of speculation come to a head this week as Syco’s Red or Black? hits our screens potentially making seven millionaires.
And basically I have got no clue as to a) whether it will be any good or not or b) if it will be successful. I think if the games are quite You Bet-esque then it’sd in with a shout, and that’s initially what it sounded like, but since then we’ve seen pictures of people hoping to match a big jack in the box and picking cars and I’m not sure I see where the entertainment value in that lies.
Similarly will the excitement wear off after the first million, or will people tune in to that spin every night? Time will tell, use the comments thread for your thoughts.
I like the fact that the wheel was not brilliantly designed so the ball kept moving – It actually added tension
Poor camerawork during the roulette wheel bit. They kept panning out, why didn’t they focus on the wheel throughout it which would’ve made it more intense? poor!
Now, some quality TV: Million Pound Drop 😀
Oh, another series of 71 Degrees North. Wasn’t expecting that.
Hosted by Paddy McGuinness. DEFINITELY wasn’t expecting that.
Seeing someone win £1m – especially by luck – doesn’t really do anything for me now. Looking forward to seeing someone lose though!
And they seemed to miss his reaction too as he became a millionaire.
Well that was quite exciting.
What a curious show Red or Black is. Taking the show as a 105 minute whole, I found the first 45-50 minutes quite good fun, the next 45 minutes fairly tedious and then the final five minutes quite enjoyable.
Weird wheel that seems to chuck the ball out several times before it settles – now there’s drama.
Erm, interesting experiment, quite nicely done most of the time. Will I watch the rest of the week? Probably not, and I think that’s down to finding it hard to care about the contestants, which in turn is the result of a complete absence of skill. Not just on the final spin, but unfortunately, throughout.
There’s another thing that’s nagging a little bit about the arithmetic. The guy made ten decisions correct in a row to win the million: nine to get to the spin, plus the tenth being the spin. The last seven pre-spin decisions reduced the contestants from 128 to 1. This means that the first two pre-spin decisions must have reduced “1000” (in practice, one might guess at something like six hundred) to 128, via (apparently) 294. This suggests not only that there were a not-necessarily-power-of-two number of starters, but also that the second game was not necessarily a 50:50 shot – in practice, it was a 128:164 shot. Wonder what happens if sufficiently few people turn up for the first decision that fewer than 128 qualify for the second round?
I believe that’s one of the reasons they asked for an audience – if not enough contestants turned up members of the audience could fill in the numbers. There was certainly something one of the original stories that there may be some entries avaliable on the door.
Good ending but is it a killer blow they gave away £1 million on the first night? I can confirm my folks saw the live spin but will be watching it tomorrow as they didn’t see the show’s process tonight.
I wonder how many of people we saw tonight at Wembley Arena, Battersea Power Station and at Fountain Studios would qualify for a contestant on Million Pound Drop.
Yes, Angel did slip through the net but Simon Cowell has got the contestant selection spot on by applying the original Millionaire call in method. Any one of any age, size, gender, employed or unemployed can win £1 million.
Quick observation. The adjudicators are mentioned in the credits being Olivia Van Der Werff and Beyond Dispute. Those will remember Beyond Dispute were the adjudicators on Golden Balls and have worked on a number of other shows in the past. So they have picked reliable people
http://www.beyonddispute.co.uk/ofcom-compliance.html
Also the adj. for DOND, in which a non-random scandal was uncovered by readers of this very site…
Wouldn’t the choice of Beyond Dispute help ensure no splitting, seeing as that was explicitly part of what they did in Golden Balls?
(Mind you, that was necessary because of the format. This is different.)
I did enjoy it, although it did feel like it could have been so much more. The first stunt was the only thing that lived up to my expectations of the challenges, although even that felt edited just to get through it as fast as possible.
I still can’t decide if the final spin would be better or worse if the ball stayed in the first pocket it stopped in, would mean a bit more of a punchier finish but at the same time I was taken by surprise at how tense that finale was.
I’m off on holiday shortly, so I’ll be able to enjoy the rest of the run with a fast forward function!
I can see only one way this will go, ratings for the main shows will drop off a cliff and people will tune in for the last 10 minutes of the second show for the actual spin. A winner on night 1 might well be a critical blow since they don’t have the building excitement of “will this be the night” to fall back on if it does start tanking.
Bottom line, no way in hell is this getting a second series.
It’s like You Bet! meets the US lottery shows, on a scale that exceeds even Miljoenenjacht. Surely that’s a winning formula for the US market? Mind you, if Wanna Bet? ended up making it to air (I forget if it did or not) then I suspect Red or Black would be dismissed as a scaled-up version of that…
Wanna Bet did make it to air a couple of years ago with Ant & Dec hosting on ABC. It didn’t make brilliant numbers and was cancelled.
Ratings are now up in the Saturday Night thread. The Black or Red second show rating was the biggest rating for a civillian, non-talent game show since In It to Win It in February 2009.
One L in ‘civilian’, dude.
6.6m and 7.2m. Good figures ordinarily but feel like a bit if a disappointment here. I’m certainly not sure I can see them increasing over the week.
I was hoping it would achieve either 8 million average or get a 33% (so at least 1 in 3 were watching Red or Black). I know the head to head with Doctor Who was barely level last night.
It clearly proves that normal game show for civillians cannot get the ratings any more. Unless Red or Black has a massive surge in the ratings next week, then I can conclude we will never see a show reaching 8-10 million again. Shows featuring celebrities and reality/talent formats like The X Factor, Got Talent and The Apprentice are here to stay. I know people on forums want certain shows to come back but it will never happen.
Certainly “turn up and play” contestants on shows are not bringing in the ratings as much as they once did. Interesting times. Still haven’t a clue why things like the Cube don’t bring in the numbers you’d think they ought to.
All these shows spend too much time filling us in on the contestants’ life stories and how tense everything is and what would you do with the money and on and on and on. The Cube is a good format but it seems that only half of the show is spent playing the games. Compare to something like Pointless which spends plenty of time answering questions.
That’s a very interesting observation, because Pointless famously went from five teams in series one to four teams in series two apparently to fit more banter in.
It’s one of the few shows that gets away with it, as well.
Mmmnmn, but (a) women would tend to have a different opinion of that, and (b) surely our version of DoND wouldn’t work without it?
That said, shows where personality doesn’t particular matter – out-and-out quizzers particularly – could often do with less chat.
Interesting thing from the ratings breakdown.
Firstly the last 30minutes of the main show had more viewers than the ‘results show’.
The peak was also recorded here and not when the Million was given away. Also it looks like the results show peaked at the start and lost audience from there.
I think this show is missing one key gameshow ingredient – jeopardy. Having it purely based on luck is pretty dull and considering Cowell is going for the roulette endgame he should be aware that the thrill of gambling is knowing when to walk away. I do feel to get a proper pay off at the end the player has to have sacrificed something, rather than just randomly arrived at that point without any choice but to play.
Also unlike Million Pound Drop and Deal you haven’t invested enough in the player to care whether or not they win or lose at the end.
Watching Italian Minute To Win It right now
(yay 100th comment!)
Given all the talk about the lack of ability to be invested in players – along with the fact that we don’t see how the selection order is laid out – I’m wondering how appealing this hypothetical V2 could be.
Stripped across a week. One major prize per week.
Sunday: Arena day. Strip 1024 people down to 16. All through stunts in the arena. The focus on this episode is the stunts, not the personalities.
Monday: A game to determine the selection order. An elimination round to select 8 who go through.
Wednesday: A game to determine the selection order. An elimination round to select 4 who go through.
Friday: A game to determine the selection order. An elimination round to select 2 who go through.
Saturday: A series of games (involving families as well?) to determine selection order. The Spin (One player *will* win it)
Also, getting through any daily stage should award prizes, because you’ve at least done some work to get there!
This would be a brilliant idea. Pretty much what I was thinking too. You’d have games in it for contestants to get involved in which can be entertaining for viewers. You’d still have the red or black selection element. And also you’d be able to invest in these people as the viewer would go on a “journey” with these contestants right from the first episode to the big ending in the final episode.
This is exactly how Red or Black should have been. Syco has messed up, they know it, they were hoping for a peak of 9m to 10m but it fell well short of that.
The problem with having a game to determine selection order is that it’s not actually going to make it especially more interesting, and then people are going to whinge that it’s still all just luck anyway.
It definitely would make it more interesting.
Maybe, but you’d ultimately get the same complaints.
A challenge to determine performance order? The exact trap that “Show Me the Funny” fell into, and led reviewers to say that it was eating up airtime that could be used to show the comedy performances.
I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea, just that it absolutely has to be brilliant television, and I’m not getting absolutely brilliant television from “Red or Black”.
But that’s a completely invalid comparison. Show Me The Funny was a reality show so people obviously expected to see more of the comedians’ routines and performances rather than random tasks.
This is a game show. It should have games which are entertaining and allows viewers to get involved. At the moment, Red or Black fails doing that.
I wonder if the way to do this would be to take a leaf out of the old Play Your Cards Right playbook? Make the draws on-stage but off-screen while the contestants’ stories are in progress, then ask the audience “Did you see us make the draw?”, so they can all shout “YES” back. Takes about ten seconds of screen time, adequately entertaining, removes uncertainty.
Show one tonight is only an hour long. Fingers crossed that it might be a bit more crisply edited – though I’m still going to fast-forward through everything but the games…
In addition, I would’ve advised them to just have 1 hour each day, instead of 2 hours. Nice, quick, punchy episodes rather than the drawn out affair we witnessed yesterday.
Don’t think that’s the solution really. I agree with the train of thought it is just a little bit too big – scale it back a bit to say 32 contestants in a studio over an hour, with say £100,000 jackpot. You could perhaps have 8 shows with 8 winners then a million pound final.
But then you might as well have Poker Face.
We may as well have Poker Face, that show was fantastic.
I heartly agree, but if it was axed before it would probably happen again. There was one series in Australia under the name of The Con Test, played as a series of straight games with no big money final, I think it might have been axed before the end of the series.
I’m just adding my voice to saying that Poker Face was fantastic.
I think there is more to it than being a show running for a week to see if it’s the next big. ITV has been trying to find a show to sell around the world and have yet to done that. Giving it’s a co-production between ITV Studios and Syco, with The Dark Lord behind the invention he could pursue countries that picked up The X Factor to produce their local version of Red or Black.
I wouldn’t be surprised if FOX decides to pick this up to replace Million Dollar Money Drop and air it mid-season to pair with American Idol.
What are these idiots making the show doing?! Haven’t they listened to any constructive criticism from last night?
They still have the ridiculous 8 clips of contestants background story taking up over 5 minutes. Boring, viewers don’t care!
God, what stupidity from the producers. They have instant feedback via Twitter these days, loads of people complained about it yesterday, and yet they still do it. At least Endemol listens to fans’ feedback and made changes after the 1st episode of Million Pound Drop.
Terrible camerawork during Pixie’s performance. I don’t understand why producers keep panning out, you can barely see the performer.
Funny how Ant and Dec aren’t saying how many people are playing online. Probably much less than the 46k who played yesterday. 46k is nothing compared to the 100k+ other shows get 😀
I heard 19k at 7pm.
Did Ant and Dec say that or was it posted online somewhere?
That’s not a good sign. Only half of the day before, imagine if that’s reflected in the viewing figures.
Online by a chum on Twitter.
The numbers aren’t very good compared tom MPD but caveat, MPD’s audience very much more likely to be tech savvy. Also MPD online game probably quite a bit more fun.
Tomorrow’s ratings will be very interesting.
Be honest Joe. Would the two finalists, Ian and Kevin be suitable contestants to appear on The Million Pound Drop?
Any person aged 18 or over can apply for the Million Pound Drop. 🙂
LOL! Typical public relations/politicians answer.
Actually, this reminds me that one thing that amuses me about Red or Black is that it screams from the rooftops one thing it does that other game shows (and other Cowell extravaganzas on ITV1) do not – casting contestants without recourse to such considerations as demographic or aesthetic appeal – while perpetuating a string of other game show tropes (The Sob Story, Painful Padding, and above all Dumb Luck) and amping them up to the power of 10.
Which is another big-money event show that would work better than this.
That might be honest, but that’s as much of an answer to his question as “earwax.”
Oh dear, they have the same end game in the results show every episode. How repetitive and boring will that be?
Virtually all gamnes shows have the same end game.
I think this would be better with a bit of jeopardy. Have ten sections but introduce a bit of risk, so say after revealing three the “winner” can opt to spin for £250,000 or play on, then at 4 spin for £500,000 or play on and then reveal 5 to play for the £1m.
People would get bored of seeing the spin 5 times in a row in the same episode.
They’d only spin once – that’s the jeopardy.
And two nights on the run they miss the reaction of the winner – surely they could do a split screen.
They were able to split screen in the 80s, were they not?
Cowell’s head clearly too far up his own arse to pay attention to his critics.
I largely suspect other than putting his money on the line and yesing the premise, he probably doesn’t have much to do with the running of the show.
I don’t get the ‘there’s no jeopardy’ bit – of course there is jeopardy, particularly emotional.
People need to understand that jeopardy comes from the uncertainty of the winnings. And no game show in this country has ever had such stark uncertainty as a £1m coinflip (well, wheel spin, but you get my drift).
Besides the obvious legal reasoning for the ending working this way, it emphasises the whole egalitarian angle Cowell’s obviously playing for here. DoND tries that, but in practice contestants who are in financial difficulty will, quite reasonably, be more conservative on strong boards and almost always make significant losses on a big-money box if they happen to have one in front of them. On Red or Black?, literally anyone really can win the million. Whether that’s a good thing or not will depend on your point of view, and I’m not sure I have one myself, but the format’s true to the publicity in that sense.
The only problem with that is to do with the gambling laws. They had to around this law for the wheel by stating there is no money at stake. Nothing to lose.
*game shows of course!
2 winners in a row.
and on the thirteenth anniversay for Who Wants to be a Millionaire? as well.
I think the runner up kind of summed it up though – £1m now isn’t necessarily enough to live on for the rest of your life and give up work completely.
BTW, we know this is the first £1m win since Poker Face back in 2007, but when was the last time someone won £1m live on TV. Were the Poker Face finals live – otherwise the only two I can think of is TFI Friday back in the early days of Millionaire and a caller winning the £1m on The Vault.
The PokerFace final was recorded 48-72 hours prior to transmission. The heats were recorded weeks in advance. The last “live” £1 million was The Vault in 2004.
The last figure I heard bandied about for ‘immediate retirement and never having to work again’ money is actually around £6 million.
It’s quite an interesting discussion; the answer depends on your perspective. I know a thirty-year-old who seriously reckons he could retire on £600k; he’d get a £300k London flat for himself and he reckons he’d be able to live (not particularly grandly, but adequately) off the income from £300k worth of buy-to-let. (I think he’s taking his chances on the inflation of the rent he can attract over time exceeding the inflation of the things he wishes to buy.) When we have this discussion at work, among us bluff Northerners, the figure bandied around is rather fewer millions than six.
I’m 25, not a homeowner, and I think a million might be enough.
There’s a house that I would dearly love to live in selling for £250k. Let’s say I leave £750k to live off the interest. Leading savings accounts currently pay 2.5-3%, at which rate the annual interest on £750k would be somewhere in the region of £20k. I’d be absolutely fine living off One Rock a year with no mortgage repayments (or, in that house, many energy costs) to worry about, at 2011 prices – though maybe by 2040 that might be different.
On the other hand, this is based around living off the interest from a savings account at 2011 interest rates. That’s about as conservative an estimate as you can get (although I’d argue that’s appropriate here). Using your buy-to-let example, £300k in my spiritual home area (the student quarter of Southampton) buys you a potential five-bed student let, which would typically yield at least £1,200pcm – let’s say, after all management costs, that £1,100pcm is what’s left (and that’s being pessimistic). That’s £13k a year in rental yield, on top of a similar amount of interest on the £450k that’s left.
Oh that’s quite interesting, £2m seems to be the number that crops up in conversations we tend to have.
If you aren’t working, what would you fill your time with? It’d probably end up costing money.
And then when you begin to bring family into the equation the money required really shoots up.
I think £2m though is a good starting figure – half to shell out on what you’d like to buy now and half to live off fairly comfortably in the future.
Perhaps Cowell should have coughed up a bit more cash from the back of his sofa and added a rollover element to the show. I assume though £1m is still the biggest amount to be won in a UK gameshow, though of course the million pound jackpots won back in 1999 are worth more than the jackpots being given away on Red or Black this week (around £1.3m-£1.4m according to http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ppoweruk/)
Three wins in the remaining five episodes, and Red or Black? has produced as many millionaires in a week as WWTBAM? did in thirteen years. Two more, and 2011 has produced more game show millionaires than any other single year – 2001 holds the record with three (two on WWTBAM?, the other on Survivor).
I quite enjoyed the fifteen minutes or so of the first show I watched after heavy use of the FFWD button. The stunts are pretty decent, and cutting out the waiting turns a 3-4/10 show to a 6-7/10 show. (Not the same thing as saying that it’s a 6-7/10 show!) The Haye-Khan stunt was particularly interesting as I thought it wasn’t actually going to be 50:50 and that it would take some skill as to decide which one to determine; I’d have made the same decision as the contestants and been just as wrong. Good TV though possibly not so true to the nominal initial premise.
ITV, please continue to keep the only interesting bit of show two being minutes 26 to 29, counting the two extra minutes that Virgin’s V+ box tacks on to the start, for my skipping-to-the-good-bit pleasure, thank you.
Well I think my Dad’s reaction to Red or Black pretty much sums it up:
http://www.timhalbert.com/others/redorblackdad.jpg
Hem, hem:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/3794435/1m-Red-Or-Black-winner-Nathan-Hageman-jailed-for-brutal-attack.html
I’m conflicted. On the one hand – boo, on the other hand, he’s done his time and turned his life around.
It’s not looking good for series two – Paul B suggesting 4.7m for the first show and 5.3m for the second one.
I’m not. I don’t see how the tabloids can whinge about convicted criminals winning money on a Cowell show when they don’t mention the Cheryl Cole and that toilet attendant incident. She’s raked it in from the X-Factor.
Well done Nathan and Kevin!
Yep, true that.
The difference for me is that it’s very recent. This means that his criminal record is still on file, and not yet “spent” – as it’s called. Given that he was sentenced to five years, in his case his record will never be spent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_Offenders_Act
Millionaire banned anyone who had an active (non-spent) criminal record, and I’m slightly surprised RoB hasn’t don’t the same thing.
Well I bet The Million Pound Drop wouldn’t take on convicted criminals.
I’ll say this much, the fact Nathan did win is pretty good evidence that it’s not fixed as some people are inevitably saying.
Let’s face it, if you had any possible way of fixing it, you’d want to fix it so that Nathan – once he got through – didn’t win the million, because frankly you’d probably get less bad PR from it being a fix (which isn’t anything new in television) than from Nathan winning the million (which is).
Of course, it’s possible that Nathan happened to slip through the net, and Cowell (and it would be Cowell) will exploit a canny loophole in the rules, retroactively disqualify Nathan, and perhaps give Angel (as the runner-up to Nathan on Saturday) a £1m spin on the final show.
That, or for “Nathan’s” £1m to be donated to charities supporting victims of crime. Which, let’s face it, would be classic Simon Cowell, turning negative tabloid PR positive at a stroke.
I don’t know if this would actually be possible, because – unless I’m much mistaken – the full Red or Black? rules are not present on itv.com…
I largely suspect none of these things will happen.
There seemingly hasn’t been much of an outrage bar the paper themselves – Most people it seems accept he realises it was stupid
Although this really was the only way this show would ever get on front of The Sun.
I’d expect a further audience decline tonight, and then maybe a stabilisation to ‘we’re never commissioning something this expensive with such a poor return ever again’ levels.
A re-resurgence of focus on daytime in future, hopefully.
I think a big event show can work, but within reason. I’ve not seen things beyond the arena that warrants the £1M+ budget, not counting the prizes. I’ve not seen anything more impressive looking as a whole than, say, The Cube. Or more exciting than stuff like Deal or No Deal. I can’t help but think this could have been done so much cheaper and it probably would have been as good a show. Possibly better. The focus was on the cash spent and not about the show. That’s never good.
Part of the excitement of this stuff is the journey and the rarity of getting to the apex of the show. America hasn’t had a million dollar winner on Millionaire in 10 years, on a daily format. Over 1,000 shows without one. And it gets nerve wracking as hell when someone even gets to $250,000 now. That first day was great to see the win. But, as I figured, as everyone is getting to that point now I’m getting “eh” about the spin. And sadly that’s how the show is structured right now.
I just don’t know. I get mixed feelings. I think it’s a good production but a bad format. Which is a shame because that wheel spin is dramatic. That first spin had me on the edge of my seat. And it got attached to an extremely lopsided show. I’m not saying I can do any better. I’ll wait until I get a pilot to say anything like that. But for as good as this should be something got lost in translation as the event progresses.
The plot thickens:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/3796745/Strip-TV-brute-Nathan-Hageman-of-his-million.html
So I sat down and watched Red or Black last night. Notes…
* Two motorbike stunts, and one helecopter? Is this ITV, or Blokes ‘n’ Motors telly? That tightrope stunt felt badly explained, with one of the Jedwards appearing to introduce a new rule halfway through.
* Lovely of them to put in a Making a Cup of Tea break about two-thirds of the way through. Profiling the contestants? Who cares!
* If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s the difference between good direction and bad direction. Joe’s right, the direction of Miss Lott’s performance was abysmal. “Pixie” is a name, not how she should appear. Pixie Lott is signed to Mercury records, a subsidiary of Universal, and distinct from Sony. Chalk this up as one who wasn’t giving some money to Scowell.
* “Our independent adjudicator did this.” Pics or it didn’t happen.
* Cor, a commercial for Supergeth’s new show. Don’t forget to miss it, everyone. And a plug for The Chase, introducing the concept of The Fourth Chaser.
* Great! They’re going to play Duel. Bring on Nick Hancock. Oh. It’s the final game from Winning Streak, and my pre-snark in the Game Show Times comes true.
* You missed the money shot! You missed the reaction of the guy winning the money!
* Squee! Scala on the Downturn Abbey trailer!!! Best part of the night.
It’s interesting (well, I say interesting) that most people on this when given a free choice seem to opt for red.
Well, they hadn’t thought the go-kart shuffleboard game through very well.
I’m adequately enjoying 15 minutes of Big Dumb Stunts per night. Quite a few of them miss the target, when the show really needs to bat perfectly, but there’ll always be something a bit new and a little bit different along in a couple of miinutes. The variety between challenges where people can choose colours in advance and ones where they take a mystery {jack-in-the-boz | cloche | plunger} works OK, too, and the soundtrack is quite fun.
Still a pretty terrible show and will probably rival Don’t Scare The Hare for the most epic failure of the year, by virtue of the size of the swing it has taken and with which it has missed, but not without redeeming features altogether.
It is amazing how the lack of Peter Dickson on the dramatic voice over sequences shows!
Well, he took the loss boringly well.
On a point of pedantry that’s pretty extreme even for here, it’s surely quite unusual that when Dec and Ant ask the biggest question of all, the million pound red-or-black decision, Dec is on the *left* as we see him on the image. Surely it’s so that they can both just turn around and close the show out in the Ant and Dec trad. arr., but nevertheless it’s not what I, and other keen “which is which?” watchers, might have expected.
Surely it wouldn’t be beyond them to wheel around when the director has mixed in a shot of the wheel rather than of the hosts, and then to wheel around a second time when everyone turns back away from the wheel? That couldn’t pose all that high a risk of cables tieing up, could it?
I felt the stunts before the studio were better last night as they were “big” on the scale but come the studio the shuffleboard stunt didn’t go well also come the wheel I didn’t have any warmth for THE ONE.
There is something in the format but it’s not right. If the show can maintain a 20% share for the rest of the week then ITV will say. “Hey, it’s not a flop like our summer schedule, but we admit the figure is slightly disappointing”.
It would’ve been better if they stripped it to make a tournament like BGT and PokerFace did in the past when it was a week long event.
Have four heats, one from each country or area but keep the structure for the eliminations the same. First half an hour we see the pre-recorded but but with the second half an hour we see the studio bit so at the end of the hour (and I say hour, not 75 mins) to leave two people left. Those two would go to the final on the fifth show. Come the fifth show we got 8 people representing the whole UK and they will be whittled down, 8>4>2 but come down to 2 people they could play a head to head to see who plays the wheel for £1 million or let them both play the wheel and decide red or black to see who will wins a guaranteed £1 million. Due to the wheel, the show cannot give people money to bet on, so it’s have to keep the all or nothing premise.
I would also ditch the music acts for the heats as they seem out of place. You could have one major name for the final as an interlude but no more. Musical acts does have a purpose if it’s an interlude for some shows (Takeaway, BGT, TXF) but compared to last night, we see Il Divo sing then pick a rose, boring.
If it does get recomissioned and it’s a big IF then they should have the show like Live Millionaire as an occasional event. As an suggestion, ITV can have Dancing on Ice (results on sunday) on Saturday evening but have that as the meats for a Red or Black sandwich.
I must give ITV credit as they are trying to recreate event television and trying to find a fifth show to along with the reality formats but like the first series of Push the Button they haven’t got the formula right. Like PtB and now in 2011, I have seen loads of shows that are worse than Red or Black but I don’t think it’s deserve to be in the hall of fame. That said, I cannot list five shows for the hall of fame this year, without looking at the list.
It’s going to be a hotly-contested Worst Show In Show award this year. Not only Red or Black, not just Don’t Scare Hare (The), but Famous and Fearless, Tool Academy, Love Thy Neighbour, The Marriage Ref… and that’s only the ones we’ve seen and got consensus on.
It is always easier to hate than to love, and what is there to love about Red or Black? It looks like being suitably Big and sufficiently Dumb to play well in Yankee-land. Gideon Osbourne will appreciate the extras on the balance of payments.
For what it’s worth, I think I could just about cast five votes for Best Show In Show. They may not be for five shows.
Famous and Fearless was hated? I thought the opinion was pretty much apathy.
While the end-of-year UKGS poll has a long and glorious tradition of achieveing its goals spectacularly, it does occur that there is a sophisticated audience at the Bar who are capable of obscure technological trickery in the pursuit of game show thrills from around the world. With this in mind, even though the UKGS polls need no change, I wonder if there would be any merit in some sort of global poll? Jingoism would be hard to avoid, so it’s possible that there might have to be some sort of juried semi-final, to identify (say) half a dozen shows, representative episodes of which might be secreted somewhere covert in the hope that viewers from around the world could sample the best and/or worst that that year had to offer.
Hmm. Would a vote would add much to the enjoyment of the shows? I’m with Paddy O’Connell: “why do we have to vote on everything?”
But on the substantive point, there would need to be someone choosing the various shows. I’m not sure how that would be so different from the “Fun Thing Found On Youtube” category right here.
Brig has done sterling work, putting together a set of shows and clips that evoke some sort of reaction – good or bad, comprehensible or Japanese, memorable or “Move On Up”. This sort of curated collection, and the discussion it generates, is at least as valuable as any award.
5.1m and 5.3m last night according to @tvscoops.
That makes it a MASSIVE HIT!
Turns out they dented Eastenders and New Tricks by the odd million. I see the share was around 20% again. Around 75% of ITV’s current output in 2011 cannot get that figure or more.
I think Wednesday will be the interesting night as BBC One is normally a quiet night for their primetime lineup.
And R&B has 7 players tonight – wonder if we’ll see the 7-3-1 change?
And it turns out it turns into a no choice game and must pick a box in the hope it is the right colour
Guaranteeing 4 players in round 8
I’ve watched large parts of the first two episodes on YT. (I am glad that somebody has uploaded them.) I look forward to seeing at least parts of the others.
The term “curate’s egg” comes to mind in regards this program. Too much time is devoted to anonymous guys and dolls saying what they’d do with a million pounds, or lamenting the fact that they will not be going onward in the quest for the mega-quid. The little bios of the Final Eight get tedious as well–although that would seem to be the opportune time to try to put human faces on what have been, up to that point, regional accents.
The stunts are, generally speaking, quite well staged. One, a competitive tightrope walk, looked like it would not be out of place as an Adventure on and in “Fort Boyard”. “Daredevil Limbo” (on the premiere) was also a cleverly-thought-out game.
Once it gets down to two players, things will get a little bit samey, as it’s always “Duel”, followed by the Wheel. That’s to be expected once the final game is on, but it’s a minor niggle to see that happen at the head-to-head.
The musical number is pure padding, and does not even have the advantage of distracting the audience from a studio change (which one presumes is the reason that the German “Schlag des Raab” has such numbers slotted in.)
There has been speculation as to whether there would be an attempt made to do a Yank version of “Red or Black”. Simon Cowell is a big name over here, but right now, he is probably more concerned with whether American audiences can figure out “The X Factor”, and can differentiate it from the multitude of other talent shows on various networks. Once that is settled, and especially if “The X Factor” is a hit here, then he can see if he can push “Red or Black” on unsuspecting Yanks.
Can’t help thinking that Cowell must be saying “No publicity is bad publicity” to himself over and over again, until eventually he believes it.