8pm, ITV1
Matt Allwright challenges teams of two to enter a 26-room pyramid answering questions in each room for increasing amounts of money – £100,000 if they’re very lucky. But to keep the money the contestants must escape the maze by remembering every answer and their route.
I have been to a recording, I think is it quite a lot better than High Stakes that was in the slot previously, although I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of big winners (it’s the sort of end game where people are going to get stuck quite often towards the end), and I hope escaping the maze looks a bit more visually interesting on telly than it did from the audience.
Please leave your thoughts.
I’m actually looking forward to seeing The Exit List. I think it’ll be at least better than High Stakes as you won’t see people exploiting the game to just get to £25k and leave, and with any luck, it’ll rate better than The Plank Job 😀
At least this format does have a much more continuous risk-reward strategy, with many different points at which one can leave.
Hopefully, for the sake of viewer excitement, contestants will be just on the risky side of ideal judgment – that will translate into close calls on whether or not they get out. If contestants chase the £100k and end up with massive lists they have no chance in hell of recalling, it’s not exciting television.
Ooh that logo looks really nice. Much better than the fake-neon one for High Stakes that looked more suited for the front window of a kebab shop.
Music and presentation has a touch of The Cube to it, possibly?
Mentions about the music is similar to The Cube. The Exit List uses the same composers.
With any kind of memory game, one technique I learned is to memorise pairs of items instead of single items. So at the moment, I’d just picture Zippy dressed as Lady Gaga to strengthen that link in my mind.
Whoa, that first Panic Room really threw them. Having to remember that long string of letters will really hurt them should they try to leave.
Also, not liking that female computer voice. It’s too breathy and off-putting. Anyone agree?
I’ve memorised Lady Gaga wearing nothing but a Zippy puppet. Whatever works…
Yeah, that’s better, actually… *embarrassed laugh*
Don’t give her ideas.
OK, that break bumper announcer got it wrong “24 rooms, 1 designer”. It’s 26 rooms now…
Very cube-y (cubic?) presentation, quite minimalist but I think it works. I like the fact that Matt’s gantry is the same shape as the rooms on the floor.
I like the fact that you don’t know who will be remembering the list until you decide to go back – you have to both memorise the list.
The panic room works well.
Found the pace so far a little slow, I’m hoping it will improve and there won’t much more “which way shall we go” or “shall we stay or shall we go” dithering.
Also, SPOILERS in the “After the break” segments. Eurgh.
Give them buttons on the screen!
Also, that money isn’t locked in the vaults in any way, is it. It’s just a drawer painted silver. Looks tacky, needs to open automatically.
I’m liking the direction – it’s pretty zippy, not a lot of faffing about.
Only negatives:
– The choice of subjects seems to slow things down unnecessarily. Surely it would be better to just have pot luck?
– The Panic Rooms are amazingly harsh.
– The vaults are a bit rubbish.
– It’s a shame the maze is quite so stark and featureless, though I get the reason for it.
Sadly, this might be of those shows where these small negatives stop it being a hit.
I’m not sure I’d say it was particularly zippy – four questions and a panic room in twenty minutes. Also repeating the list each time gets annoying.
But I think it’s a good concept that’d make a great speedy endgame.
Also, SPOILER WARNINGS if you Google The Exit List. So don’t.
I don’t know who did the soundtrack, but I approve of its Danny Elfman quality.
The game is unfortunately slower than it could be I feel. I think the show is fantastically shot though given the way the maze works and the amount of space they have to cover. I like the panic rooms although they do feel a touch on the difficult side, that first one did at least.
I remembered about half of them, it’s obviously not meant to be easy, but think they got quite flustered.
Difficulty of Panic Rooms depends on how much you like the subject, I think.
Looks like it depends what kind of panic room too. That flower one was harder than the currency one, you had both the picture and the country to help with the latter.
As I rather expected, the contestants (well, in this case the bloke specifically) are caught chasing the £100k not realising they’re probably not going to get it.
I’d have turned back at £15,000 with hardly any hesitation.
Easiest bailout ever. To make that even EV+ she has to have a >22% chance of getting out. I wouldn’t even give her a 2.2% chance.
Taxi for Mr Howell…
I actually walked upstairs after they got the £10k question wrong and turned the telly off. The last time I gave up on an episode of a game show thinking it was all over was the first £100k box win on DoND.
Can’t help but think that I’d enjoy it more if there were 2 games per show or carryovers. There’s a good show there, just a bit too much padding.
She was using the Link System there. 1 is Gun, 2 is Shoe, 3 is Tree etc. then putting each set of answers on those pegs. Hence that bit about “Seven is Heaven…”
Bit frustrated by that show. So many things they’ve got right but so many flaws (most of which are easily ironed out) that are going to stop this being a hit. The bit about requiring the guy to act at the end was the worst error. You should never ask contestants to do that.
Matt’s good, game’s sound, but it needs to be faster and I’m not convinced it was all that exciting really. Which is basically what I thought at the recording, so good-oh.
Well I now sound completely foolish.
Here’s how little chance I gave them (well, her): I read the spoiler, I knew that they’d air a great episode first, and I still gave her absolutely no chance. In fact, I presumed that the spoiler was a fake, and that Brig was deliberately giving a fake spoiler in case a real spoiler would upset the producers.
I saw that as twenty-two thousand times more credible than her actually winning the damn thing.
Forget the rest of the series. That episode stands on its own as one of the greatest game show moments of all time, and I don’t want to see anything else of the show for it can only pale in comparison to that.
I Googled “The Exit List” and the FIRST BLOODY ENTRY was “Couple wins on new show The Exit List” by the Liverpool Echo. I’ve learned a lesson today.
Much more promising than High Stakes, I think everyone is agreed! Matt’s a good host.
My thoughts:
Good core
Speed it up, stop dithering
Put buttons in each room to specify answers
Have better vault flaps
Stop dithering
NO “After the break” bits
No more dithering
Great set
Too much dithering
I liked the audio stuff aside from the main backing bed.
Did I mention dithering?
All in all, I enjoyed that more than I thought I would. Just speed it up a bit. 8/10
OK, time for my 2 cents’ worth, I think.
Pros:
The music
Decent difficulty of questions
Matt did a decent job as the host
Cons:
The female computer voice. I’d prefer to have the bloke for reading out the items on the list as well as the break bits.
Not enough questions, only 10 asked in a hour.
The Panic Rooms. Yes, they WERE suitably tricky, but the flower one was particularly harsh. Maybe giving them the initials of the flowers would have been better, seeing as with the currency one, they were given the country they came from.
The bailout option. Was it necessary? “The Memory Maze gives you £22,000 to bet AGAINST your team-mate making it out of the maze”. Will anyone take it? Maybe time will tell.
Well I’d have taken it without the slightest of hesitation so there we go.
It’s going to depend on how generous the offers are, isn’t it? If there were two or three comprehensive losses taped in a row and the other contestants saw them, that might change things. Conversely, if this was actually the first or second episode taped, then I largely suspect nobody’s going to take the bailout.
Just caught up on +1…I really rather enjoyed that. Have always wondered why Matt’s not hosted a quiz before, he’s one of the slickest, most competent presenters on TV. Music was really stylish, too, and nice graphics and fonts.
No mass backlash on DS (although didn’t seem like masses of people there were watching), and the Twitter reaction seemed to err on the side of positivity.
David (B) is right, though – felt odd to see the bloke asked for his best impassive face at the end; does the bailout actually add anything? And I see what Brig’s saying about the final exit lacking explosive excitement – I’d have had a time penalty for getting your route wrong on the way out (5 seconds, say, for each time you make a mistake) – which would really have cut it fine for tonight’s contestant, who went wrong the once.
I would argue that moving into an incorrect room costs you in time anyway, adding an additional penalty would seem a little overkill in my opinion.
Keeping the player who isn’t reciting the list in isolation would have improved the awkward part of making the contestant act. I generally don’t like the bailout option at all, it doesn’t quite seem in the right spirit in my mind.
It’s been beautifully produced but I think unfortunately it will fail.
Also, was I the only one who got annoyed by the SCS sponsor calling it ‘Exit List’ not ‘The Exit List’?
ScS also using the Bid TV auction theme for that particular promo, I noticed. Must be a widely-used production music CD..
I absolutely loved the show. I thought everything about it was utterly brilliant, especially the set and music. On the topic of speed, I guess watching American TV my whole life has corrupted me, because I thought the show moved at a perfectly fine pace.
I expected the Exit List to be ridiculously hard, but I found that had the whole list memorized rather easily, though I imagine it would be a lot harder with all the pressure on you.
Basically, if ABC doesn’t greenlight this, they’re idiots.
It’s not bad….The set and music are great. BTW Brig-the same duo who does the music for The Cube did this show too (Ken Bolam and Nick Foster)..
I like the concept in theory….the execution just seems a little off to me. The bailout option is fine, but I’d have it more like insurance instead or all or nothing- say tonight I would have said you can try for the whole 100K but it’s zero if you fail- but if you’re willing to play for only half the money if you win, I’ll give you 4K if you fail.
Considering ITV didn’t even give them a show page on their website as of Monday, I suspect they don’t have a lot of hopes for it, which is a shame…
Here’s the bio page of the person who does the Maze voice if you’re interested…
http://www.cassiusmanagement.com/media-entertainment/Kait-Borsay/
Honestly, I didn’t like it that much. The final was exciting and the doubt for getting the 22k or 100k was a nice twist, but overall, the game really lacked speed.
The setting was brilliant and nice, looked really well, but I skipped through parts because I just didn’t get the feeling to play the questions or try to remember the list.
Just noticed that the recording report says that if you get blocked in the back row you have to exit.
If that rule was in effect last night the show would have ended with the players winning absolutely nothing and not even getting to play the proper endgame.
I’m guessing that was a budget-saving rule patch from ITV after this game taped (and by the sound of it, this game had already taped when you went, Brig). That’s not going to look good mid-series.
I think you misunderstand – it’s actually very difficult to get blocked in the back row – sidesteps are always an option, but you can’t go back on yourself. So you’re only blocked if you back yourself into a corner.
Oh, I get it now – because you, by definition, always sidestep in the back row, and it’s only forward steps that get prevented by wrong answers. Hence the approach of playing for the corner.
Yes, sidesteps are effectively free but forward steps have to be earned, and you can’t go backwards or into the same room twice.
2.37m for this last night by the sounds of it. Which is a bit less than it deserves, but around what I was expecting. Was also the lowest rating show on primetime ITV1 last night!
More than High Stakes though, so that’s nice.
A pleasant surprise; this does a lot right.
The show looks and sounds great; lovely camera angles, and if the maze is not especially maze-y and the vaults not especially vault-y then it’s in order to make the camerawork, er, work, so I’ll take it. I love the background music; not yet an earworm, but it felt authentic. I particularly liked the rising scale when the exit list was repeated. The graphics package works for me; it’s all a bit Cube-esque, but sufficiently distinctive, and if this is the start of a modern ITV house style then I’ll take it happily. On a technical point, it goes to show that The Cube gets the kerning of the typeface right, in a way that this show gets it wrong – the gap between the £ and the 1 and the 1 and the next digit is very wide.
Matt Allwright sounds great and did a fine job. I don’t think he has the look but he does have the attitude and if you’re only going to get one of the two right then it should be that one.
The gameplay was fiddly in places and some of the rules feel contrived rather than organic – for instance, the whole “sacrifice your money if you get blocked in” thing. What would have been wrong with a straight 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 triangle, guaranteeing no panic rooms in the first 2-3 rows, a right answer permits diagonally forward, a wrong answer requires a move sideways or diagonally backwards if one is available?
The gameplay of the endgame was tremendous; the contestants are required to do something sufficiently original and genuinely slightly heroic, so you’ll be rooting for them. I am delighted for the (very likeable) contestants. However, the staging at the top of the lift is again very contrived; put the non-answerer in an isolation booth, don’t let them see how their partner did and make the “how did you do” reaction shot between the two of them completely spontaneous and transparent.
The pacing of the show… I’m not sure. It didn’t exactly feel slow, but it did feel a little bit same-y despite the evident sense of progression and the occasional breaks brought about by the panic rooms. The introduction of the rules, a bit at a time, felt a little clumsy. An hour may be more of this than I’d like to watch on a regular basis, but I’m not sure it could be turned into a truly balanced half-hour show without the core activity becoming too easy. Perhaps with quicker questions and fewer pauses at decision points it could work, though modern game shows have traditionally not done very well at enabling interrupts (in a technical, programming sense, rather than a “jumping in before the question is read” sense) and have to spell out all the contestants’ options at every point as an explicit decision with an explicit rejection.
The whole thing did feel a bit like a pilot that needs the rough edges smoothing off (and fingers firmly crossed for a tidied-up second series) but the core activity of the game really works for me. For me, it was an 8/10 episode, but I’d be surprised if that weren’t the best episode of the season, and it may just – just! – be a 7/10 show. Still, on balance, not a bad way for 2012 to start.
I think your pyramid structure is interesting, but would be quite difficult to film. Currently they can just have cameras at the end of rows and columns and zoom in. The way I picture your structure to work this would not be possible and would be incredibly cramped.
The pacing issue for me is mainly the faffing about in between questions.
I thought Allwright’s Chirpy Guide Bloke persona works really well in this.
No where near as bad as “Tuesday, 8pm, ITV” implies. Actually quite decent.
The pacing issue is the oddest to gauge, I think: Actual padding is kept to a minimum, and the 30 second clock helps that a lot, but the usual indicator gives 10 (8) questions in an hour, which isn’t good.
However – I’d contend that that’s because it’s a memory game with a quiz to determine what goes onto the list rather than a quiz with a memory game tacked on. Which means it’s a bit of a shame that so much emphasis is on question/answer rather than memory.
Because the aim should be to (if playing safe) get to one before the end of the row at the back or (if playing risky) the end of the row at the back – Though not to the point of abandoning all gauge of one’s own ability to memorise things – I think that the ideal way to play is to look at categories until you get to the relevent position of the maze, going for the one you’re most comfortable with – The back row is worth so much money per room, even ignoring the £100k room – that the loss of a few thousand for sidestepping early on your way just isn’t significant if you get there. It’s also interesting that continueing if you’re not quite sure of one or two items on the list (such as a harsh Panic Code) in order to hear the list again.
An offer to “Bet against your teammate” does give a poor vibe, yes. Perhaps a more positive version of that decision would be the option of gambling a safety net in exchange for an increase in the jackpot? Presumably to an amount calculated by the memory maze in the same way that it’s implied the offer is?
Has Matt ever done any other work for ITV? All his Rogue Trader / consumer projects I seem to remember being BBC.
And did anyone else start thinking back to the highly successful Nicky Campbell vehicle ‘For The Rest Of Your Life’ towards the end? Especially with the sticks at the end to decide who was doing what and then one of the players having to decide how much trust to put in the other player but nobody finding out what they had decided until the end of the game.
Matt has always been a BBC man.
It did cross my mind – thankfully The Exit List didn’t have anything nearly as annoying as ‘light it up’.
The Exit List, then..
Well, I agree with most of what has been said. We are lucky that it wasn’t an Endemol UK show, otherwise we would be left in the end game with husband and wife having to, no doubt having to choose whether to split or steal the £100,000.
Things I like –
Matt Alright. Nice host. Not his first game show he’s flown solo – he did a very watchable food show called Food Poker for BBC Two daytime ages ago, and brought a nice line in ‘this show is cheap and you know it is’ knowing raised eyebrow sarcasm to that show. Hopefully, we will see occasional flashes of that as the series goes on – rather than shouting at the players to take the money out of the plywood silver sprayed shelving.
However, Matthew, if you start to irritate me presenting then I’ll happily post what happened when you went to Southern FM to do some work experience on this very forum.
You have been warned…
Set – It looked great in SD, can’t wait to see it in HD. The colours matched well, and the close up the maze rooms didn’t look that cheap and bolted together in close-up shots. And nice to see the lift from Beat Me Up – sorry, Take Me Out, getting a different outing on another set.
Format – Hmmm, Ok until the contestants reaches the back row. I don’t see the point of potentially going through the rooms, trousering say £34,000 only to abandon that (and make the last 35 mins of tv you’ve just watched a bit useless) just to sniff out the £100,000. Just doesn’t seem right some how.
Then, the Panic Rooms I don’t think it was too difficult, it’s just that it could have done with going for increased items to memorize the more panic rooms are gone into – say start with 6 pictures increasing by two for every one found thereafter.
But, the biggest pothole is the ‘bag some cash whatever happens’ mechanic at the end. It’s ok for this series, but will lead to a few unsatisfactory outcomes come series 2 (which this show deserves – unlike High Stakes) because, now the secret of what is going on when the headphones are on is out.
You are going to get in the next series a couple who clearly have no short memory recall so won’t remember a medium length exit list, having collected say £20ish grand in the main game, who knowing the offer made of £4,000 for them will be a nice holiday, and accepted by their significant other will, in the first room say something random like “bongo sprouts” just to get the fall back sum out of ITV.
Plus, as DavidB said earlier – it’s not fair to ask a contestant to ‘act’ or look expressionless for the sake of a reveal. I was thinking it would have been better for the lift to ‘jam’ halfway up, so Matt could explain what went on on the balcony when they had the headphones on.
Good show though. I’ll be back next Tuesday. Strokes chin and gives it a credible 8/10
(Brig – tecchie question. I know they were using 1 maybe 2 hotheads/technocranes, but were they also using a ‘spidercam’ on a t-wire for those nice tracks across the top of the maze walls? It looked like they were. Ta)
Yep, there was a spidercam. I remember being very impressed at the recording because it was the first time I had seen one.
Stalling the lift halfway up to explain the bailout is a bloody brilliant idea, denecessitating an isolation booth just for the reaction shot.
I thought this too! Let’s not let the fake get in the way of things, it WAS set up marvellously. Money well spent.
Personally, I didn’t think they were using any cranes, I think all of the overhead shots were done from the spidercam or from fixed positions. There wouldn’t be enough coverage from a crane/jib for it to be worthwhile having it there.
The wide angle movement/small tracking shot showing Matt on the balcony, just after the main game had finished could only be done using a techocrane, as the next cut but one was from the spidercam.
There wouldn’t be enough time to wizz and reframe the spidercam from the other side of the studio in that time, and there was no heavy obvious edit.
One thing I didn’t notice – Can the contestants keep saying any old gibberish until they get the right answer during the exit? e.g. name a few singers until they arrive at Lady Gaga (with the loss of time the only ‘penalty’?).
And did I spot Lawrie Jordan of ex ITV Play fame as one of the producers?
Yep, but they can’t move on until they’ve hit something off the list or a complete set of answers.
We are lucky that it wasn’t an Endemol UK show, otherwise we would be left in the end game with husband and wife having to, no doubt having to choose whether to split or steal the £100,000. = comment of the year.
I thought this was a neat little show – should be plenty of combinations of outcomes to make a series, at least. Took a while to get going, admittedly. I was really loving the guy’s sombre reaction to her winning until I realised it was researcher-enforced. Agreeing with The Bodycombe on this one, as a viewer that sort of thing comes across as a bit of a slap in the face.
Hooray for Bolam/Foster getting more work though. About bloody time!
They really are right up there with the best, aren’t they?
“Hooray for Bolam/Foster getting more work though. About bloody time!”
They’ve been getting the work but not everybody has spotted that. They last worked on Derren Brown: The Experiments.
Interesting thing I’ve just spotted watching the ITV2 repeat. When the exit list was being recalled – I spotted a couple of shots taken from the Spidercam before the next shot was from the remote pan and tilt camera shot dangling from the lighting grid – without the spidercam getting in the shot.
I take it the one doing the exit list, is required to mearly retrace their tracks again, once the audience have gone home to give the vt editor something to work with for the final edit?
Mmm, I don’t know. They seemed to be doing *something* in the maze between the end and when we were let go, but it’s difficult to see what in the audience seats.
Incdientally, the fact this seems to have pretty universal critical approval after episode one is interesting. But I wonder if everyone will feel the same way by the end of the series.
I’m not sure if I’m getting over the dissapontment that was the Bank Job or if I’ve just been deprived of decent shows for a while, but I really, really enjoyed the Exit List. Could it just be that I was happy to see big winners? Time will tell…
I am *rubbish* at predicting how good people’s memories are.
He did really well. I guess a viable strategy would be to get the 4-answer parts of the list out of the way first, then the Panic Codes, then the single answers.
One thing I ought to point out that is the questions used are really decent, generally speaking.
I have a slight flaw in the back of my mind after watching tonight…
If they had gone along the back row until they found the £100k the bailout offer would be in the region of £20 – £25k anyway would it not? So there would be no real disadvantage in getting a few questions wrong to find the £100k then taking the bailout offer.
Guessing the contestants in this series were not told of the bailout ‘twist’ however it could present a problem come Series 2? (If there is one). Because couples could decide before appearing on the show that if their exit list was above a certain level they would agree with each other to take the more or less guaranteed £20 – £25k.
Although Matt did mention the offer is affected by the length of the exit list as well as how much money they have, which eases my mind a little.
As I think you’ll see, I wouldn’t get excited about there being some standard formula to come up with the offers.
Of course, the other point here is that it relies on them getting the £100k question correct in the first place. You’d think they wouldn’t want to make their top-prize question an easy one.
Just 2.02m for this last night. Woooow.
That’s low. A bit too low for my liking.
Last night’s was a good episode. Hopefully the chap will spend some of the £25k on earplugs. Sure his lady was as cute as a box of assorted buttons – but that voice got annoying very quickly – and got on the nerves of the sound editor in postprod, as he dipped the levels down on the list recaps…
Let’s see if ITV keep faith with it. The format has got legs. If there is a series two (which there should be) then they need to promote it both in terms of on-screen, and in the schedule. Sunday night 6.30pm in late September/October, anyone?
Oh yeah couple of things for internal bar discussion.
Would it be good idea to see which rooms inside the ‘maze’ are the panic rooms before the start of gameplay – just for the audience at home?
And would the back row of the maze be improved if there was the £100,000 room, and a guaranteed panic room lobbed in there as well?
1) Probably not, but I can see the case for it. It’s one of those things I’d definitely prefer as optional red-button integration, and ITV doesn’t do that anymore (did it ever?).
2) Maybe, although it’s possible that’s already the case. I’d personally prefer a mixture of five-figure amounts in the back row (and possibly the one before) but I expect that to be shot down in short order.
Millionaire had a playalong feature in the ITV Digital days in 2001 where you would answer the same questions as the contestants. This was brought over to Sky in 2002.
I’m willing to bet that the room three in the middle is ALWAYS going to be a panic room to make them veer of course, and that there probably already IS a PR on the back row (don’t forget, they make no mention of the fact they are randomly placed, just that there are five of them).
If you knew that was coming you could subvert it dead easily by sidestepping on the second row – a choice of categories, an easy-ish question anyway, and a bonus £2k. Plus you’ll get an easier list to remember at the end.
It’s a pretty overwhelmingly favourable tactic even if you have only half a suspicion that row 3/room 2 is a panic room, really…
The only two rooms I think would never be Panic rooms would be the very first room and the room directly in front of that, if only to get them started.
And if they complete a Panic Room, would they be able to skip a room when they work their way out (since there wouldn’t be any panic code at all)- or just tell them they can immediately move to the 2nd room at the beginning….
What? Nobody yet?
There’s only one thing keeping me from liking this series tremendously rather than just liking it a lot … and that’s the spoilers. As soon as I saw tonight’s contestants, I remembered one of them from the opening sequence in every episode and knew we’d have the “I’ve gone blank” moment.
I’ve taken to avoiding the pre-break promos. And to their credit, they don’t have any “Next Time” show-end promos like that certain other cuboid-ish show.
Also: Nice work on the music cues we got to hear for the first time tonight.
Oh I watched it, but didn’t really have anything to say other than “ooh that’s a long list” and “ooh, I’m sure I’ve seen Phil on something before”.
We didn’t get much of the music at the record because “it hadn’t been done yet”.
The other thing was the example of why you work into the back corner. If they’d gone into the back-right corner we might have had another £100k win – I’d have fancied their chances at getting a question on the FA Cup, which was the subject for the £100k room, and they’d have had a (slightly) shorter list.
Although they might have ended up facing two panic rooms along the way (one at the back corner next to the £100k, and one on the previous row immediately behind the £100k).
I’ve just noticed something
Matt claims there is money in ‘every vault’ but do the vaults in the panic room contain any dosh?!
Good question, don’t know the answer.
Similarly I don’t know if they’re allowed to move forward if they get ten out of ten.
At a guess, ten out of ten means you get the normal money for that row and can move forward. But it’s purely a guess, and there’s approximately zero chance of that happening anyway.
I recall on one of the first two episodes, Matt said “you didn’t get ten out of ten, so the route ahead is blocked”. Presumably that means if they DID get all ten, they could move forward. I don’t know about the money, but I’d guess they’d get the money too.
Great show, great music, great contestants, great episode. If one season is all it gets, it has already earned its blaze of glory.
And with the secrecy involved in the risk-reward decision it wouldn’t have worked with a second season anyway. Possibly even less than a second season of Fluke (and I largely suspect that it’ll be just as fondly remembered in our circles in years to come).
I’m a little baffled at that offer though, compared to the other ep where the £100K was in play:
ep 1- 10 rooms to get through in 100 seconds, 2 panic codes (one the full 10 elements, the other 4), and 2 sets of wrong answers- offer was 22K with 100K in play.
ep 2- 12 rooms to get through in 120 seconds, 3 panic codes (2 of them just a single element, the other 3), and 3 sets of wrong answers- offer was 17K with 115K in play.
It worked out in the end of course, but it just seemed a bit cheap last night even with the extra set of wrong answers and 2 extra rooms- the shorter panic codes and 20 extra seconds should have balanced it out. I was thinking 25-30K or so in that case because of the 22K offer in the earlier ep…
I think that Matt says something like “the maze has made an offer based on the length of the list and the amount of money you have in play”. Obviously the panic code complexity isn’t taken into account.
I think that £22k is about half the utility of £100k for me, and £17k is about a third as useful as £115k, so I’d have to give my partner a 50-50 shot at winning to reject the £22k, but only a 1-in-3 chance to turn down last night’s £17k. If I gave someone a 50% chance of doing what Jenny did, I probably do give him or her a 1-in-3 chance of winning last night too. Probably.
I don’t think the offer takes the time into account, otherwise it would be pretty much the same every time, given that the list length goes up proportional to the time. I’m also unsure if panic code length gets taken into account, given how it’s presented as the first person is exiting the maze. So if we simplify we get:
ep 1 – 10 rooms, 16 entries on the list including 2 panic codes, offer is 22k on a 100k case, or 22% of the case value.
ep 2 – 12 rooms (in rather a twisty turny pattern), 21 entries on the list including 3 panic codes, offer is 17k on a 115k case, or 14.78% of the case value.
I don’t know if we can assume the layout of the route is taken into account, but it might be, and it seemed a bit of a complex route to remember, perhaps driving down offer value?
I think you’re all reading too much into offers, it will be whatever the producer feels like offering.
And maybe this was taped before the first aired ep, I will give it that much…I just thought it was a lowball offer was all.
Yes, they’re definitely not airing in the order taped.
I know one of the guys producing this also did the similarly deserved-a-bit-better Impossible? on Five.
There are other alternatives for the discrepancy that just occured to me:
1) the offer takes into account the person who has to recall the list: clearly last night the girl who was left to recall the list wasn’t the one the pair wanted.
2) there’s a threshold number of items on the list that can hammer down the offer value, perhaps once the list gets to two columns.
A thought I had watching the most recent episode, if the pair get a perfect panic room, does that mean that nothing gets added to the exit list? If that’s the case, surely that would create a bit of a void when it comes to the endgame as there would be one less item than there are rooms they have to pass through.
I can only imagine that just gives you a free room. You’d still have to remember your way out, but maybe at the final (£1000) room you don’t have to say anything. Heck, for getting an entire panic room you probably deserve that!
It feels like it could have been a good lottery show. Two games an episode a la “Who Dares Wins”, slightly smaller maze, range of mid-low five figure amounts in the back row and perhaps some change to the final so there could be multiple series (clearly there needs to be some kind of out, but not giving you the incentive to just go as far as you can and then take the offer – perhaps pick one of three envelopes containing 0%, 10% or 20%, or have a certain number of wrong answers/list length mean an automatic defeat?)
As it is, it’s not something ITV can get behind and it feels like a terrible waste.
One thing The Exit List’s end game gets right (at least, for the first 30 seconds) is that it leaves you genuinely unsure as to whether they’re actually going to do it or not. The first few answers are always rattled off pretty confidently. It’s a shame that this quite exhiliarating portion of the show lasts for mere seconds in the whole hour. It would be nice if they could find a way of shoehorning this nice little source of excitement into several other places across the format.
Failing that, what might be quite fun would be the following: rather than offering a fixed bail-out sum at the outset, have an algorithmically-generated offer jumping up and down with the action (and visible to us too) that the partner has the option of locking in at any time, which, if taken, is revealed in a brief action replay after the lift sequence. To the layman, this will become “the Memory Maze will be offering you a constantly changing bribe the whole time”.
Perhaps jackpot/(numberOfAnswersRemaining+1), then multiplied down for every second the player is “off schedule”.
That’d work. I’d say it’d be a tad complicated but then again this show is far less intelligence-insulting than anything else on ITV1 at the moment.
Would also be tense because we would not only never know whether the partner bailed out, but we also wouldn’t know what they bailed out for if they did. With dramatic consequences in the inevitable episode where one person gets out with a six-figure sum and their partner took the bailout the moment it got to twenty grand.