The Drop

Via two lines on Broadcast, then better via Quizzlestick, via The Independent, on shows Channel 4 have lined up to replace Big Brother:

Bellamy talks often of “the national conversation”. He hopes it will be reflected in The Drop, the first commission from the newly-appointed Channel 4 head of entertainment Justin Gorman. Ironically, this is a show made by Endemol, the production company synonymous with Big Brother. Bellamy plans to screen the hour-long show across six nights of the week. “It is live event meets game show,” he says. “I’m very interested in taking different genres and colliding them.” Contestants are given £1m, but must answer 10 questions or watch it all disappear through a series of trap doors.

The format, untried in international television markets, contains “a whole bunch of smart interactive thoughts, twists and turns” and allows viewers to be rewarded for questions which fool the contestants.

So it’s a live million quid quiz, not seen since the glory days of The Vault all those years ago, with added physical set element and where the people set the questions like The People Versus. I’m not generally speaking a fan of shows where you get a top prize that gets reduced as a penalty, because it gives people the opportunity to switch off if it’s not going so well – it doesn’t feel like risk even if they dress it up to look like risk. We’ll see.