In case you missed it, Endemol are currently hawking round a format called The Code at MIP which we talk about in the Revolution thread (sorry). It struck me as a pretty unexciting mish-mash of old ideas (it’s ‘half questions’ + ‘random numbers’ + ‘simple logic puzzle’), it struck me that if Endemol have an idea, they’ll keep putting it in things decades later until they find something that might stick. It feels like this is a format that somebody pulled the lever on some sort of Endemol slot and that’s what came up.
So with that in mind, I’m going to pull the lever and I’ve come up with “Cash Bash” (“half questions” + “multiple choice quiz minefield” + “comedy obstacles”). This is how I envisage it working:
- There is a path above a load of water consisting of 30 panels in 3×10 formation. To win a million pounds or whatever they have to get to the end of the path.
- Half a question is asked and three possible answers are given – A, B or C, relating to the three panels in front of them. They pick an answer by stepping on a panel. If they are right, that’s good, if not a massive padded bar spins round and knocks them into the water.
- Profit.
What are you going to get?
“Big Numbers” (estimated guess questions + random numbers + backstabbing) :
* Four contestants start with a million pounds each. (This got devised after Revolution.) They face the same estimated guess question.
* Whoever is furthest out loses money at a rate of (error margin on question * value chosen from digital money grid a la TIOLI).
* Whoever is the closest gets to steal money from someone of their choice.
* The last two players play the Prisoner’s Dilemma for their combined pots.
It’s the Shafted/Million Pound Drop/DoND/Guesstimation hybrid EVERYONE wanted to see!
What fun! I’ve got…
“constructed reality” + “gratuitous meanness” + …er, a lemon?
“It’s Funny Because It’s Not You”
* Minor celebrities move into a house in terrible condition, with a live web stream available 24/7.
* The celebrities take on stunts and dares. Theoretically these have the hilarity and invention of the Big Red Balls but in practice they resort to just disgusting and hurting the celebrities in short order.
* Vote at a pound a time to vote people to be safe from elimination and then vote again to decide who wins the giant mystery prize!
* Which is a lemon.
OH WAIT I HAVE A NUDGE! ER…
… AUTO-NUDGE! …
* Minor celebrities move into a house in terrible condition, with a live web stream available 24/7.
* The celebrities take on stunts and dares. Theoretically these have the hilarity and invention of the Big Red Balls but in practice they resort to just disgusting and hurting the celebrities in short order.
* Vote at a pound a time to vote people to be safe from elimination and then vote again to decide who wins the giant mystery prize!
* Which is a bar.
My go just gave me Steve Jones pointing at things and saying “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen!” I suspect the slot machine may be broken…
My go gave me two Prisoner’s Dilemmas + Danny, the 25 year old media exec from Essex with shit hair.
Does anyone have a quid I could borrow?
Wasn’t there an episode of South Park a few years back when manatees were writing the jokes on Family Guy by just selecting giant balls/orbs from a tank? I almost feel like that’s what’s going on here. They will make something work or they’ll attempt it so much that you just have to accept it or it’ll never go away. I accepted Cash or Trash. Now leave. Please.
Spot on. It was a two parter called Cartoon Wars. Funny enough it was repeated on Comedy Central UK earlier this week.
Let’s see…
“Don’t Bug The Bear” (fancy robotic mascot + guesstimation questions + laughing at people in pain + Prisoner’s Dilemma)
* 2 contestants stand at the end of a 50 space long track, at the other end of which is a robotic bear.
* They get a guesstimation question, and have to lock in an answer after much debating and blatant In It To Win It-style padding.
* For each number they’re off, the bear moves one space towards them.
* If after 10 question the bear hasn’t reached them, they are given 24,000 pounds for each space away from the end they are, but in a dramatic and completely unexpected twist have to play “Honey or Bees” to determine who the prize fund goes to.
* If the bear ever reaches them, they are mauled to death as a bloodthirsty audience laughs uproariously at the carnage.
Bit complicated, but I think this could work well on primetime ITV.
You laugh, but there’s an actual format called Crazy Cow that involves people being pushed offstage by a mechanical cow. It’s not Endemol, but look it up on C21.
It’s also a great way to give Ratings Bear the ratings he truly deserves.
…Is it bad that I would happily watch it?
Why do I suspect Jeremy Kyle would be hosting this one as well? Or I suppose he could be the bear…
Well there was that judge that called his show human bear-baiting…
Prisoner’s Dilemma + Prisoner’s Dilemma + …
…come oooooonnnnnnn jackpot…
…Prisoner’s Dilemma! DINGDINGDINGDING!
The imaginatively titled “Prisoner’s Dilemmas” – set in Strangeways, actual inmates are given the chance for a reduced sentence. Tasked with giving advice to members of the public with dilemmas (get it?), their efforts are judged by Denise Robertson of This Morning, Deidre Sanders of The Sun’s Dear Deidre, and a weekly special guest judge (week 1’s guest is John Barrowman!). But, will the final two share or shiv?
And I’ve got… “incumbent’s advantage” + “recruitment” + “mediocrity”. Nasty.
“Be the Best”
Four people take part in a job interview. Also competing is an established industry professional, whose identity is not known to the interviewers. The winner is the person whose performance is closest to the established professional, but is not better than theirs. Contestants need to be the best, but not to beat the best. The first episode’s established professional is George Lamb, and the winner hosts the other shows. (Blast.)
*pulls the lever*
I’ve got… “luck-heavy game” + “gratuitous stalling” + …
…
…
Come on already, what’s the third?
…
…
Argh, can we please get on with it already?!
…
(3 minutes later)
… and “Prisoner’s Dilemma”.
Let’s see:
Title: “Steal…or…No… We’ll be right back after these messages. … Before the break: ‘Steal…or…No…’ Welcome back. …Steal.”
* Two-player Deal or No Deal: 24 boxes, two players each pick one, then start opening them up. Both get the same offers, but each can take it individually and bail out.
* Then at the very end, their winnings are pooled and they play the Prisoner’s Dilemma to split or steal it.
* The show…will be presented…by William Shatner.
Sorry to crash the thread, but there’s a few things broken about the Code’s end game.
The main one is that if you actually get a lot of lucky digits in the right places, the game is – bizarrely – HARDER to win because they force you to keep correct numbers in the right places. If you got, say, _789 straight off, you only have three chances to guess the final digit.
Another downer is that often by the third guess there is no tension to whether you’ve won or not, since it often becomes patently obvious (i.e. you’ve got 2 correct digits and 2 digits in the wrong place).
The web page now works for standard web browsers, by the way.
Interesting (and don’t worry about crashing the thread), I had never really considered the maths of it, only I was regularly at the point where my odds of winning came down to picking one of two or three digits.
Walks up to the machine, heafty yank of the leaver and ..
clank, clank, clank, clunk…dingal-linga-ling..
Blatant rip-off of another companies format + bog standard mutiple choice quizzer + Minor reworking of two Endemol formats + Prisoner Dilemma =
THE BUS JOB
A large bus/coach with 35 constant recording cameras and mics starts from London with 20 people on it (all aged between 18-35), heading nowhere in particular on mainland Europe.
After every mile, ‘the voice’ (never seen) over the buses PA system asks a multiple choice question. Using a provided smartphone, the contestants provide the answer to the question.
£100 is added to the cashpot (which starts at £1000) for every person who answered the question correctly. Answer a question wrong and you loose a life and are frozen out of answering the next question (that’s if ‘the voice’ remembers to tell those are frozen out before he asks the question) Three wrong questions and you are off the bus at the next service station.
(this is a concept of the format that isn’t fully explained to anyone either playing or watching until it first happens)
At the service station they are then removed from the game in a ‘hilarious’ stunt type fashion, (i.e catapulted from the roof, lowered into a paddling pool of custard from the top deck of the bus, give the impression they are going to be run over by the bus – all endlessly replayed from various angles)
Between the questions, certain ‘discussion topics’ are given by ‘the voice’ to the group, and cans of cheap lager or cider are randomly provided as a treat if the discussions turn out repeatedly good natured, friendly and boring to the viewer.
This is repeated with no variation, until there are just two players are left on the bus.
The Bus trip then stops and the remaining two are presented with two rucksacks each – one containing all the money from the cashpot, and the other containing the same weight of the cash – but actually contains printed bus timetable leaflets – Times or Dimes.
They then have a chance to unconvincingly discuss with each other which they are going to choose, and then pick one rucksack each.
Then, from wherever the bus stopped, they have to get back to a ‘top secret city of London location’ together using only £100 in used fivers given to them by the driver of the bus.
They have 24 hours to arrive back at the location and once back at the finishing point they open their rucksacks to see what rucksack they chose in a thrilling anticlimax watched by any remaining viewers who are still remotely interested (and Endemol Joe for who this show would be more a bigger tv exprience than the moon landings)-
and if they leave The Bus Job with a share of the money…
Answer, probably not.
Note – Halfway through the series – and for no apparent reason – a couple of WAGs, Cheryl Baker, Andi Peters and the deputy political editor of Sky News are put on the bus for a day to play for a charity of their choice.
In vision Host – Brian Dowling. ‘The Voice’ – George Lamb.
Narrator for the discussion bits – Marcus Bentley.
I’d watch that, although I’d change the title to 24 HOUR QUIZ BUS TRIP.
That actually seems like a decent format if you remove a couple of the more ridiculous elements. Set it on a double-decker bus doing one circuit of the M25 and make the questions every 10 minutes to make traffic jams genuine jeopardy if you’re near the end running out of lives. Whoever’s still on the bus at the end of the road split the jackpot equally between them with the chance of nobody winning it. Allows the contestants to confer about it to lead to tactics about whether to give the jackpot more money/get rid of people. Hmm…
If memory serves–and it had best not command–Iain Weaver has used a similar mechanism in some of his regular columns. He calls it the “format tombola”.