Right, seen this now thanks to one enterprising punter. What do I think?
- Guy Fieri’s quite good – more restrained and authoritative than I imagined he would be.
- I quite like the “60 Second Circle”, or rather the lights that surround it acting as a clock. I’m also rather fond of the large surround screen above the audience, especially when it seems to show THE APOCALYPSE just before each game starts.
- The biggest beef I’ve got with it is that, on the whole, the games are rather dull and I was bored about halfway through the first episode. They’ve been given some quite cute names (each game is introduced by a ‘blueprint’, with a cold VAL-alike explaining the rules) but the fact is that watching someone pull tissues out of a box, or try and nod so that a pedometer attached to his head gets to 125 isn’t all that entertaining, especially when you have no real idea as to how well they’re doing (man nods his head for one minute on prime time telly, find out how many he managed as a big reveal, which surely defeats the point of a beat the clock set-up).
- There is a money tree in effect ($1k, £2.5k, $5k, $10k, $10k, big jump to $50k safety level, $75k, $125k, $250k, $500k, $1m) and contestants are given three lives to play with. But they must decide whether to go onto the next game blind of what the game actually is (no winners this time on Takeshi’s Castle). For some reason the contestant is still asked after the $50k if they want to play on or not, even though there’s no real decision to be made. The games post $50k are noticably tougher than the early ones.
- That is not to say all the games were rubbish (I was quite enamoured with the “throw beanbags to turn the push lights out, being careful not to turn them back on” game, and a game where a contestant must sort twenty face down playing cards into five piles of Aces through 10s on five different podiums three metres away from the central table only holding one card at a time, leading to all sorts of amusing confusion as to which pile was started where). The best games could easily be adapted into something a bit bigger and more interestingly Crystal Maze/Boyard-esque I think.
- I also think that by and large the games would be fun to have a go at (NBC have the whole list up, in fact you can watch all the blueprints on there). The problem is that they aren’t much fun to actually watch.
- And this is where The Cube has Minute by the groin really. Not only is The Cube very stylish with the way it handles fairly banal ideas, it’s only when you stop to think hard about it you realise that actually it is fairly difficult to emulate many of The Cube‘s challenges in your front room. In that sense, it has an aspiration factor I hadn’t really thought about until this evening. One or two Minute games were basically from The Cube but in miniature and not very tense or exciting (look up Candy Elevator, for example).
- Minute doesn’t really rip-off The Cube‘s presentation style as much as I was expecting – it has a slow-mo camera (the ‘Power-Cam’) but that’s used for replays after the event, the games are shown straight with none of the camera wizardry. Interestingly they sometimes cut to ads partway through a challenge rather than just before it starts, although by ‘interestingly’ I mean ‘annoyingly’.
In conclusion then, not really worth getting excited about, and almost certainly different enough not to infringe copyright.
Edit: I just wanted to mention that The Cube‘s games are “tangible but abstract”, which doesn’t really add anything but does increase my chance of winning a Pulitzer.
I do fear what this will look like once they get past these first few episodes (because the smoke effects and the “game agents” don’t get introduced for a couple of weeks- these were test eps apparently)..
BTW, that French documentary on the Milgram experiment disguised as a gameshow airs this week..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/francetelevisionpsychologyentertainment;_ylt=AnsZutahvSn.JUrREHct4ywmWccF
Cheers for that, I think it might prove quite interesting.
I was expecting “Minute” to be Million Dollar Beat the Clock. I was not entirely disappointed. I am expecting “The Cube” to blow this out of the water, though.
That “60-second circle” would have been COMPLETELY original… if Russian Roulette hadn’t thought of it first.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0uLrmaLD0w
Ooh yes, good point of reference.
I got hold of the first episode of MTWI, and I was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed it and am actually looking forward to more. The games were of decent difficulty, and seeing as they use regular household items, can be replicated at home (except for the ‘yo-yo attached to belt and knocking over soda cans’ one, unless you have a rather large living room :D). Yeah, I have no doubts that the US version of The Cube will be better, but MTWI is more light-hearted and fun, and that sits well with me.
In fact, the “put the lights out” game can be traced back to a game in the Fourth Series of “The Crystal Maze”; a game that was featured in the Futuristic Zone, and one that flummoxed all who tried it.
One might accept the connection at face value, except that this would indicate that some other American was watching “The Crystal Maze” when it was on YouTube. And I thought I was the only one!
The one with the fifteen buttons? I think that’s a bit of a large leap to be honest.
Yes, the one with the fifteen buttons. Tap lights were not widely available in 1993, so the version on MTWI was rather simplified. But the same principle applies here.
Did we all see this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8571598.stm
Death by gameshow – interesting idea…
So what? Noel Edmonds once killed a man FOR REAL. Therefore the Brits are harder than the Frogs times a million billion, cheers.
Yes, but not on purpose….
At least I hope that man didn’t fall to his death on purpose…
People presenting the Milgram Experiment as being a shocking revelation?
I think the key point there is ‘being egged on by the host’ – I’d be interested to see if the game itself can be the ‘authority’ figure, which would need a fake hostless gameshow to check.
it is fairly difficult to emulate many of The Cube’s challenges in your front room. In that sense, it has an aspiration factor I hadn’t really thought about until this evening.
Has Brig stumbled upon part of the secret of Raven‘s success – after all, not many people have a raging river or a 30-foot high tree in their back garden.
Actually, is there a closer correlation between these shows? Contestants on The Cube start with nine lives, they win gold for completing the challenge, the challenges themselves are so simple that a parent can understand them, there are cute camera tricks employed, er, the show’s hosted by a legend of children’s television, er, er, that’s it.
I think a lot of successful shows (or at least, shows people have fondness for) are largely basically things you would not get the opportunity to do in everyday life, but think it would be fun to have a go at.
I think that you two are on to something there! This applies not only to “The Cube” and to “Raven”, but to “The Crystal Maze”, to “Fort Boyard”, and to other such series.
As for “Raven”, I’d like to see some good example of the show. Unfortunately, the BBC is quite tight with clips, and probably doesn’t like to see them on YouTube, despite the excellent opportunity for promotion that such listing provides. And BBC America does not run any of the game shows from either the adult BBC or from CBBC–more’s the pity!