The advert for Genius Game looks extremely good

By | April 10, 2025

Looks like we’re getting many of the hits, the Zombie Infection game, what I originally thought was Middle Race but might on closer inspection be actually be Scam Horse Race (with some other animals), elements of some sort of flash-forward/flash-back at the end, phwoar at the set (although it does look, dare I say, a bit more cramped than the original).

Our season commentaries for the original seasons of The Genius a decade ago are still up on our Specials Board, if you are that way inclined. We will inevitably be chatting about this and other Brain Survival Spring games in the Discord under #geniuschat.

It’s Brain Survival Spring

By | April 9, 2025

Well fans of the genre are about to be spoilt – already we have the surprisingly good LG Genius corporate rip-off Life’s Game on Youtube, adverts for ITV’s Genius Game have started going out – rumours suggest an April 30th start but we’ll see and this morning the trailer and date for Devil’s Plan 2: Death Room on Netflix has dropped – May 6th, and it looks goooooood.

The Devil’s Plan is a kind of legally distinct sequel to The Genius, made by the director of the original and some of the staff. The first series had lots of great moments, even if it was sometimes a bit more ponderous. And now it looks like we’re going to have Genius vs Devil’s Plan at the same time, which we wondered might happen when we knew DP2 was Q2.

I Want To Break Free

By | April 2, 2025

Got To Get Out is the new Glenn Hugill produced show for Hulu starting next week (so no idea if this will be officially viewable in the UK anywhere) where a mixture of reality celebs and non-celebs try and escape a house as a money clock counts up to a million dollars. It looks quite fun from the trailer, although the trailer also details a major spoiler which suggests episode 3/4 will probably be worth a watch so you might as well not bother with any of the other ones. Also it occurs the reason it looks quite fun is because it was quite fun when it was basically Jailbreak with Craig Charles on Channel 5 about 25 years ago.

Know Where To Hide: Wie niet weg is…

By | March 28, 2025

Here’s some unexpected fun for the weekend, and thanks to Nico W on the Discord to alerting us to it – it’s Dutch Big Money Celebrity Sardines on Amazon Prime and it’s Very Much The Sort Of Thing We Like. Nine Dutch celebs travel around various Dutch landmarks on a bus playing Sardines for €18,000. One person is picked at random on an extremely whizzy wheel (immediately one of the all time great gameshow props, I reckon) to go and hide somewhere on the location, the other contestants get 90 minutes to find them, and if they do find them they have to hang out in the same space until the clock runs out. If *everybody* finds the Hider, the Hider is eliminated. If not everybody finds the Hider then the Hider picks someone who didn’t find them to eliminate. There are added complications – there’s a currency called Triangles which can be spent to increase your chance of becoming the Hider or to buy various advantages, at various points during the Hunt special rooms open up offering risky rewards via mini-challenges and decisions. Hunters earn Triangles by finding the Hider, but they earn more the fewer people find them. Sometimes the Hiders haven’t thought about the implications of the space they’ve chosen to hide.

It’s decently entertaining and at around 45 minutes an episode (six episodes as far as I know) doesn’t outstay its welcome – it’s sort of a bit like Bother’s Bar favourite Run For Money except without the running or indeed much money but the location scouts have done a good job of finding decently sized buildings which are interesting and have lots of potential hiding spots. Stylish graphics. English subs are available. My one criticism is then “next time” bits give away a bit more than you’d really like.

Postcode Loterij Win Win

By | March 26, 2025

This was show piloted recently as The Winner Takes It All and we were wondering who the “top comedians” fronting it were. Well I don’t know if they did the pilot, although it makes sense, but it’s Mel and Sue which feels like a bit of a choice for a big Saturday night entertainment show but we’ll see, I suppose it’s been years since their version of The Generation Game.

A cohort of 40 in studio players every week answer survey based questions to win high-value prizes, ending with one lucky winner going home with £1m by the end of the series. However, the show is promising to be HIGHLY INTERACTIVE and you’ll be able to play along at home for a chance to win the prizes yourself, including that £1m grand finale prize. Whether these prizes will break the curse of the interactive app, where you get all excited in week one only to not bother because it’s effort for episode two onwards remains to be seen – and as there are prizes involved, it also remains to be seen how robust it is againist possible cheating and system gaming.

It’s being produced by Hello Dolly of Limitless Win fame, but it’s being co-financed by ITV and the People’s Postcode Lottery. Not the first advertiser-financed show (although I suppose they all are), The Krypton Factor reboot about 15 years ago and Cooking With The Stars were made with Sage and M&S money, and the Postcode Lottery has sponsored loads of Dutch shows (Miljoenenjacht being the most famous one) so it will be interesting to see how fruitful this ends up being and how much more of a thing it might be going forward.

Show Discussion: Million Dollar Secret

By | March 25, 2025

Three eps on Wednesdays for three weeks from March 26,
Netflix

12 people rock up at Peter Serafinowicz’s mansion and each shown to a room, and inside each room a box, and inside one of the boxes one MILLION dollars. That’s for that player to take away provided none of the other contestants suspect them of having it and eliminating them. To help the contestants work out who is the secret millionaire, tasks are set, the winning of which earns clues to the millionaire’s identity. It sounds like there’s a Round Table and at the end of each episode someone gets accused and eliminated, the money being reassigned if the millionaire gets caught presumably.

It’s Fortune Hotel…meets The Traitors!!! Although there’s no obvious signs of case swapping or murders. What the trailer does suggest is lots of overemoting Americans being undercut by Serofinowicz who seems to be having a great time administering it all. Probably there’s little here we haven’t seen before, but it still looks like fun.

We’re always a bit worried about shows where producers give out clues to players – where does the difficulty balance lie? How hard done by should you feel as a contestant by a perceived gimme? Is it just an easy way to get a favourable result? We’ll find out how fair it all feels by the end.

When you’ve watched it, let us know what you thought in the comments.