TV Zone reporting this evening that the host of upcoming ITV Daytime quiz Time is Money is none other than Sara Davies off of Dragons’ Den, a leftfield choice, but potentially quite a good one, in the past she’s certainly shown a lot of interest in the more gamey-entertainment ventures – this doesn’t guarantee she’ll be a good host but does suggest she’ll have a reasonable understanding going in of what’s required. Time is Money is a show where you start off with a load of cash and then have to answer questions correctly against the clock to keep hold of it which on paper doesn’t sound very new, it’s Quizzy Ant and Dec’s Push the Button, but we live in hope it’ll be a fun addition to the daytime line up.

Fans of walls of text will be happy that Jeopardy UK is back March 17th apparently.

Do you like DRAMA? Do you like CHESS? Well the dramatically titled Chess Masters: The Endgame (that’s an absolutely ridiculous subtitle for a first series, unless they’re also banking on it being the last) begins March 10th at 8pm on BBC in Only Connect‘s slot. Players will do battle across chess puzzles and it will end with a game of chess. An EDITED game of chess mind, it sounds as though they’re going to be showing the matches in full on iPlayer. But if you’ve just watched the highlights of as ten minutes a side chess game, and why would you just watch the highlights of a ten minutes a side chess game, are you really going to go back and check the whole thing out afterwards? Basically it feels as though this really ought to be a cheap and easy way to fill an hour slot and they’re going to have to rush to fit everything into 28 minutes. As ever, we hope the swing connects but we live in fear.

Finally Davina’s doing Stranded on Honeymoon Island, people who have never met each other marry and then have to survive living on a desert island. It’s Married At First Sight On A Desert Island. I get why the BBC are trying it, MAFS is a Channel 4 sized success on E4, but you know how some things just don’t feel very BBC? I fear this will end up being one of them.

This looks like it might be quite fun, Million Dollar Secret coming to Netflix from March 23rd sees twelve people rock up at an estate, each one given a box – 11 are empty, one contains a million dollars which they can keep if they can keep it a secret. So far, so Fortune Hotel. Different is that there are challenges that, if completed, give away clues to the identity of the fortune holder (which they can sabotage), and there will be vote eliminations throughout, presumably the money gets reallocated if the holder of the million dollar box is eliminated. Trailer looks like lots of over-emoting Americans, but Serofinowicz under-cutting that by playing the host role amusingly seriously. Challenges look big scale.

My issue with ‘clues to an identity of a player’ formats is that you can never tell going in how well they’ve been calibrated – how well you do is only so much in your own hands, whether you win or lose is entirely down to how generous and cryptic (or not) the producers are and how satisfying (or not) a solve is. Still, though.

In the latest example of the brand name doing a lot of heavy lifting, prepare yourselves for the Race Across The World Experience: London. Prepare to live out everyone’s favourite bit of the RATW format: the bit where they’re following instructions from their GPS device to get to the hotel. Will your relationships survive? Will you lose your passport on a bus? Will you have to work in a bar to earn a couple of quid?

The race takes participants on a 4-5 km mission through the capital, typically spanning 2-3 hours. Players will pass through key partner venues, including renowned pubs, cultural hotspots, or famous landmarks, each serving as a ‘checkpoint’ where teams must solve escape room-style puzzles. These puzzles will guide them toward the next leg of the race, offering clues that unveil new parts of the city, “all while providing a true taste of London’s hidden gems.” (Quote from Televisual)

It’s basically any citywide treasure hunt but possibly with higher production values. What it isn’t really is Race Across the World.

I’ve had an message from Phil Stone who does Youtube quizzes who has a new format he’d like you to know about, a Bamboozle-esque experience called 50/Fifty Interactive Challenge. It’s probably not going to be winning awards for presentation any time soon, but I thought the experience was compelling enough to give it a shout-out – basically in each round you get a number of 50/50 questions – eight (easy) initially, then four (harder), then two and one final question, to progress to the next round you’ve just got to get half or more of the questions correct. Such is the limitations of Youtube that you’ve got to keep your own score and click on the relevant video at the end of the round to fail or continue, so basically you’re on your honour.

Doing This Sort Of Thing on Youtube is a pretty laborious and thankless task – you don’t even have the basic functions of a DVD player to keep score or anything really, as we saw with The AI Games last November, something as slick as that still required almost 30 separate videos and that was just for a game with effectively three questions in it – you have to think about “what does doing this using Youtube improve upon” if you want this sort of thing to blow up really.

Ooh, fun, keep Saturday 1st March free for a full day of live and interactive quizzing courtesy of Royal Flush and his fifth anniversary Game Night on Twitch that you’ll be able to play along with on your phone/second browser window. Normally his nights run from Saturdays from 8pm, this one’s from 10am going through to midnight (although my money’s on at least a two-hour overrun so bring snacks). There’s something for everyone (through accident or design, it looks the ones in dark blue seem to be the more hardcore formatty quizzes, the ones in green a bit lighter and chattier (Edit: I’ve just been told they’re “guest games” – and he has landed some proper celebs for some of these before), the turquoise ones are games that run automatically so Ben have a break presumably).

We’re normally about on a Saturday evening when we’re able, we will look forward to joining in with some of these. Five years of this sort of thing! Incredible.