Tuesday-Friday 7:30pm,
Monday, Wed-Friday 7:30pm Wk 2,
ITV1

Well… it was massively successful for a long time in Australia where it was a daily show for about a decade until The Chase basically killed it off, it’s been on in many countries, and finally it’s here. And I’ve never really loved it to be honest.

Six people are randomly ordered with one of them in the Hot Seat at any one time. If that first person can answer all fifteen questions correctly, congrats, you win a million. However if you don’t know an answer you have an option to pass and go to the back of the queue, which is better than elimination by getting it wrong but depending on where you are in the stack only just. That’s because only the person who answers the 15th question gets a chance to win the money. Every time someone gets a question wrong the top prize decreases, and if the person playing the fifteenth question gets it wrong they’ll go home with £1,000 provided they’ve collectively at least five right but you won’t have much of a broadcast if they haven’t.

It has it all: thick people’s idea of deep strategy, a format that fits uncomfortably into the Millionaire formatting (“it’s the £4,300 question!” or whatever, you can’t take most of the money points home at any rate) but almost certainly wouldn’t exist without the Millionaire branding and backing. But it does have 15 questions against the clock, it is only half an hour so won’t outstay its welcome and it has got Jeremy Clarkson so it’s unlikely to be a grossly offensive waste of anybody’s time.

We understand 18 episodes have been filmed, we’re getting eight now and the other ten are coming later presumably. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Sunday 4th January 8pm then Sundays at 7pm,
ITV

Let me just take you back to three years ago, a few days after The Floor started in the Netherlands where I said words along the lines of “hey! This isn’t rubbish!”

Fast forward three years to today and the show has pretty much conquered the planet. ITV had a go at the “recognising things” genre with In With A Shout, Alan Carr’s Picture Slam is a 7/10 version of the idea that gets a boost from Strictly, but now with some slight tweaks that have been tried out internationally (i.e. some rounds are a bit different to “recognising things”, but don’t worry “recognising things” fans! Most of it is still “recognising things”) and now In With A Shout isn’t a thing any more there is room for the world conquering “recognising things” champion on ITV1 and they’ve even got Rob Brydon, and everyone loves a bit of Rob Brydon don’t they?

81 people (this series) each have a square on a 9×9 grid on the titular Floor and each person has their own specialist subject, and by specialist subject the categories aren’t so specialist you’d have no chance at them – and that’s important because one person selected by The Floor will have to challenge someone next to them on the grid on their specialist subject. A 45-second chess clock duel will happen – recognize the thing or whatever as fast as you can, a ‘pass’ means taking a painful three-second penalty, whoever runs out of time first loses and leaves the show. The winner takes the square to add to their territory, and inherits the loser’s category if they were challenged. Keep going across ten weeks until one person has conquered the entire floor and they win £50,000.

Which is a bit crap for a primetime show across ten weeks frankly – rumours suggest this was originally intentioned for a 6pm slot in the Spring but really it was always going to be more premium than that – it’s not a great look frankly (especially if it’s going to be leading into Limitless Win next week.) There are a few other question marks too – we don’t know what the incentives for staying on after winning a Duel are – the main ones internationally is that having the most territory at the end of an episode is worth a guaranteed cash prize (or sometimes the top two get to battle it out risk free for the bonus) – anything less than £5,000 would be a bit of a piss-take considering, and other versions give you an extra 5 seconds you can use if you win three duels in a row (fortifying your position), or even let you swap your category with anyone else on the board.

Nonetheless we’ve found the international versions we’ve watched decent fun, and it’s quite a difficult show to mess up at this point really – they filmed it on the Dutch set so they’ll have plenty of Dutch experience to go with it. We’re keeping our fingers crossed. Watched it? Let us know what you thought in the comments.