Red or Black

By | May 2, 2011

According to the normally reliable @tvscoops on Twitter, tomorrow there will be some sort of press reveal about Red or Black, Simon Cowell’s new big money game format. This is what has been revealed so far, it will be interesting to see how much of this has turned out to be accurate and if anything has changed:

  • It’s going to be set in a stadium and will feature thousands of contestants. At one point there was a plan for some sort of pay-to-enter raffle to choose the contestants, although that’s gone a bit quiet.
  • It will be stripped across the week.
  • In each episode, several You Bet!-esque challenges will feature. The contestants must decide if the challenge will be completed or not. A correct answer means staying in the competition, a wrong answer means elimination. It’s sort of a bit like Ultra Quiz.
  • However, what we do not know is if audience members are going to be assigned a response or whether they will get free will. The object is that at the end of the week one person will remain. Forced responses will get the numbers down quicker but will give rise to the suggestion that the ultimate winner doesn’t really deserve it, free will risks not getting the numbers down quick enough.
  • Once the winner is found they simply have to guess whether a spin on a roulette wheel will end up red or black. Guessing correctly wins a million pounds.
  • Ant and Dec are set to host.

I wasn’t initially all that enamoured with it – sure, it’s likely to get decent viewers for the final ten minutes but with so many contestants it’s going to be difficult to care about what’s happening for the first X-1 days. However I’ve since come to the conclusion that if the challenges are interesting and spectacular enough then it might be in with a chance if it can look and feel like event television and not, for example, Famous and Fearless. We’ll soon find out.

Board of Not Much Excitement 1st-7th May 2011

By | May 1, 2011

Really really not much going on this week, although history fans might be interested to know that it’s Takeshi’s Castle‘s 25th Anniversary tomorrow, apparently. Challenge are celebrating by showing double bills at 1am and 5pm.

And after the Easter break, The Bother Series of Poker resumes next Sunday – details to follow, it’s not been created yet. Edit: Game 9 now created and details now up.

Saturday Night’s Alright for Writing 30/4/11

By | April 30, 2011

Gamey people are well served this evening (well I say that but…), things on tonight include Don’t Scare the Hare (5:25pm, BBC1), Sing If You Can (7pm, ITV), So You Think You Can Dance? (6:45pm BBC1), Who Dares Wins? (8pm, BBC1), Britain’s Got Talent (8pm, ITV1) and The Million Pound Drop – Live! (9pm, C4).

I know you like to talk about them, so talk about them here.