There is a new game show on Channel 4 after Countdown these days. It is advertised as “the game show taking the world by storm”, but even I don’t honestly believe the world is that stupid.
I first saw this show when we were in France (along with Interville, which was later imported as Simply The Best). It didn’t seem to make a lot of sense when we saw it in a foreign language, and it doesn’t make much sense in English either. Allow me to explain.
There are 22 boxes, each identical but for a number on the front. There are 22 contestants. There are 22 amounts of money, ranging from a penny to a quarter of a million pounds. Each player has a box, and each box contains an amount of money. An arguably lucky contestand is chosen at random (random being something of a theme for the show) and them and their box are called to the central podium, which also contains a telephone. The other players now play no further part in the show, except as box-openers.
The selected player then chooses five boxes at random (they are not allowed to choose their own box). These boxes are opened, and whatever amounts of money are written inside them are removed from a giant list of all 22 amounts. The list then represents the possible amounts of money in the player’s box, which is to say, their eventual prize. Then it gets interesting (comparitively, not actually): the Banker calls the phone on the podium.
The Banker (credited as “Featuring The Banker… as himself”) is a wholly imaginary entity. He is never seen or heard. It’s like watching the host (Noel Edmonds, of all people) have a telephone conversation with Sooty. The banker then offers to buy the player’s box, complete with whatever amount of money it contains, for some amount of money. Noel relays this information to the player.
It is painfully obvious that the phone is connected to precisely nothing, and that the offer comes through Noel’s earpiece. Everything else the Banker is supposed to have said is ad-libbed by Noel.
What Is Supposed To Happen Next:
If the player agrees to the Banker’s offer, they get however much money the Banker offerred and the game ends. The boxes are opened for the sake of completeness. If the player says “no”, then they get to open three more boxes, after which the Banker will call again. The Banker’s offer will constantly change to reflect the likely contents of the players’ prize-box, which in turn depend on the contents of the other boxes which have been opened, process-of-elimination stylee. Every time the player refuses to deal, three boxes open and the Banker makes a new offer. Eventually, if the player continually refuses to deal, there are only two boxes (and therefore two prizes) left — one which the player has and one which they don’t — and the Banker makes one last offer. If the player refuses it, they win whatever amount their box contains. If the accept it, they obviously get whatever the Banker offered for their box.
The clever tactics involved stem not only from the fact that the Banker’s offer might be much more or much less than is in the player’s box, but also from the fact that the Banker’s offer might go up or down, depending on what happens later in the game. It’s all terribly exciting.
What Actually Happens Next:
The banker makes an insultingly small offer and Noel uses less-than-subtle verbal techniques to make sure the player refuses it, because if the player accepts the first offer, the programme would only last four minutes. The player obviously rejects this offer, because they want to win a prize of some value. The banker continues to make insultingly small offers until only five boxes remain, by which point the programme has lasted long enough for it to be safe for Channel 4 to allow the player to deal, and therefore the banker then makes reasonable offers. Of course, nobody really cares by this point — we know who’s won, we have a good idea how much they’re likely to win, and there’s nothing they can do to change this amount anyway. Trying to string it out to any kind of tension is a waste of time. On my experience (two episodes) the player always deals in the end anyway.
This show uses every trick in the book to try and build the twin illusions of suspense and tension. It fails.
Noel repeatedly tells players, for example, to choose the boxes with low amounts of money in, because eliminating the small amounts will make the Banker offer more money. Obviously the player has no control over the contents of these boxes.
They also, having made the player choose a box, wait until after the commercial break to open it. The trouble with this trick is that nobody cares what is in the box. Usually it’s of incidental interest at best even to the player. They don’t win that amount. The banker won’t offer that amount. It’s just a number in a box.
And of course the players can’t see that the programme is stupid. They sit there being all deathly-serious about it and panicking and generally taking the whole thing far too seriously. It really is a miserable affair. It’s no Weakest Link, but it’s pretty dreadful.
