From Wednesday 23rd September,
Netflix

On paper this is a pretty perfect idea for an eliminatory reality competition seeing as the original Roald Dahl book is basically sort of structured a little bit like one anyway (Agatha Christie basically invented the eliminatory reality TV gameshow with And Then There Were None in 1939 – there’s no Cowell without Christie! Put that on a T-shirt). This one sees 12 golden ticket winners and their partners enter the chocolate factory where through tests of skill, cunning, morality and so on one of them will win, quote, “a lifetime’s supply of money” which has been left deliberately vague so could range from anything up to Squid Games Challenge millions in generational wealth to £10 a month for the rest of your life.

The set looks great, the idea appealing, but the voiceover likely to attract some attention – it’s an AI recreation of Gene Wilder as Wonka with his family’s blessing. Gene WAIlder, if you will. At the very least this will be an interesting test case on whether the public in general are on board with this sort of thing or not. It certainly feels like a choice, but if this flops it will be difficult to definitively know if that was the reason or not.

Let us know what you think in the comments!

Monday-Thursday, 9pm,
Sky One and NOW TV

Not sure precisely how much in our purview this is but seeing as it’s basically like a new version of Crisis Command: Can You Run the Country? we’d be remiss not to at least give it a mention as the sort of thing you might find of interest as a thought experiment.

The big difference this time is the people involved have, in fact, variously ran the country – the effective Prime Minister here is Michael Gove and the cross-party selection includes Nicola Sturgeon, Penny Mordaunt, Harriet Harman, Baroness Warsi and others. This claims to be a simulation of COBRA in the event of Russia attacking UK soil, based on a Sky News podcast of the same name. This was recorded months ago, but there’s a live show after Thursday’s final episode.

Probably not a great deal in the way of fun and laughs, but doubtless an interesting series if it appeals to you. If you watch it, let us know what you think in the comments.

Saturdays, 9:15pm
BBC1

John Bishop puts Francis Galton’s wisdom of crowds theory to the test as an individual attempts to answer estimated guess questions better than an increasing number of crowdmembers – 200 in the studio, in order to win a large cash prize.

We have a rough idea of what to expect as we had a mole at a test recording, and also the show has gone out in Germany where it flopped (Die Weisheit Der Vielen) and it’s sold to Spain although I don’t think it’s gone out yet (Los 200: Uno contra la masa). Our understanding – contestants answer several questions and have to beat increasing numbers of the crowd for increasing amounts of money. If they don’t win, the money rolls forward to the endgame where a single contestant will win it all or it will get split amongst the 200.

The 200 in theory stay all series although again if our understanding is right people can get replaced by being furthest away on a question, or the best player all episode can turn on the crowd and go for the jackpot.

It’s made by Magnum Media, the people behind The 1% Club, the executive press quotes seemed to suggest you’ll love this if you love quiz shows with large crowds like that is the appeal of The 1% Club. This does seem to be basically a format for John Bishop to do some crowd work, and there’s nothing like watching John Bishop in action to really appreciate the talent and craft. Of Michael McIntyre.

Anyway, let us know what you think in the comments!

Saturday (8:15pm) and Sunday (8pm) for two weeks then Sunday nights,
ITV1

Gary Lineker invites ten celebrities to get inside yellow boxes which will be placed before a challenge, opened, and the celebrities will quickly have to work out what the challenge is and then get on with doing it as fast as possible, scoring points based on position. There’s an individual challenge and a team challenge, and the lowest scoring pair of contestants will have to face off in an elimination challenge.

I’ve seen some Boksen, not the original Norwegian but another Scandinavian version and… it’s fine! And I’ve no reason to believe this will not be perfectly entertaining. Challenges in the original tend towards outdoors-y pursuits, but doesn’t preclude a bit of puzzle solving or unusual situation. It sounds a bit like this version is pushing unusual situations a bit more – there were poorly AI rendered logos for audiences required for a celebrity debating show, dance-off and soccer showdown around the South Coast floating about around the time of filming last year, but some of these things suggest a degree of preparation which is not really what the show is about, we’ll have to see.

The yellow boxes all lined up and arranged is quite a striking visual. This very much feels like the sort of thing that would have been a reasonable returnable hit twenty years ago but probably doesn’t have quite the killer instinct to break out today which is a pity but we are where we are. Let us know what you think in the comments!