Don’t forget that lots of idle speculation can be found on this entry here, your comments on the reality of the finished product should go here.
Right, watched this, I’m writing this blind of your comments. Basically, most of the stuff I feared would happen happened, but at the same time I thought it was a better show than I was expecting:
- The general set is teriffic I thought. I like the fact they’re playing up a large tower and they can see the money tumbling beneath them. The spotlights work. I even quite like Marc Sylvain’s mood music, even though it is basically one note with some heartbeats over it.
- What’s the one way to PROVE you’re live? Davina the Talking Clock!
- I like Davina, but here she’s a but more gurn-y Big Brother than The Vault, unfortunately. But she is good at chatting to the contestants, telling them to hurry up and giving relevant facts at relevant points.
- And what of the questions? Fairly interesting, and very up to the moment.
- The players (two play as a pair, which I wasn’t expecting) are given £1m in bundles of £25k. They must answer eight multiple choice questions by placing money on the correct answers, splitting their money across answers if they don’t know but always leaving one option money-free. The first four questions have four choices, the second three three and the final question is a straight fifty-fifty.
- This is where the problems come in a bit – in the early stages, the contestants take more time putting money on the trapdoors (the set designer obviously didn’t consider how big forty wodges of cash were) than they do on thinking about the question. When a quiz becomes more about stacking and co-ordination than answering questions, you have a problem. I thought this might be a problem. It is.
- Each question is timed, the contestants have just over one minute to come to a decision and move the money. What happens if they run out of time before putting all the money on? I don’t know. Perhaps Davina will look at them a bit angrily. I’d have a hole to chuck the money down.
- If they’ve not put it all on one answer, and if time pressure causes them to pile it on a trapdoor without due care, Davina’s got to count it all. Which isn’t very elegant.
- Wrong answers are then “dropped” one by one in time honoured quite tedious slowly-as-anything fashion. I thought they were always going to drop the wrong answers without any money on first, quickly guaranteeing success, but to their credit they mixed it up later on.
- Are the questions difficult? Yes and no. I think they’re quite well pitched in terms of trying to find the correct answer – the problem is, there’s usually one “gimme” wrong answer, so it’s much more difficult to get knocked out of the game. As such, more people might get through to Question eight than I first thought, but as I first thought it probably won’t be with much cash.
- And what of that cash? Well, in most other circumstances, £125k (for example) is and feels like a life-changing sum of money. But it’s difficult to feel that way about it, as until the final question the money in front of them is basically abstract. If we’re meant to be feeling shock and upset when a couple drop half a million… well I’m not. And I suspect most people playing won’t either, as they’re mainly concentrating on survival. As such, I think it’s quite a decent game, but I’m not entirely sure it makes for a great show. The emotional attachment to the cash isn’t there.
- And as predicted, eight whole questions in one hour. I think it needs to be faster.
So after a pretty poor start I grew to quite enjoy it, but let’s be honest, you’re not getting the same feeling of excitement like the first time you saw Millionaire, are you? Well I’m not.
Tomorrow I should be able to play along on the internet.
“I immediately liked the fact that it was live, because as far as I was aware, I’d never seen a live gameshow”
The Vault?
Yeah bit of a lie though vault was 3/4 recorded – only the final and the viewer game was live
Well, in fact, only the “phone” part was live. The rest of the show was taped.
Someone answered before 🙂
The final in-studio game was live too ?
I think it would have to be, otherwise there would be some interesting legal implications of asking people to phone in at a pound a throw when there’s no possibility of being chosen.
Although, seeing as there was a fair bit of hoo-hah at the time around the fact that it was always female callers picked, maybe it was all a fix and Davina’s just let something slip by accident? I’m just throwing that out there as an idea by the way, I’m not suggesting it’s fact. It’s much more likely she’s just forgotten about it, seeing as it was ten years ago.
The Vault was well before all the hoo-har kicked in though, especially Davina’s time on it.
No no no, check your records, it was noticed that basically all the people who were selected for the phone-in jackpot were female, which raised a few eyebrows in certain places. Admittedly this came to light after Davina’s series, but that was a relatively short series anyway.
This show could be brilliant. But I fear people will get bored of it after a couple of episodes once the novelty wears off. A bit like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Well then… it isn’t brilliant, is it?
Did I say it is brilliant? I said it “could” be brilliant 😉
The National Lottery gameshows used to be live!!
Would anyone happen to know of a naughtystream for people who can’t tune in properly?
Theme music is reminiscent of The Games, do we know who it’s by?
Nice quick start – likiing it – i’m playing live on c4 site
Also, who’s playing along?
and its broken – yay
Works for me?
Working again – though now missed first question – i’ll presume its a glitch
Well there’s a question you definitely don’t see every day – in which city is it currently such and such a temperature.
Ooh, literal live question.
Very slow so far.
The pace of the show is awful. No need to do a reverse reveal to be honest.
That was me BTW.
I guess everyone else now knows just how slow game show recordings really are? 🙂
I like the time limits on the questions, and the fact that the physical shuffling of the cash takes up non-trivial time. It fills time far better than, er, not having cash to shuffle.
Haha, what noobs they are. Obviously Cancoun is warmer because it’s daytime there atm. Idiots!!!
Of course they’re noobs, they’re the first contestants on the first episode of a show. How could they not be noobs?
I really don’t like the pejorative use of “noob” in general. If you mean “unknowledgeable people”, say so, but I hope this is a place that likes noobs.
The set is pretty good and the questions aren’t bad. This isn’t a disastrous show. Not sure I’d go far as good, let alone great, but it’s certainly not disastrous.
Being retweeted right now:
“Davina: “The audience’s mobile phones have been confiscated.” So they can’t tell anyone how shit Million Pound Drop is.”
Just over 53,000 players online it seems.
Broken TV offers this: “The Million Pound Drop is basically a big money version of Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation’s “Chronoloco” round, isn’t it?”
And then there’s this, probably the tweet of the night.
“Due to government cuts the Million Pound Drop has been ordered to be renamed the fifty quid drop by the end of the week.”
They need to pick up the pace. They’re taking too long ‘Colour of Money’ style. It’s booring!
Another glitch on website – sigh
So those who are watching- you think anyone on this show will beat the Heads or Tails top amount won? (just over 100,000 IIRC)
I doubt it. The questions are quite tough (I’m down to under £100k already)
I’d cut the odds significantly from 4-1, but I reckon that on the final show – if there’s no winners up to then – they’ll make the questions dramatically easier.
That’s the odds I quoted on no winner all series in the earlier thread btw.
so 7:30 per question – make it three minutes I’d be interested…
Halfway through and I’m not feeling like I must stay on til the end…. how does playing with this much money look so dull?
Too many fantastic tweets tonight.
“Normally, Violence solves nothing, but it would be a pretty good start for the people on million pound drop.”
“Anyone else watching Million Pound Drop LIVE. Painful. These girls aren’t doing much to help the intellectualisation of women on TV.”
“Million Pound Drop the money itself needs to be on a drop so people dithering to answer the question lose it”
“Million Pound Drop might be the worst TV show ever created. It’s just Who Wants to Be a Millionair with trapdoors!”
“Davina we get it. Million Pound Drop is LIVE!!! That in itself is exciting but saying it 87 times in the first part is knocking my pan in!”
“Improvements for Million Pound Drop: Entire show should be Davina counting the money! “
The questions are well-set, and they’ve made good use of the live aspect in that respect.
And, erm, that’s about it. All the woefully predictable cliches – reverse reveals, after the break reveals, talking up the tension when there’s none there, pregnant pauses – hurt it, which in turn make the whole thing fairly tedious – four questions in half an hour, for goodness sake.
The piling up of wads on question 1 also looked ridiculous – and made the set looked badly designed. Which it isn’t really, although having a ‘security guard’ collect money bundles from what looks like a plastic garbage chute doesn’t really work for me either.
And over on Digital Spy, the abortion ad screened in the first break seems to have generated more interest. Could be a huge, huge turkey.
Davina isn’t doing a bad job to be fair – and I expected her to be the weak link in the show, not the pacing.
Surely the facts she’s providing us, like when Queen Victoria was born and when the Cabbage Patch Kids first appeared, are being fed to her?
That’s a given, surely? I certainly don’t expect her to be an Osman-like fountain of knowledge.
I was thinking more about her propensity for gurning and making weird noises as she does on BB in recent years. Almost had a moment of such a thing when she wanted to lie on the money and knocked some of it over!
Well that would be me wiped out –
Ditto. Never mind, it’s all different when not playing for real, etc. [/excuse]
Ha! Davina’s basically just told the contestants she think’s they’re thick.
The pop question caught me out as well.
Me too. Just thought it was a nice honest moment from the host 🙂
I quite like that the number of answers per question has decreased. If there are only eight questions and the eighth is two-choices, all-or-nothing, rather than eight plus a ninth two-choice all-or-nothing, then there is a nice feel of development to the show.
Honestly? I’ve enjoyed this far more than I thought I was going to. I think it’s a 4/10 show.
Incidentally, they don’t need to introduce a specific new rule to make the eighth, two-option question all-or-nothing; the “you have to leave one space completely free every time” stipulation means that when there are only two spaces, it’s got to be all-or-nothing in practice.
More tweets.
“I love it when idiots lose money on gameshows. That’s the only redeeming quality of The Million Pound Drop. This show sucks.”
“Oh my gosh those poor wags, how do feel? Never mind million pound drop was as bad!”
“Million Pound Drop needs a TV dropping on it. Long, overly-drawn out drivel”
“I’m watching The Million Pound Drop Live. It’s so tense, I nearly popped out a little Malteaser during the last question… :-S”
“Watching Million Pound Drop – Interesting to see people getting excited at “only losing £125,000″ on a question.”
Ah, see the million does fit if stacked tidily. Shame they dithered too much, though.
Opinions – The good the bad and ugly
The good
Its quick into the game – no sob stories here
The online game is a nice touch
The bad
Dumb contestants
The online game is glitchy – very annoying
The ugly
The pacing is so slow – i mean come 4 questions in 30 minutes
Overall
I’ll give it 6/10 – Ok but it ain’t the next millionaire
It’s no TCOM, but falls short of being anything memorable. As expected, there’s no motivation to tune in tomorrow to ‘see what happens’. I know what’ll happen, it will be a slight variation of tonight’s show.
That must’ve been Channel 4’s best 10pm gameshow in years. Well done everyone involved!
That sounds like something Insincere Dave off Digitiser would say.
Set: Someone should be shot for making those trapdoors that small. We watched the first question through our fingers.
Contestants: Hugely dislikable.
Music: Marc Sylvan at his worst. Altogether now! # Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #
Live questions: Only redeeming feature.
Contender for the worst show of 2010? I think so.
OK, I feel the need to partially defend the show. Anything that goes at the rate of 0.002222 (recurring) questions/second is inherently shooting itself in the foot with something large and spiky, so it’s clearly not a good show. However, I enjoyed the questions, which had a rather vibrant feel to them. The contestants were pleasant and did not annoy me. Davina was decent. The set is nice. The direction is reasonable; I like the split-screen camera angle. The gameplay is based on an adequately interesting principle.
Sucess Verzekerd, or however it’s spelt, would probably have been better, but this was just ordinarily horribly slow rather than painfully terrible. To me that adds up to 4/10.
I agree, the pacing of the show is awful and its major flaw – waiting SO long for the drop reveals, and revealing the answers first is pretty pointless and time-consuming. Four questions in half an hour is NOT acceptable. Davina was better than I thought she would be, but still a bit too excitable. The questions are well set and based around ‘educated guesses’ rather than being able to know the answer for sure, which of course creates the jeopardy needed, and physically moving the bundles created a little bit of panic.
I feel the show could work if they got in 15-20 questions in the hour and the contestants that at least a vague knowledge of mathematics; the fact is to survive, you would need to lose no more than 5.5 bundles maximum in the first 7 questions to leave a chance of taking a punt with at least one bundle on the last question, and the contestants currently playing were guaranteed to lose (and have lost) 20 bundles on the FIRST question, so basically they’ve got no hope…
The tactics are quite interesting, but sadly by the end it was all a bit underwhelming for me.
I don’t think it’s all that bad. They need to pep up the pace quite a bit, certainly. I’m sure they are well aware of that now after night one as the show is LIVE i think Davina might have mentioned.
The questions were reasonably good – an actual live question, excellent. They have to be careful the questions don’t all go along the lines of “which of these happened first/last” which they were tending towards.
I think it’s a solid B show, with the potential to get up to B+, A- or even A if it’s tweaked.
It’s not how well the first show does that’s important, it’s how the second show does…
On the subject of questions per hour, I wonder which gameshow of the past had the best question rate for the time it was on air? Maybe 100% with obviously 100 questions in about 24 minutes on Five? 15 to 1 also had a lot for half an hour, and Weakest Link probably has about… er, 120-ish?
Mastermind, I’d have thought. If Kevin Ashman can score 41 in a show, then there must be scope for 164 questions in 30 minutes.
And that’s 164 questions within 16 minutes of that half-hour. Taking the half hour as a whole, we can – at a pinch – add another four sets of three times (name, occupation and specialist subject)…
By no means record-setting, but The Chase was moving along at a nice clip yesterday.
“When a quiz becomes more about stacking and co-ordination than answering questions, you have a problem. I thought this might be a problem. It is.”
Not necessarily!
Well obviously 65th best gameshow ever Accumulate is an exception, but that’s mainly because it comes about by design rather than accident.
Trying to be constructive…
But seriously – how much rehearsal do you need to know that drop platforms not big enough for the money might be a problem. Or that sixty seconds might not be enought time to PHYSICALLY move that money. “You have to place all your money…” says Davina. Or what? They haven’t thought about it and the gallery are panicking – that’s what!
If you don’t pick a catgeory in time something bad happens too? What? Is this decision making process with subsequent penalty for indecision timed and properly adjudicated?Davina said she’d toss a coin. I couldn’t tell if she was being flippant. (There’s always time for puns – even during a critical rant)
Anyone that has worked in a shop and has cashed up a till is aware of an amazing piece of modern technology called money scales; a quick and easy way to give a digital reading of how much money has been placed on a platform. As opposed to Davina having to turn all Vorderman on us and have to do some quick adding up.
But they wouldn’t even need the scales if they dropped the live nonsense. It could be quickly counted during a filming pause prior to the reveal and edited out. What does it being live really add apart from awkward pauses and tension beds that can’t be edited to fit the beats of the show? What *is* the weather like now in Cancun? Who cares?
3 consecutive questions were ‘what was earliest?’, ‘what was latest?’. ‘who was oldest?’. Now if this was chronology themed quiz this would be all fine. But it isn’t – and no mention was made of such – so why so unimaginative with the questions?
There were other things too. I’m stopping there. It’s late.
Do come back though!
Of course the most fun thing is… they’ve got to make five more of these, and you’d have to assume they can’t really change any of it.
On the whole agree with Brig, but actually the pacing didn’t feel as slow as it should have IMO.
Also clear they needed to think a bit more about the basics – having an assistant on hand to return the money and count the cash would be an idea for example, and I also think it be good if the table was designed in such a way that any money that wasn’t on one of the drops when the time ran out that it was lost.
Time checks are always annoying – just keep it to the clock in the background – but on the whole not a bad effort.
Did anyone try the play along version online tonight? Might give it ago tomorrow, but the play along element is a bit flawed when contestants leave early as players can’t see how they’d have continued if the game had been live.
Does anyone know if last nights show is repeated as i missed it.
It’s not I’m afraid. Your best bet is 4OD or one of those naughty download sites.
We are much in agreement the pacing is a problem. Don’t Forget the Lyrics had a similar problem here as they always had the long pauses from the first song. They would be better doing what Millionaire does and cut the tension in the first few questions then bring it in. Have the first 3-4 questions have all the trapdoors open at once then from question 4 or 5 onwards to have one trap door at a time. Nice idea to have the options reduce for later questions but I wonder if they could be clever and have certain questions requiring to have two correct answers.
As for the theme tune. It’s basically The Games remix isn’t it?
2.2m for The Drop last night, apparently.
4 questions in 30 minutes? Is this a new cure for insomnia?
It is time for new quizzes to ditch the waffling over answers and the “we’ll find out the answer after the break” crud. Put a clock on the contestants and send the ramblers packing.
Three Little Words:
Ray Alan Dead.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment_and_arts/10147436.stm
i feel obliged to defend the show now actually. yes the trapdoors should have been bigger, but actually, the pacing wasnt bad, its designed to get through 1 full game per episode. Despite not being the first live game show, im sure its the first one to feature live questions, such as the weather one, which i found interesting. I thought the questions were well pitched, i thought davina was good, i liked it.
It was never going to have the ‘millionaire’ effect, because that was due to it being the first (proper) million pound game show.
it feels to me like a good lottery show. its almost certainly just the two category options, but it reminded me a little of 1vs100.
its designed to get through 1 full game per episode.
Well that’s a bit silly, because going by last night you’re going to have one leftover question every night now. Assuming they all make it to the end. Unless they make tonight even slower, and let’s be honest they don’t look like the sharpest tools in the box, do they?
I once said “Not the brighest light in the potting shed”, and I’m still trying to work out what I mean by that.
Potting shed > plants > bulbs > lightbulbs > brightness.
It’s a bit like Chain Letters, but with concepts.
Think Link! Commission x 92
I really don’t think the pacing was bad at all – it was all gameplay throughout the hour – no filler, and little discussion other than about the questions itself. It may only be eight questions an hour, but feels a lot quicker than something like In it to Win It where contestants have to spend half an hour dithering about the answer and relaying their thought process, even if they blatantly know the answer.
Ratings – as expected for the slot really – and as Brig pointed out a couple of weeks back it’ll probably be downhill from here. An hour earlier and they’d have probably found another million viewers.
I rekon by having the show at 9pm tonight would help since Tuesday is basically a day when there is nothing good on.
Talking about today. I predicted tonight should be the first episode of Millionaire to feature the new format but it looks like that will not be the case.
9pm tonight would put it up against one of the few things I’m actually bothering to watch on telly at the moment – The History Of Science on BBC Two. Though admittedly the potential crossover audience is basically just me.
My 2.3 eurocents:
Davina’s not the right person for this.
The drops were not ‘shocking’ enough – it needs to be something more spectacular – Downfall sounds better, but it wouldn’t be hard to shred fake money or come up with a clever magic effect that makes it look like the real money is falling down an infinitely deep hole.
Why not use 500 Euro notes and solve the bulky cash problem? Or just use blocks that have a £25k cheque in them?
Yes, it is very slow indeed.
The initial shot of the answer screens is far too weird and oblique.
Aren’t €500 notes illegal tender now?
No.
Legal tender but you can’t obtain them over a desk anymore.
Euros as a UK gameshow currency! Couldn’t think of a finer way to see the Liberal Democrats into government 😛
@Brig-
It got 1.9m actually with an 11% share of all viewers. It started at 2.1m and finished at 1.2m which is not good. Let’s see how it progresses over the week though before making any claims of success/failure.
@David Howell-
Those tweets made me spit coffee up my nose. Thanks.
Cheers Jellybean, that’s DigitalSpy for you.
If it keeps on in this vein, we could call it the Million Viewers Drop!
I expect Million Pound Flop. But we knew that already.
First night thoughts:
* One-line review: “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” meets “Russian Roulette”, and with the survival instinct of the latter.
* Ooh, it’s “The Games” music made substantially less Theakston.
* Blast, *there*’s someone we all forgot in the GS General Election…
* Liking the set, particularly the tower. Also the fake laser beams keeping the audience in their place.
* Other ways for Davina to prove she’s live? Refer to news events… other than those in the questions. I suspect the football and the spending cuts were in questions dodged.
* No bletheration with the contestants, let them reveal their personalities (or lack thereof) during the competition.
* Questions were a mixed bag: the live question and the one involving the contestants themselves were cute twists, but after that it tended to get predictable. Which of these came first / last is not necessarily a good question.
* Less impressed with the answers, and how there’s almost always one that can be ruled out with elementary logic (was television even invented when Queen Victoria was born?)
* Where’s the catchphrase? “You’d better start moving your money” is hardly going to make Harry Hill’s next montage, is it.
* Wodges of used £50 notes are a decent prop. Shuffling them around onto tea trays is not: it’s too cramped, there’s no good camera angle, we can’t follow at home.
* Confession: I was falling asleep (through tiredness and heat) and watched from the first commercial break this morning, at double-speed during the reveals. Gets the show done in not much more than 30 minutes.
* The great money drop: doesn’t quite work as a spectacle. Double hinges, like the doors on “Russian Roulette”. Or “Trapped”, if you want a moderately successful show.
* Counting the piles of money? Painfully amateurish.
* What would Tarrant do? “You’ve just lost £625,000” – is that the biggest ever loss on a British game show? That would play to the negative, and the aim is clearly to cheer survival, someone taking home £50,000 or so.
* There’s just a little too much delaying tactic here: eight questions in 49 minutes is too slow, ramping up to nine or ten may be the right pace.
* Overall… if it wasn’t Eurovision week, I’d make an effort to watch all six episodes live or on timeshift. As it is, maybe not. Can’t help but think this would have played better last week.
* Channel 4’s best 10pm game show since, er, last week’s edition of “You Have Been Watching”. Actually, no, make that two weeks ago, because last week’s was a bit poor.
* Extended review in the Week of 20 June, probably.
Anyway, Davina’s talking to Richard Bacon in today’s Bacon Bit podcast. (Link valid until 1 June.)