This was show piloted recently as The Winner Takes It All and we were wondering who the “top comedians” fronting it were. Well I don’t know if they did the pilot, although it makes sense, but it’s Mel and Sue which feels like a bit of a choice for a big Saturday night entertainment show but we’ll see, I suppose it’s been years since their version of The Generation Game.
A cohort of 40 in studio players every week answer survey based questions to win high-value prizes, ending with one lucky winner going home with £1m by the end of the series. However, the show is promising to be HIGHLY INTERACTIVE and you’ll be able to play along at home for a chance to win the prizes yourself, including that £1m grand finale prize. Whether these prizes will break the curse of the interactive app, where you get all excited in week one only to not bother because it’s effort for episode two onwards remains to be seen – and as there are prizes involved, it also remains to be seen how robust it is againist possible cheating and system gaming.
It’s being produced by Hello Dolly of Limitless Win fame, but it’s being co-financed by ITV and the People’s Postcode Lottery. Not the first advertiser-financed show (although I suppose they all are), The Krypton Factor reboot about 15 years ago and Cooking With The Stars were made with Sage and M&S money, and the Postcode Lottery has sponsored loads of Dutch shows (Miljoenenjacht being the most famous one) so it will be interesting to see how fruitful this ends up being and how much more of a thing it might be going forward.
Mel and Sue *did* do the pilot, I’m told.