You have to applaud the show’s production team, who’ve been talking it up on Twitter ’til the cows come home – even before the new series was commissioned.
Somehow, though, I just feel they’re trying to create a buzz that isn’t there. It doesn’t have ‘must see’ status, as we’ve already established.
The production staff at Endemol are fantastic and work really hard to make the show as good as possible. How can you complain about them trying to build a bit of buzz around the show? They’re only doing their jobs and doing a good job of it I think.
The production staff at Endemol are second to none. Sometimes they make an average format into a great one because of the hard work which goes into it. Endemol programmes as a whole are better than most other production company programmes.
I can’t let this remark of Joe’s pass without some comment:
Sometimes [Endemol] make an average format into a great one because of the hard work which goes into it. Endemol programmes as a whole are better than most other production company programmes.
It is possible to shine and polish a piece of rubbish so that it looks superficially attractive, but beneath the surface it remains a piece of rubbish. Inevitably, there will be great variations both in Endemol’s overall output and in the opinions offered by critics – I think “101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow [sic]” (RIP), “Deal or No Deal”, and “The One and Only” were complete wastes of space; other people disagree.
Conglomerates like Endemol have so many disparate production teams that we need to see the closing credits to see exactly who worked on a particular show. It’s not like the days when (say) BBC Bristol was a small and closely integrated group of people who would all work on each other’s shows. For that reason, I cannot honestly say that Endemol productions are better, or worse, than those of RDF, Talkback Thames, ITV, or any other large publishing conglomerate.
As for The Million Pound Drop, the refusal to consider contestants out of their mid-30s is no longer an oversight but a policy, and an annoying one at that. I can see a one-off Minor Celebrity edition early in the new year (two of The Saturdays or Andrew and Mario from the recent Big Brother feels like the sort of Minor Celeb) and that’ll be it. Allowing all-comers to participate would extend the run a little further; making better use of the interweb interactivity would be fab.
I was bored by this. I thought the first series was quite good but I’m not feeling it this time. Its the same show but I think it’s something which was good first time round for the novelty value but is now a bit boring…
Can we have some contestants over, say, 40 please? In the interests of saving money, we probably can’t. Otherwise, it was an ok show, production is good, but it’s not must-see TV by any means.
Just seen it on +1, liked the question that basically asked which place was furthest from London in the most roundabout way possible. Thought question writing showed more promise generally. Good live integration.
I still don’t love it, but I don’t hate it or anything.
There was a question which asked who was the favourite to win Celebrity Mum of the Year on Paddy Power (when any sensible person who wanted to cheat should have just looked on another bookmaker’s site)
A record number of players were playing online yesterday, over 100,000. The show has been such a massive success that Channel 4’s servers are finding it difficult to cope with all the traffic it has been receiving. That might be why you’ve had problems regarding the interface crashing.
If they’d chosen Film Memorabilia it’s probably quite likely they’d have been asked about the Darth Vader costume that’s set to be auctioned next month.
As it is, still nothing’s been given away yet this series…
Personally, I think that last sunset question was ambiguous. They ought to state they are using GMT as a base for the question and not local time in each country.
Would like to know David B’s opinion on whether “Which of these cities did the sun set first today?” is ambiguous without mention either local time or GMT as a scale of reference.
I hated, hated, hated that question. I think they could, on a technicality, get away with saying that “first” means “first” as from a Universal Time point of view – but it’s still not really very fair.
What I think is a much stickier wicket is the definition of “today” is. Given that the show is going out at 10-11pm our time, two of these places are already into the next day. Does that “today” refer to October 27th or the local day?
Brucie mentioned that they’d been on air for seven years an episode or two ago, and I figured they hadn’t quite championed their seventh X Factor winner yet, so I thought there’d be one year in it.
I knew it was close as I said to myself last night, SCD started around June 2004 (revealed to be May), The X Factor in late August (revealed to be September).
Many people think SCD is an autumn series but it was orginally launched to conincide with Sport Relief. The second series launched in the autumn to conincide with Children in Need. In the last couple of years they removed the charity involvement.
The Channel 4 website hasn’t got servers to cope with the huge amount of traffic the Million Pound Drop is generating. Over 100,000 people played simultaneously on Monday, a record for the show, and since the start of the series about half a million people overall have played online.
This sort of traffic hasn’t been witnessed by Channel 4’s website since Big Brother’s heyday (another Endemol programme).
I never had problems during the first series of the show. I wonder whether trying to be clever and connecting with Facebook has made the server’s more prone to crashing.
I tried that not connecting to Facebook. I tried a different browser but have yet to get through a night without getting disconnected.
Joe
How bizarre.
The ‘disconnection rate’ is very low overall. As I advised earlier, emailing Channel 4 viewer enquiries might help. I’m not entirely sure what else I could say because I’m no IT expert.
Simon
Thanks but I doubt they will be able to help and it’s not worth the bother.
Des Elmes
They’re talking themselves out of the right answer… get ready for the Lambs.
Call me a cynic but did anyone think they weren’t going to win? It was obvious they were going to get a final question that would be something they had a good chance of knowing.
Even with it being for charity it still leaves something of a sour taste in my mouth.
And why not? Nothing had been paid out in this series beforehand, and overall only one couple had won. Plus no celebrity had played the game for real before they did.
And, of course, George is a good friend of Davina’s…
Good heavens, was I implying that I was accusing Endemol of telling the Lambs the questions beforehand?
If so, that definitely was not intended in any way – I could never make such accusations unless there was hard evidence.
The questions were slightly easier like you said, though…
And I can’t be the only one whose mouth tastes sour because they won – no doubt it’s the same with quite a few Digital Spy users, and others who’ve had enough of celebrities playing civilian game shows.
Travis P
It wasn’t like they had giveaway questions like question 1. I was expecting them to leave with at least £200,000.
It does question whether the Lambs were guinea pigs for a potental series of Celebrity Million Pound Drop in January 2011 to replace Celebrity Big Brother.
It didn’t stop her from presenting the first two Got To Dance semi finals and Celebrity Big Brother. It also didn’t stop her presenting eviction night on Big Brother 3 and hosting The Vault less than 24 hours later.
Unless you got concrete proof, Joe the Endemol loving servant. Then I can see Davina Darling presenting both shows in January (Drop on Friday & Saturday, Got to Dance on Sunday).
Joe
No need to get rude. It’s not only Got To Dance, there’s also two new ITV shows she is presenting.
Like I said, it’s unlikely MPD will be back as soon as January.
Travis P
I’ll stop being rude when you reveal who you are and David B get’s his fiver if you claim to be the question producer.
Something tells me you don’t work for Endemol but you know someone who does and therefore know the information. That or you are Davina’s agent.
Joe
Why does it matter to you who I am or who I work for anyway? I admit I have links to Endemol but would rather not reveal who I am on an Internet website.
David B
Regardless of Joe’s identity, it’s nice to have someone with links of whatever kind to explain a few things that’s going on, and I don’t think the hostility towards him is that necessary. It’s a lot better having him around than being in the dark…
Travis P
I admit it was sort of cruel but it was late that night. I admitted in another thread afterwards he is useful to us. Although it didn’t help revealing who he was back in the summer as I had the impression he was some very young guy winding us up saying it’s the best thing ever. Saying that, I did do something similar over eight years ago bragging In It to Win It was the best show ever.
Des Elmes
Time to resurrect this thread!
We start with Raymond and Mo from NI – and Mo is 51…
You have to applaud the show’s production team, who’ve been talking it up on Twitter ’til the cows come home – even before the new series was commissioned.
Somehow, though, I just feel they’re trying to create a buzz that isn’t there. It doesn’t have ‘must see’ status, as we’ve already established.
The production staff at Endemol are fantastic and work really hard to make the show as good as possible. How can you complain about them trying to build a bit of buzz around the show? They’re only doing their jobs and doing a good job of it I think.
The production staff at Endemol are second to none. Sometimes they make an average format into a great one because of the hard work which goes into it. Endemol programmes as a whole are better than most other production company programmes.
I can’t let this remark of Joe’s pass without some comment:
Sometimes [Endemol] make an average format into a great one because of the hard work which goes into it. Endemol programmes as a whole are better than most other production company programmes.
It is possible to shine and polish a piece of rubbish so that it looks superficially attractive, but beneath the surface it remains a piece of rubbish. Inevitably, there will be great variations both in Endemol’s overall output and in the opinions offered by critics – I think “101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow [sic]” (RIP), “Deal or No Deal”, and “The One and Only” were complete wastes of space; other people disagree.
Conglomerates like Endemol have so many disparate production teams that we need to see the closing credits to see exactly who worked on a particular show. It’s not like the days when (say) BBC Bristol was a small and closely integrated group of people who would all work on each other’s shows. For that reason, I cannot honestly say that Endemol productions are better, or worse, than those of RDF, Talkback Thames, ITV, or any other large publishing conglomerate.
As for The Million Pound Drop, the refusal to consider contestants out of their mid-30s is no longer an oversight but a policy, and an annoying one at that. I can see a one-off Minor Celebrity edition early in the new year (two of The Saturdays or Andrew and Mario from the recent Big Brother feels like the sort of Minor Celeb) and that’ll be it. Allowing all-comers to participate would extend the run a little further; making better use of the interweb interactivity would be fab.
Does anyone know where I could find a live stream? I don’t know if whoever did it last time is doing it again…
Never mind. I found one.
First of the series of MPD against the final of Hell’s Kitchen USA on ITV2. Thank goodness both channels have +1 channels.
Boy George has been in prison fairly recently…
Ming the Merciless in Star Wars!? Really, guys?
Well, they were right to put all their money on it…
Noticed that online players put more money on Bob Marley than on John Lennon – even though Lennon was older…
Most would automatically think that the Moscow flight would be earliest – but then either of the other two could have been delayed…
Game over… Gordon Brown was 56, John Major was just 47.
…Although it’s perhaps not surprising that online players put most money on JM.
Easy first question there…
I don’t intend to sound like an attention seeker, but how come no-one else is commenting?
Knew this would be a question about the world’s shortest man once the second answer came up.
One trapdoor at a time – don’t think I’ve seen that before.
I’m amazed they didn’t think Clint Eastwood was born in the USA – he’s as American as American can be!
Not quite as amazed at them being surprised at the fact that Michael J Fox is Canadian…
I was bored by this. I thought the first series was quite good but I’m not feeling it this time. Its the same show but I think it’s something which was good first time round for the novelty value but is now a bit boring…
Despite being bored though, it was a fantastic production by Endemol as usual.
I was probably bored by the contestants. Not as good as the first series so hopefully they will have better ones tomorrow.
The production itself is quality, something which Endemol can only do. Well done Endemol 🙂
Can we have some contestants over, say, 40 please? In the interests of saving money, we probably can’t. Otherwise, it was an ok show, production is good, but it’s not must-see TV by any means.
Just seen it on +1, liked the question that basically asked which place was furthest from London in the most roundabout way possible. Thought question writing showed more promise generally. Good live integration.
I still don’t love it, but I don’t hate it or anything.
Good show but the C4 website lost connection at least 4 times during the show for me.
1.9m for MPD last night. Decent for C4, but not brilliantly decent.
That’s a brilliant rating for the Endemol-produced show, up 21% from the slot average.
…but down on the series one opener. In October.
Joe, in this thread alone, you’ve managed to use the word Endemol 7 times in 4 posts.
You actually slag off the show a bit by saying it bored you, but perhaps that’s to throw people off the scent a bit…what’s your game?
That’s Joe for you. Joe the loving Endemol robot.
Knew what this question was going to be once Justin Bieber came up…
…but they’ve blown it…
I appear to have lost all my money because the game was too slow to update when the contestants put all their money on very quickly. Cheers then.
I actually hadn’t even heard of Paul the Octopus before that question came up…
Blimey. He was all over the papers and news media during the world cup, really.
… But I couldn’t have been the only one who guessed that Dannii Minogue would be one of the answers once they chose Mums.
So one of The Saturdays is playing – and cheaters have caused Paddy Power’s site to crash, just like they did with heatworld.com in the last series…
How so?
Too many users causing server overload, what else? 😉
You wouldn’t happen to be one of them, would you…? 😉
Me? No, of course not – I’m no cheater.
…Although I did try to access the site during that ad break. 😉
So many people going there simultaneously to look up an answer, presumably.
There was a question which asked who was the favourite to win Celebrity Mum of the Year on Paddy Power (when any sensible person who wanted to cheat should have just looked on another bookmaker’s site)
Interface crashing again tonight. I don’t remember having any problems last series and there’s probably more people playing this time.
A record number of players were playing online yesterday, over 100,000. The show has been such a massive success that Channel 4’s servers are finding it difficult to cope with all the traffic it has been receiving. That might be why you’ve had problems regarding the interface crashing.
Bye bye… a great effort all the same.
Easy first question tonight.
No surprise Sarkozy and Obama were dropped first…
And that’s the first time I’ve seen the full million still in play after the second question.
…And two questions later it’s all gone.
Looks like we’ve got a run going here of players getting through question 1 with the million still intact.
…And a run of players still having the lot after the second question too.
If they’d chosen Film Memorabilia it’s probably quite likely they’d have been asked about the Darth Vader costume that’s set to be auctioned next month.
As it is, still nothing’s been given away yet this series…
Personally, I think that last sunset question was ambiguous. They ought to state they are using GMT as a base for the question and not local time in each country.
Am I right in thinking that Joe and Hafsha are the first contestants this series who are not in their 20s?
And they’re not going to keep up the two runs I mentioned…
Would like to know David B’s opinion on whether “Which of these cities did the sun set first today?” is ambiguous without mention either local time or GMT as a scale of reference.
I know I certainly thought it was a really, really poor question.
I hated, hated, hated that question. I think they could, on a technicality, get away with saying that “first” means “first” as from a Universal Time point of view – but it’s still not really very fair.
What I think is a much stickier wicket is the definition of “today” is. Given that the show is going out at 10-11pm our time, two of these places are already into the next day. Does that “today” refer to October 27th or the local day?
…the point being that if they haven’t had their sunset of the “new” day yet, the answer would be Reykjavik.
I can’t help but wonder what Davina herself thought of that question…
Knowing that she stuck up for BB all the time, she’d probably do the same for the question setters.
And that’s not saying anything bad about her BTW. (I do like her a lot, after all…)
Knew this question would be about the most popular baby names in England and Wales once Oliver and Olivia came up.
Marvin: “I’m gutted they didn’t know the answer.”
ROFL!!
It looked like Hafsha preferred Soaps there…
Well they’re heading to the final question…
…And STILL no winners this series… 🙁 🙁
Unfortunate really, I knew the answer but didn’t realize it was so close.
112 days to be precise.
Brucie mentioned that they’d been on air for seven years an episode or two ago, and I figured they hadn’t quite championed their seventh X Factor winner yet, so I thought there’d be one year in it.
I knew it was close as I said to myself last night, SCD started around June 2004 (revealed to be May), The X Factor in late August (revealed to be September).
Many people think SCD is an autumn series but it was orginally launched to conincide with Sport Relief. The second series launched in the autumn to conincide with Children in Need. In the last couple of years they removed the charity involvement.
Did the announcer say nothing about what was going to happen tonight because he had an idea that most people already knew?
And the question was obvious before all of the Four Other Members Of Girls Aloud had come up… this has happened quite a few times now this series.
Although the answer less so unless you knew, obviously (which I did).
I called the type of question for publications before it came up (and the C4 website is still disconnecting me every BLOOMING night)
The Channel 4 website hasn’t got servers to cope with the huge amount of traffic the Million Pound Drop is generating. Over 100,000 people played simultaneously on Monday, a record for the show, and since the start of the series about half a million people overall have played online.
This sort of traffic hasn’t been witnessed by Channel 4’s website since Big Brother’s heyday (another Endemol programme).
This might be the reason why the website is not working well for you. lease submit your complaints at: http://help.channel4.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=C4_Author,Company={2EA1BB9C-510E-44A5-A481-01EB1DDA1669},T=CONTACT_VE,VARSET_TITLE=General
And hopefully Channel 4 will sort it by next Friday or at least series 3 next year.
Joe
I never had problems during the first series of the show. I wonder whether trying to be clever and connecting with Facebook has made the server’s more prone to crashing.
There’s been increased traffic for series 2. But perhaps if you try the game without connected via Facebook, it might work better for you?
Do let us know.
I tried that not connecting to Facebook. I tried a different browser but have yet to get through a night without getting disconnected.
How bizarre.
The ‘disconnection rate’ is very low overall. As I advised earlier, emailing Channel 4 viewer enquiries might help. I’m not entirely sure what else I could say because I’m no IT expert.
Thanks but I doubt they will be able to help and it’s not worth the bother.
They’re talking themselves out of the right answer… get ready for the Lambs.
If they split the money, I do expect there to be a “lamb chops” joke to be made.
I wonder how many easy questions they’ll get?
The questions will be [i]slightly[/i] easier 😉
The amount of celebrity based questions on this is shocking.
“Reportedly paid” – how do you verify something that is conjecture?
They’ve won… 🙄
Call me a cynic but did anyone think they weren’t going to win? It was obvious they were going to get a final question that would be something they had a good chance of knowing.
How unexpected!
Still it’s for charity so, you know.
Even with it being for charity it still leaves something of a sour taste in my mouth.
And why not? Nothing had been paid out in this series beforehand, and overall only one couple had won. Plus no celebrity had played the game for real before they did.
And, of course, George is a good friend of Davina’s…
Are you accusing Endemol of telling the Lambs the questions before-hand or “colluding” with them? That is a very serious allegation.
Good heavens, was I implying that I was accusing Endemol of telling the Lambs the questions beforehand?
If so, that definitely was not intended in any way – I could never make such accusations unless there was hard evidence.
The questions were slightly easier like you said, though…
And I can’t be the only one whose mouth tastes sour because they won – no doubt it’s the same with quite a few Digital Spy users, and others who’ve had enough of celebrities playing civilian game shows.
It wasn’t like they had giveaway questions like question 1. I was expecting them to leave with at least £200,000.
It does question whether the Lambs were guinea pigs for a potental series of Celebrity Million Pound Drop in January 2011 to replace Celebrity Big Brother.
I would say it’s unlikely that MPD will be back in January because Davina has other presenting commitments (Got To Dance). Not 100% but unlikely.
It didn’t stop her from presenting the first two Got To Dance semi finals and Celebrity Big Brother. It also didn’t stop her presenting eviction night on Big Brother 3 and hosting The Vault less than 24 hours later.
Unless you got concrete proof, Joe the Endemol loving servant. Then I can see Davina Darling presenting both shows in January (Drop on Friday & Saturday, Got to Dance on Sunday).
No need to get rude. It’s not only Got To Dance, there’s also two new ITV shows she is presenting.
Like I said, it’s unlikely MPD will be back as soon as January.
I’ll stop being rude when you reveal who you are and David B get’s his fiver if you claim to be the question producer.
Something tells me you don’t work for Endemol but you know someone who does and therefore know the information. That or you are Davina’s agent.
Why does it matter to you who I am or who I work for anyway? I admit I have links to Endemol but would rather not reveal who I am on an Internet website.
Regardless of Joe’s identity, it’s nice to have someone with links of whatever kind to explain a few things that’s going on, and I don’t think the hostility towards him is that necessary. It’s a lot better having him around than being in the dark…
I admit it was sort of cruel but it was late that night. I admitted in another thread afterwards he is useful to us. Although it didn’t help revealing who he was back in the summer as I had the impression he was some very young guy winding us up saying it’s the best thing ever. Saying that, I did do something similar over eight years ago bragging In It to Win It was the best show ever.
Time to resurrect this thread!
We start with Raymond and Mo from NI – and Mo is 51…
Have the producers finally seen sense??!?!
Ooh… very nearly failed to place all their money before the time ran out…
Davina: “Don’t do that again… but I love you.” xD
Knew this Villains question would ask which of those events happened first.
And – oh dear – they’ve got just £100k left now.
Bonnie and Clyde were still alive when Capone was sentenced to prison…
And it’s perhaps unsurprising that they lasted just one question more.
So normal service resumes as regards contestant ages – these sisters’ combined age is ten less than Mo’s.
And they think Tom Jones was 51 today – deeeeear oh deeeeear Delilah…
(sorry)
I can’t really be bothered with this this evening. Not knowing Bryan Adams has annoyed me a bit.
More because Everything I Do was such a massive hit rather than being an Adams fan, I should add.
“My Thology – what is it”
Christ on a bike with stabilisers.