10pm, Channel 4
Endemol’s bright new hope, The Bank Job hosted by George Lamb, begins this evening.
In it, contestants answer questions and pick vaults to try and earn as much money as they can, all the while making sure they leave enough time to get out of the vault before it shuts on them. All the daily winners come back for one final winner takes all game on Saturday night.
The online game was quite good fun and you will be able to play along with the online show this evening. But will it stand up to a full hours worth of viewing for six days (in fact the final is 90 minutes on Saturday)? And we have some reservations over George Lamb as choice of host, he didn’t seem quite comfortable doing the live links on The Million Pound Drop last month. Why not try and predict how often he’ll use the word “guys”?
I’m more intrigued as to how the game’s going to differ from the online game. Four players, yes, that could be two head-to-heads with the winners playing each other for the spot on Saturday. But five?
Just to make it more interesting, the online game is talking of being able to play along with “the final round”. What comes before?!?
This is going to be tremendously interesting to watch, and I don’t think I’ll be able to see it live 🙁
I would offer a guess as to the number of ‘guys’ Lamby will use, but I don’t think there are enough digits in the universe.
I hope there’s going to be some McGuffins involving handcuffs, lasers, slowly closing doors or other props.
I still believe George Lamb lives in the BBLB studio, waiting…
Why am I suddenly thinking of 19 Keys…
This is excellent so far, liking George Lamb
Hi Joe!
Haha! Nice one Brig
I think from what i have seen so far, i would have much preferred the format of the online game.
Watched five minutes. This opening round has its own tactical intrigue, and I like it as an entreé before the head-to-head showdown that will presumably follow the online format.
Can’t watch the show now, though. Strobe lighting. 🙁
Bit controversial there – she was surely out of time there…
Digital Spy are saying as much, and saying it’s because they wanted to keep the pretty young female contestants in the game for longer. Cynical, as you’d expect from DS.
Here comes the VT’s -_-
I will post a ruleset after the show for future reference.
My gut instinct is that it’s quite a good idea, but I’m not sure I’d have done it in the same way.
I’m liking the strategy element of this second round, only being able to bring through 2 money bundles. I wonder if the final round will play exactly like the online game. Enjoying this show so far.
The on-line game happened during the show… missed it..
Oh you can reload the page and try again – Thank god
Things seem a bit patchy at the moment, George telling the contestant they needed more than a certain amount even though they didn’t as the other contestant was out of time, buzzer not working.
Hopefully they’ll settle down over the week.
I can see how this might have seemed a good idea.
But it’s really not. It just doesn’t work.
They should have made it like the advert with keys and mazes and vaults slamming shut.
How did everyone do on the online bit?
I got 13/15 questions correct and left the vault with £76,500. Not bad for a night’s work, eh?
It seems from quick glance at the Sky EPG that the last 3 episodes of The Bank Job are on at the same time as Celebrity Big Brother.
Why did the winner not answer another question in order to increase his winnings, he had 13 secsonds left??
Was it because the show was live and there wasnt enough time left??
Bought this up on Twitter, hope to get an answer.
Well if it’s like the online game then if he gets 13 seconds of wrong answers then actually he’s lost the game and Rebecca wins as she got out.
Yes, but he didn’t get the option is the thing.
OK here’s the game:
Round one:
Four contestants enter. There is £150k going in 25 deposit boxes – at least four of them are empty, we are not privy to how the money is otherwise split.
The round has a ninety second clock. Contestants answer (fairly) simple questions on the buzzer. Get one wrong, get locked out. Get one right, stop the clock and pick a box, the money is added to their briefcase. Each time they get a question right they are asked if they want to leave.
A contestant who leaves sits in the “danger chair” until someone else comes out with a lower amount of cash. The person who has left with the least, or who hasn’t left the vault in the time is eliminated.
No idea what happens if more than person remains in the vault. Presumably the person with the least in their case would be gone.
Each round gives the contestants a fresh slate, but money is banked for Saturday’s show.
Round Two:
Another £150k is loaded up. This time each contestant has two cases in front of them. Questions are once again asked on the buzzer, this time when they pick a box they do so in the knowledge that only one bundle of cash can go in each box (once filled you can’t replace it), and they must have two bundles of cash to leave the vault. Therefore if it’s a low amount you can bin it, but towards the end you might find that beggars can’t be choosers. The person with the lowest combined total, or the person who doesn’t escape, is eliminated.
Round three is the same as the online game:
The vaults are filled with £200k, some zeroes and some steals, which allow you to steal the biggest bundle your opponent has. This round works on a 45 second clock chess principle, and you continue fielding questions until you get one right. After each pick you have the option to leave the vault. The person with the most money if both escape, or the person who escapes if only one does, is the winner.
All the daily winner’s money is bought back on Saturday when one person will have a chance for it all.
But I don’t know if that means “one person will win all the cash” or “all the cash will be distributed amongst all the rounds on Saturday”. If it’s the latter, then it might look a bit cheap if it’s offering less than the half a mill on offer each day. Especially as on tonight’s episode the winner had loads of time left and could have added to his total.
Right then – I really liked the set – a giant vault in the middle of a bank, lots of electronic clocks everywhere, good stuff.
I don’t think they made nearly as much of the door as a set piece as they should have – surely it should remain open throughout, except when it shuts to lock a player in? SYMBOLISM.
The game I felt was fairly sound. I thought it would have been better in round two if the distribution was known so they could make an informed decision, but as it turned out it had a fairly exciting end anyway (even if because of the way it turned out in episode one, they should have been more on the ball with explaining why it was in fact a bit of an anticlimax).
Clock judging feels like it needs to be tighter – there was an incident at the end of round one where someone answered out of time but they seemed to fudge it as being OK because he asked before the clock ended. Surely a door on an electric lock would shut when the clock hit zero regardless?
My gut instinct still says that “steals” in the final round should give the option of a repick to avoid kick-em-when-they’re-down moments after someone has left, although this didn’t come up this evening so.
George Lamb was surprisingly OK at keeping the whole thing together.
I don’t think the show uses its full potential – it feels much too stop starty (it’s an hour show of which only 4.5 minutes was quiz). I think that thematically aspects of the show would be improved if more was kept secret, such as player totals (or even more fun, the clocks). The questions were very easy. The rounds (particularly round two) didn’t feel very interesting to start with but towards the end when the strategies were a bit clearer felt a bit more interesting.
I enjoyed it, although it’s a “like” rather than “love”. Will keep watching.
I invariably watch new shows with Twitter in the background which means I can’t give them my fullest attention, I’ll try watching it without the internet tomorrow.
Also the stat and tweet crawl during the second ad break felt quite exciting and daring. Wonder how they got the advertisers to agree to it.
If you think about it though, it provides a reason to stick around and watch the adverts rather than go out and get a cup of tea or whatever.
I read Jeff Stelling’s autobiography last year and he mentions how Soccer Saturday having the scores on screen during the adbreaks actually ended up massively increasing what Sky could charge for the advertising because it meant viewers kept looking at the screen. Now whether that generalises beyond that very specific example I don’t know but that example suggests the advertisers might have at least been onside (football pun not intended) with the idea.
Scrolling programme content is allowed. I think they are on this side of legal as long as no programme audio is mixed in with the advert audio, and, the advert is the main thing filling up the screen, it’s ok.
Also now allowed is a simliar device that is often seen in Schalg Den Raab when they are putting on the safety gear or having a ‘how to use’ briefing, where by the advert is run in a box bigger than the live feed, and a countdown timer to the return of the programme is displayed.
I’ve seen Channel 4 Racing do this, just before a race and they have a spare 30 seconds to spare.
I was pleasantly surprised despite all my carping about their ageist selection procedures. Time went by quickly, and although I would have disagreed with many of their strategic decisions the first two rounds do not play at all like the online game and so they were playing blind.
Big Plus: It was FUN to watch and genuinely had shouting at TV moments. I have put this on series record..
Minuses: Questions were probably too easy and seem to be nearly all topical/current. Suspect none of the question setters are the wrong side of 30
The Live nature of the show seems totally unnecessary. I fear a disaster over question adjudication.
From a cash point of view, forget about all the other shows and tune in on Saturday.
The online play along version is not a patch on MPD (one 45 second run right when a vital part of the show was on…), although give it massive kudos for being available to play 24/7, very handy for revision of pop culture 🙂
Conclusion: I will give it time to bed down. Could be a great show, especially if they let a wider range of contestants on in future. Plenty of strategies/arguments to formulate/champion/argue over 🙂
Mark
PS: New episodes of The Chase start tomorrow (Jan 3rd)
Yes, would agree – more fun than anticipated I think.
I think that review about sums up what I could make of the show given that I couldn’t actually watch most of it. A show with an excellent premise that gets some things quite badly wrong, and some things quite brilliantly right.
Which, in my opinion, is actually quite typical of an awful lot of Endemol shows. Deal or No Deal – excellent premise, screamingly toe-curling “get on with it!” and “stop interfering with play, Mr Edmonds!” moments, but almost unrivalled for drama and for contestant interaction. Million Pound Drop – very clever idea, occasionally horrific padding and question-writing, but more high-stakes nail-biting finishes than just about anything else on TV.
Of course, because it’s live and they apparently still haven’t cast all the contestants, we could see Friday’s episode being the Grey Rinse Special.
I just pray they don’t select a contestant called ‘Guy’.
Or Fella.
Or Dears
I only caught the last two rounds, but the bullet point version of my thoughts is as follows:
-Ooh, shiny shiny set.
-George’s presenting style: haven’t seen him before, wasn’t too keen, although witholding judgement for a bit (he didn’t seem entirely confident when explaining the rules, and will probably improve in this department as time goes on).
-Penultimate round was ok but felt a bit too random for my liking. Would have to watch a couple more before passing judgement.
-I enjoyed the final round, but it was dampened a bit by a premature decision to leave the vault, making the outcome too predictable. Hopefully we will get closer games later in the week.
-Why didn’t they allow the winning player to keep going? This surprised me.
-George needs to clearly ask the contestant for a final decision on whether or not to leave the vault. A contestant in the final round changed her mind in response to a reaction from the audience; allowing her to do this was a bit odd.
-I thought the questions were a bit too easy. There was also a hint of swerveyness/padding about some of them, although this was no more than a minor nuisance. (The one about the EU flag particularly stuck in my mind. It was something along the lines of “The EU flag consists of a ring of 12 stars, sitting on a background of what colour?” – so basically “What colour is the background of the EU flag?” then)
-Retrieving stats about the contestants’ online styles was a nice touch.
-The clock work was ok but seemed a little bit dodgy in places. To be honest, I don’t think the show benefits from being live. I would probably have reacted better to a polished, recorded version.
Overall, I enjoyed it and will be watching again!
I keep imagining Richard Bacon presenting this in the back of my head!
It was good, but like the early episode of MPD and the live episodes of Push The Button, the whole thing felt very awkward. George Lamb seemed to screw something up every couple minutes.
Enjoyable, but it’s got a lot of kinks to work out.
I thought it was decent- the motif works a lot. I do agree that it’d probably be a bit more polished if it wasn’t live (maybe same-day tape would work better)
I’m thinking the final will go as they’ll play the game like normal (with an extra round) on Saturday and the winner gets whatever money they earned in that show plus all the money earned in the first five nights- that’s the only reasonable way they could get a big total. If they do this, you probably see someone win over £500,000. If they use the totals to stock the vault, someone maybe gets £200,000, but probably closer to what the person won tonight.
Live aspect doesn’t bother me, partly because I really like live TV (if something goes wrong, it’s funny, when it goes right, it’s exciting) and partly because I’m not quite convinced the 5% extra quality that polishing gives is worth the 300% extra effort it will add to the filming time.
I like the live element which keeps it unpredictable.
Explain Joe, why does that make it any more unpredictable?
I’m waiting for someone to forget to clip up their case when the leave and have all their money fall out when they pick it up.
The Bank Job launched successfully with a peak audience of 1.7 million viewers. This is Channel 4’s highest rated new gameshow in 19 months 😀
Hello Joe 🙂
The fifteen minute peak was 1.283 million. I assume 1.7 million is a five minute peak. The average was 1.045 million, rising to 1.187 million including +1 and HD. Share of 5.45% It also lost viewers in the last half hour.
For what it’s worth I didn’t think it was terrible, just quite average and a bit boring.
do we know the mash up’s ratings? i fancied that was (at least supposed to be) a good leadin for it, especially with advertising for it in every ad break.
According to this post on Digital Spy:
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showpost.php?p=55656645&postcount=3109
MPD a solid 2.0m for the night, Countdown the real winner @ 2.3m.
So 1.2m for The Bank Job feels pretty low. I will be interested to see if it grows during the week though.
I didn’t mind the show, I thought it was very long and drawn out, although that being said the first 45 minutes had disappeared before I even realised. George Lamb is yet to grow on me as a presenter and as others have discussed there feels after last night to be a clearer definition of when the time expires. On the online game, if you don’t answer in time, you’re out but here it seemed to be ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ and ignore the clock once it’s hit zero.
I enjoyed the production though, I particularly liked the little display next to the ‘danger seat’ displaying the total to beat, could have been done with an on screen graphic but it was nice to have it there next to them.
Meanwhile 758,000 for Only Connect.
A little way off our record overnight figure (something like 790k) but pretty darn good considering it was not in the ‘main run’ of shows.
I was surprised to hear next week is a Mastermind special – you kept that quiet. Is it specials for the rest of the month then? I gather there’s another Connecting Wall night coming at the end of the month.
Don’t want everyone getting ahead of themselves, now.
I’d imagine they’d stick on a couple of special repeats thereafter, but Wall Night 2 is on the 30th, yes.
Then that’s your lot until Sport Relief.
The Bank Job.
Thrice minor issues.
1) With all the money being thrown at it (including what appears to be a false raised marble effect stage) you would have thought that Endemol could have got a clockmaker in to fix the clock on the wall behind contestant position number 2, which was stuck at 2.20.
I guess the strobe lighting is within the limits of rapid lighting levels for UK television – but where was the warning beforehand? We crashed into the show on 4HD. The non-appearence of a sponsor was also surprising.
2)Round 2 is weak, very weak. The appearence of a 2nd case adds some unecessary confusion to the proceedings. Better would be to keep it to one case, but keep the option to risk it and junk lower amounts of cash.
3)Direction was at times dodgy. Our man calling the shots appeared to have trouble keeping track on who was supporting who in the audience. We once had the same close shot reaction shot of the same person, but for both contestants.
3a)George. Not as dreadful as I feared, hopefully he will improve, cut out the ‘dears’ and get on with it a bit.
8/10. I still prefer the on-line game marginally over the tv show, though.
First-night notes from this corner.
Good: The overall idea. The set. The colour scheme – BBC2 teal!
Adequate: Lamb’s hosting. Introducing a new rule, that players can only exit on a correct answer.
Poor: Stacatto quiz. Lamb’s understanding of the game rules. Changing rules part-way through the game: in round two, getting a correct answer is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to exit. Clock management – if they want to do a Mastermind and play for 90 seconds plus the question going as time expires, that’s fine, but it felt fudged.
Notable: The interactive viewer response crawl during the final ad-break. Channel 4’s been doing that on their racing coverage for a couple of months. Channel 4’s flop show launched to 2.27m people (0.85 s) at this time last year. Really.
Overall: Fun to watch, and distracting from a massive pile of ironing. Why is this live, and not on 30-minute delay to edit out massive cock-ups like later series of Big Brother?
The players can only exit on a right answer exists in the online game also
Certainly to me, it seems an odd thing to deny players the right to fill their with ‘£0’ (I’m not doing the voice) and walk off the stage. Not only is it inconsistent, it’s a potentially funny moment lost, there.
I’ll second that, given how round two works it seems a flaw if there can be a situation where a player can get a question correct yet refused to be allowed to leave, regardless of how little time is left.
And potentially in a situation where a big amount in the other case is enough on its own to secure a place in the final round. Mind you, I suppose they would say that’s part of the luck element of the show.
I’m stunned to hear myself say this, but I really liked the first episode. The only fault I could find was the pace could have been a hair faster, particularly in the first round, when Lamb recapped everyone’s scores after every question. Sure, beyond that, it was still a bit slow, with only 4:30 out of 51 minutes being actual question time, but the strategic decision-making between each question didn’t feel dull at all. Liked the set and general atmosphere. I don’t know why, but this just felt like a “good old game show”.
Then again, after watching a few Bob’s Full House clips, I was disappointed no one asked for Legs Eleven, Two Little Ducks, etc.
I don’t think I’m going to say anything that hasn’t been said already. Basically there seems to be a good show in there trying to get out, but a bit of fine tuning definately required.
My only issue is pacing – 4.5 minutes of questions in an hour long slot. That said though all the time off the clock was pretty much used by the game – there wasn’t too much filler at all, although I hate the “are you sure” nonsense so many gameshows have now. Just take their first answer for gods sake!
Alright, got to mention it, contestant Joe eliminated in slightly dodgy circumstances this evening, he was the only one left, buzzed to answer a question, buzzer wasn’t engaging, panicked, ran out of time, answered, didn’t find enough. But if he answered immediately without trying to buzz would have had two seconds left – if a question is started it is allowed to be finished. I’d be a little aggreved if this wasn’t made clear this was going to be the case beforehand.
I agree, he should have been made aware that he didn’t need to buzz as he was the only player left in the vault, then he could have had 2 questions.
And George has just told Oonagh she doesn’t need to buzz. I call shenanigans!
Not necessarily shenanigans, they might just have on-the-fly realised the need for that clarification (and I’m sure that clarification will remain for the rest of the week when this situation comes up).
Unfortunately for Joe I think he just got flustered as is understandable in such a situation. We’ve seen contestants forget the answer to questions in this situation though but you wouldn’t consider giving them a second chance to remember it. I don’t think there’s a real way to rectify this situation, only try and prevent it happening again.
We obviously don’t know how much they’re prepped but it wasn’t an issue for yesterdays contestants – so perhaps he’s just an idiot.
Same thing happened with the “Why did the buzzer stop working?” query yesterday, only the realisation was faster and it was due to the other contestant being frozen out rather than eliminated.
Same sort of thing happened (but without dodgy elimination) on day one, right? During round 2, when the blonde missed the Potter question, then the guy didn’t need to buzz to answer the next (and last) question (although he definitely tried). He did manage to spit it out just as time expired, and it worked out etc.
A watch on TV Catchup (and knowing what to look for), and I find this was covered in Lamb’s patter. The clock stopped in round one at 15s, George said that the question in play at 0s could be answered. He later told contestant Joe that he didn’t need to buzz in, and Joe promptly ignored George. Usually, that’s the right course of action, but there’s always an exception to test the rule.
From catchup, by chopping out the early part of the first two rounds, and the various introductions, I can get this down to an agreeable 30 minute show.
For the benefit of analysts like us, it would be good if the full rules were online for the public to pore over. I don’t advocate changing the rules in mid-tournament, I do think some of the rough edges could be removed by crowdsourcing.
I felt bad for Joe until I realised… Endemol… Joe…
And a cock-up from George telling Oonagh she has “13 grand on her clock” 😀
Well that was an exciting finish!
Got my stats for the online bit and they are as follows:
Day 1 – 13 boxes opened – £76,500 – 150th on leaderboard.
Day 2 – 10 boxes opened – £68,000 – 130th on leaderboard.
Any news on what happens in the event of a tie? Is there a tie breaker or is it simply whoever gets out first goes through?
I do quite like the structure of the rounds in this though – all basically the same but different. The second round is actually quite a nice risk/reward element.
No, don’t know, although it does look like it has the same rules as the online one – i.e. you can’t escape if you’re tying the lowest, you have to be beating it.
No idea if more than one player is locked in either.
Potentially you could have one person run out of time in the final and the second person could still be answering questions. Which would be odd.
I guess in theory all 4 contestants in Round 1 could end up locked up with exactly the same amount.
There certainly seems to be a few potential flaws in the format – although the idea of them probably having to make up the rules on the spot kind of makes it worth watching.
I didn’t feel it as much this evening – I deliberately tried watching without Twitter on in the background, found I found the pace a lot more stilted than I remember the first night and twitwatched with the final round, which turned out to be quite exciting anyway.
Right, Night two: 1.13m with 125k on +1.
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showpost.php?p=55677178&postcount=3393
I was actually surprised at that £800 box last night- I was thinking all the boxes would be in £500 increments (I’m assuming it’s to try and limit the chance of ties- but surely they’re using even hundreds in increments- i.e. we won’t see a £750 or a £1,111 box or something, but you never know I guess)
Yes that caught me off guard as well. Wondered if it was going to be paired with a £700 box or a £1,200 one.
We’ve just seen a £100 bundle on tonight’s show. On the online game, the lowest I ever saw was a £500 bundle.
Amazing, easy questions and they’re getting them all wrong! Lots of padding for the rest of the show I expect.
When Live TV goes terribly, terribly wrong.
This is hilarious this evening. Why hasn’t George got question cards precisely in case this sort of thing happens?
And apparently 208,800 = 261,000 now.
Hmm.
And just to top things off I now have no idea how much the grand total now is for Saturday as George gave a completely different figure to the on screen graphic!!!
Amazingly, despite nobody bothering to get questions right in round one, managed to overrun a bit.
Quite the nightmare production this episode.
Somebody should probably be getting fired after tonights show – a real shambles and could ultimately cost it viewers and hence a recommission as although it didn’t start particularly high, it kept the viewers for episode 2 – and perhaps word of mouth would be encouraging new viewers to tune in tonight.
And what would have happened if 3 or 4 players had remain locked in the vault. It’s all these flaws which really let the show down and make it feel like they create the rules on the spot. Didn’t help tonight either having the contestants talking amongst themselves either.
P.S. Finally thought I’d take a look at the Million Dollar Mind Game tonight and I can absolutely see why you all rate it so highly. This is the sort of thing C4 should probably be doing as well – though despite Vernon Kay being rather good here his reputation here for light entertainment might mean they should probably go for someone perceived as a bit more intelligent. Could be an ideal primetime vehicle for Rachel Riley.