7pm, ITV1
The fourth series of The Cube begins this evening featuring brand new games but the same old cube. It seems the show has been successful enough that it’s now being parodied quite regularly, not only in Shooting Stars, but The Impressions Show on BBC1 did a take off of it last week as well.
It will be especially interesting to see the numbers – it floundered a bit in the Spring when stuck on its own in the schedules but as a lead in to The X Factor last year it was getting 5-6 million. Being scheduled around The X Factor is no guarantee of success as Holding Out For a Hero has shown, and not only is Countryfile currently performing very well but it will also have Strictly to contend with.
Wow, would never have called that at all. Doing it successfully on the trial run, then losing both lives in actual play.
Also, I WANT THAT SOUNDTRACK!!! That music that played on that last life was EPIC!
I think The Cube’s at the point now where it’s going to start to drag unless someone finally defeats it. Hell, if someone could just take on the 250k game, it’d boost things a bit.
As we’ve still only had one £50k winner this series, and just £10k has been won across the last two episodes, I’d be tempted to agree… 😕
One thing that I’ve noticed that they seemed to have altered to make things a little bit harder (forgive me if someone’s already mentioned this) – is that they’ve ever so slightly altered the blocks in Construction.
Compare this link to a clip from Series 3 in the Spring…
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdtE82nQYpE&feature=related)
…to what we saw today…
(http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/video/?Filter=291149)
…and it seems to me that on the close-up shots you can see that on the new blocks they’ve bevelled the bottom end on a lathe or something which means, despite looking the same for all intents and purposes from a distance, there’s actually less surface area for each block to balance on, making the whole game a bit harder, reducing the room for error yet further and increasing the ease with which the tower can fall.
I’m unsure what to make of this. What do the punters reckon?
I did notice that the blocks in previous series were perfect cylinders, and on tonight’s episode they did have bevelled edges, so it’s not just you that’s thinking there’s some foul play afoot. Also some of the new games that have been introduced this series do seem a lot harder than the games that have been used in previous series. Like the game Isaac got (Placement), placing 10 large silver balls on narrow posts in 17 seconds, and if one falls, you lose a life instantly. And that game with the tabs last week (Extraction, was it?), removing 25 tabs AND hit a button in 8 seconds? That’s a bit much.
They’ve definitely changed the blocks for Construction. Schofe already revealed on twitter earlier tonight that Objective have given him the old set of perspex blocks.
http://yfrog.com/kjsuksij
Hmm. Yes – new games are harder and hard games are earlier on quite a few occasions which is OK if you also have some big money runs to balance it out but we’ve not really seen that this series.
I wouldn’t mind them making a game a tad harder if it was too easy in the first place but Construction was pretty hard as it was.
We really need a rollover game to confirm that they still do those too, I think.
Still all that said I think the last life on tonight’s show (music assisted!) was the most tense I’ve felt this series so far – top telly!
I can now confirm the fourth series has been the poorest performed series compared to the other three.
– Most people to have been defeated by The Cube in one series.
– Lowest average winnings per contestant by over £13,000 in this series.
– Lowest ratio of people who have won £50,000 or more. Only one from ten have won £50,000.
I asked last week on Buzzerblog whether The Cube has become harder. My answer is simply. Yes, it’s bloody has become harder!
I felt for the geordie lass in tonights show.
What about adding another lifeline? Swap the game maybe?
One thing’s for certain, there’s still not enough reason for the player to play on. I don’t know how they can’t see that.
But I don’t think this is actually all that true. We complain when shows are set-up to discourage gambling, The Cube is one of the few shows on TV when people will actually take marginal exciting risks, and I think that is to be largely applauded.
Well, she thought she could build that tower again – and so did everyone else.
And she came within an ace of succeeding… in fact, the first time, the tower fell down just after the count started. 🙁
And one could argue that she wasted her Trial Run… 🙁 😉
I’ve always said Construction is one of the worst games to use the Trial Run. Either you know you can do it or your can’t. If you build the tower the first time then it poses an even difficult question whether to play for real. That said, I’m sure she is the fourth person to do exactly that.
Under 4m last night. Interesting, especially as you would assume as X Factor’s audience increases so would The Cube’s.
Question is whether the viewers are noticing the low wins and getting fed up that they know nobody will beat The Cube for £250,000. Also Strictly is on a very good roll at the moment, compared to last year they weren’t near to The X Factor as they are now.
I think that is the problem- even if someone does make it to the final game, no one is going to want to risk £100,000. If they put in some sort of safety net at that point- not a lot, maybe 5-10k – you might see someone go for it, which is what they probably need, even if they go for it and miss.
They were taking applications for another series, which makes me think they’ll give it one more shot in the spring, probably as a leadin to BGT.
I imagine there’s an international sales element as well, and presumably it’s not costing £400k an episode or whatever to make anymore.
Most of the production costs for this show must be fixed rather than variable, surely? They must keep the studio fitted out most of the year now to film different international versions, I suspect.
Whilst that is true up to a point, they don’t need to create the main things for it any more.
The Channel 4 pilot had the feature where you could bank your money at any time but they could do that once.
The Cube is having the same problem Greed had in 2001. That also had an all or nothing concept. On the UK version, nearly every team managed to reach £50,000 (£10,000 each) after answering four questions and decided to leave. This could be because the final four questions are done differently. Also if they decide to play on then someone could leave with nothing via a one question shoot out. Only an handful decided to play on. Some failed, some left with £100,000 and one team left with £250,000. On the original US version it was a different case, nearly every team played beyond question four and faced the different question format.
Fast forward to 2010 and we see the US pilot of The Cube having everybody going for it and leaving with nothing. Different case on the original UK version. where neither of the two contestants have risked their £100,000 to go for £250,000. Also we have yet to see anybody risk £50,000 and lose.
As much I would like to see The Cube become the lead in for BGT next year. I cannot see it. Knowing ITV, they’ll have Sing if You Can instead.
It was the same thing with High Stakes too- they would use all their clues to get to 25K, then stop. I guess we in the US have more of a gambling instinct on shows like this; having the attitude of “I came with nothing, so if I leave with the nothing I’ve lost nothing, plus I got to be on TV”….
Ah, yes. I remember Gr££d. I have the entire series on VHS tapes. The first 4 questions had 1 correct answer out of 4 for the £5k and £10k questions, then 1 out of 5 answers for the £25k and £50k. After that, it was 4 correct answers out of 6, 7 8 and 9 answers for the £100k, £250k, £500k and £1m respectively. Bearing in mind that the leader of the team could only change ONE answer, if you had more than 1 wrong, you were sunk.
In a nutshell the teams had to get at least three answers right to receive the bribe from Jerry. It was the captain’s decision whether to agree the bribe and split between the team or to play on. I know nobody decided to accept the bribe.
I don’t suppose the quality of the VHS tapes are any good? As I’ve been after some later episodes of the show to transfer onto DVD but my tapes from the show are ruined. Any chance we can talk about it offsite?
The quality’s no good, as I taped them with a crappy analogue Channel 5 signal as I didn’t have Sky then. The images flicker a lot, and it’s aggravating when I tried watching the tapes on my flat-screen TV.
Fair enough. Thanks for letting me know. My problem is simply the opposite. Recorded on Sky but I used very poor VHS tapes at the time.
If the next two contestants were to both win £50k, how would this affect the series average? I just wonder if they’ve backloaded some of the bigger wins – so we could be complaining for nothing so far.
I do agree, it does seem harder and I’ve been frustrated with some of the contestants not doing well (how many attempts do you need to hit a blinking blue/red light anyway?!).
I have really enjoyed some of the new games – I really like the batak wall light cube, and the pull-the-tabs-as-quick-as-you-can was fantastic.
If we get two consecutive £50,000 winners then the average will rise to £17,500 but it’s still over £7,000 less than what the last three series achieved.
I might do an updated article on Buzzerblog at the weekend since another two weeks have passed and nothing much has changed.
A really aggravating thing is that even if they are holding back on another £100k winner, you’re immediately going to know about it with their incredible reliance on spoiler shots to pad the beginning and end of every episode.
A MAN CELEBRATES! PHILIP LOOKS SHOCKED! IMPLIED TENSION!
There are two normal shows left with the Corrie special airing on Christmas Eve. It doesn’t help when TV magazines and Digiguide states who is playing on the show.
Here we go again…
Lenny must be one of the oldest contestants yet, if not the oldest.
I gather if he uses his Simplify here, one of the blocks will be removed.
No – he gets two extra seconds.
That’s a bit of a surprise, actually…
Well that was going well, for all of about three minutes
Well, obviously those two extra seconds worked – even though he forgot to press the button at the end the first time…
I would have thought, though, that a block would be removed because the stack kept falling down.
My lord we’re never going to get a winner at this rate -_-
Invert 15 cylinders in 12 seconds – hmmm…
And she goes and makes it look so easy. 😀
Also remember that the first time Calculate was played, it took 6 lives off that guy in Series 3.
Now here’s the other kind of Cylinder – we haven’t seen it in quite a while… 😉
£10,000 without losing a life? Holy crap.
Holy flip!
Is this the first time a contestant has reached £10k without losing a single life?! 😯
Oh God, Digit.
They’re throwing all the horrible games at her
And she crushed them. No way would she have lost if she’d gone for that last one.
I rather suspect though that the £QM would have been the red/blue game but with less time – an obvious go-home given that she had to take a major simplify on it the first time round. If I was in charge I’d probably rather just set them a marathon version of it (say over a minute) – too many of the games come down to “not enough time” rather than “not good enough” which I think makes it less of a level playing field than I think the nature of the format suggests it should be. Older contestants like Lenny don’t stand a chance.
Lots of nice new games tonight though! And no Barrier! Back on form.
“No way she would have lost if she’d gone for that last one.”
Elevation?
I wouldn’t be so sure… 😕
With 6 lives she could’ve just yanked the ropes and got it over with immediately.
Even back in the first series it was clear that Elevation is the big bastard game everyone fears. Even with a simplify that guy was struggling, and nobody has played it ssince, because the moment it appears people walk away.
And that’s what a £50,000 win is like. Remember them?
Also the first ep in FIVE without a loss.
How many female £50k winners have there been, out of curiosity?
And I wonder whether or not the monkeys like games that roll over to the next episode… 😕 😕
Without looking a good 3/4. I remember on the first series no female contestant could win £20,000.
That’s the second time we’ve seen Succession. But last time, it was played for £10k and the original sequence length was 15, not 20.
That seems like a really, really nasty bump in difficulty for just one level. It was looking darned near impossible.
Was it in 10 seconds that the sequence had to be done? The average reaction speed is 1/3 of a second from being shown something to reacting upon it, so only allowing 1/2 a second for the 20 length sequence is an utter nightmare!
Yes, it was 10 seconds for 15 colors in Series 3 Episode 8.
slightly ominous sign for the cube today, first adbreak, just an itv advert, no money coming in, even as an x factor lead in
On the contrary, the show had it’s biggest audience of the series last week. But ITV can shift their advertising around in prime time, and clearly they’re giving it to The X Factor.
oh hmm okay, we’ll see i guess. this guy seems to be going well, still half an hour on him, could we have a winner pre the x factor final?
and they havent given him construction for his jackpot game! rebound, which he did in 2! pressure!
Surprising.
Thought it would be the construction game again since that was his weakest.
Aww. Looking at the clock I thought there was a chance he’d go for it as well, although it would have been a complete “no bloody way!” moment.
He really wanted to go for it!
Also, it looked surprisingly easy, the area was not decreased as much as I would expect for the jackpot.
Again, this shows one of the big reasons why The Cube is decent and things like High Stakes are poorly thought out – it’s actually fairly rare on The Cube for people to walk away without finding it a temptation to play on – in many ways that’s why there’s been a load of defeated contestants this series, they’ve gone for it and lost. People ARE willing to gamble.
And it manages this despite being all or nothing.
Also nice to have the first Philtistic of the series this evening.
We’ve seen many people drop out early but we have yet to see someone risk £50,000 and/or £100,000 to end up being defeated.
The other thing is that even when a walkaway is a blatantly obvious decision, it’s because they’re all but out of lives after an almighty scare on the previous game. So no contestant’s run is ever entirely dull.
Please excuse the lack of input for the last couple of weeks -we’ve just finished our Christmas and New Year schedules and as you might expect it’s the busiest time of the year.
I would be interested to know if anyone has noticed anything unusual about the phone-in games on The Cube this year. For one reason or another I had some input for this series but the aim on the part of the interactive team was to keep the experience consistent with previous years.
Also while I’m here, now the relevant schedules have gone to press, Fort Boyard ultimate Challenge launches New Years Day on ITV1 and CITV.
ITV1 AND CITV? Nice one.
Nothing particularly unusual (thery’re still expectedly easy although they show a degree of visual interest), although I approve of the C64-esque beeping during Perimeter.
I suspect this was to make the competitions fairer for those with little or no vision.
Oh now that’s interesting.
That is indeed why the competitions have audio cues in them this year. I was quite pleased when I saw the first few go out – if anything the audio adds to the competition rather than detracts.
Good stuff!
That was almost a Million Dollar Mind Game thing, there.
Seeing the second stack on tonight’s game got me to wondering: Do the producers arrange each game stack so that the total number of “average lives lost” is always about the same number? 12? 15?
The thought occurred to me because the £1k and £2k games seemed painfully easy, but that new £20k setting of Construction seemed next to impossible without the Simplify. And then we had what certainly seemed to be not-too-difficult £50k and £100k games.
Was this a case of the producers “trying” to give away the jackpot? If he hadn’t used the trial run on the £100k, I’m thinking he would have gone for the jackpot … and probably won.
Incidentally, to see someone actually win Game 7, here’s the May 30, 2010, episode from Portugal (not geoblocked, as far as I can tell): http://tv1.rtp.pt/programas-rtp/index.php?p_id=26112&c_id=1&dif=tv&idpod=40215
Alas, it’s “only” €30,000, and yes, the jackpot game is the dreaded … well … you wouldn’t want me to spoil all the fun, would you.
Wow, as inaugural jackpot wins on an international format go, that’s right up with John Carpenter on Millionaire for “they desperately wanted this to happen”, isn’t it? The only difficult game in the whole stack was Construction, and then instead of game 7 being a game he’d struggled on, it was one he nailed first time with almost laughable ease (and no wonder when it was set up at game 3 difficulty to start with even though it was game 5).
As for last night’s episode – well, again Construction was a nightmare, but it seems plausible that “average lives lost” is a decent proxy for measuring the difficulty of any given stack, and if you pile much of that onto one brutal game, it figures that you can anticipate either a “contestant defeated” or, as turned out to be the case, a six-figure win.
I can’t quite believe this, The Cube just over 3m last night – lowest rated of the series, on ITV’s biggest night of the year. Wow.
The Cube is a show which is very popular with the critics and gameshow fans, but not popular with the casual viewers. It is a bit frustrating no one ever wins the big money and it has a sense of “coolness” about it which is offputting for older viewers who prefer the more drearey but calm gameshows such as In It To Win It and Secret Fortune. The Cube was early last night too. But it’s not a ratings hit and never will be, I’m afraid.
But I don’t think that’s *quite* true – it was pulling in 6m+ this time last year, I think against the same competition (sub please check), so what’s different?
It’s not something I’m going to lose sleep over, I’ve always felt The Cube was the upper end of ‘good’ rather than ‘great’ after all. But nonetheless it does surprise.
Also, actually, I wonder what the demos are like? If it’s pulling in 3m but they’re all young (and as suggested, very likely the show skews young) then that’s pretty good.
It’s interesting that total viewers seems to be the main ratings yardstick here, whereas in the US a lot more attention seems to go to the 18-49 demo.
It was normally getting 5-6m last year between 7-8pm against the same competition. This year, it’s been down to about 4-4.5m for the 7-8pm episodes. I think it’s because:
–> Format fatigue: the show was still fresh a year ago as there’d only been 7 episodes beforehand. By the time this series started, there’d been about 25 episodes. It’s not as fresh and people are getting bored with it.
–> Competition has got tougher: Countryfile, bizarrely, is one of the most popular television shows at the moment, getting almost 8m viewers. It’s a load of dross but viewers seem to love it and ratings for it have been up this year. Strictly’s had a strong series too. Stronger rated shows on BBC1 impact on ITV1’s shows.
–> X Factor: the X Factor has been rating about 3m worse than last year. That means the lead-out for The Cube is significantly down from last year and fewer XF viewers are tuning in early to watch ITV1 from about 7.30pm onwards. So, The Cube experiences less of an XF boost compared to last year.
The Cube itself is not a bad show at all. Unfortunately however, it is not the sort of show which is capable of being a hit year after year with 5m+ ratings because the same games are played too often. And the slo-motion effect isn’t as spectacular now as it was when we first saw it 2 years ago when it brought something different and new to UK TV.
Mmm, the slo-mo thing is an interesting point.
Is there anywhere interesting they could go visually they haven’t done yet? Could they re-use some of the ideas from the turned-down Reflex, for example? And would it make any difference?
Considering it was up against Strictly for longer than it usually is, I’m not shocked- and the events last night make me think no one will risk 100K; the situation was almost perfect for the player, and he still walked.
Some may say having friends and family on the show influence the contestant’s decision to leave. Which is probably why we haven’t had 30 odd people winning the top prize on Deal or No Deal.