That’s right! Forget the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? revival this Saturday, it’s all about the next exciting edition of Schlag den Henssler.
We haven’t quite worked out what we’re going to do yet, WWTBAM? is such an important show we might just watch that and join SdH for the final couple of hours which would give us an excuse to talk about how good or bad the Millionaire revival is LIVE. We’ll see.
Edit: Looks like we’ll live commentate Millionaire as well.
In the “kinda sorta game” category, BBC2 has picked up a show called I’ll Get This- 5 celebs go to a restaurant, and as dinner goes on, they play some games. The catch is the one person who doesn’t win a game is stuck with paying the bill for everyone….
I can’t help but think that it was so named because they realised that “It’s your round” has already been taken.
Buzzerblog (via the S*n) apparently reporting that Clarkson Millionaire has snaffled the “player chooses the second milestone” I seem to recall showing up in a European version before. Thumbs up for that, that’s a really interesting strategic wrinkle.
And adding Ask the Host as a fourth lifeline, which will bring back painful High Stakes memories for the ten people that watched that.
Second Milestone is something I’ve wanted for quite some time, it allows for people to play the game slightly less conservatively if they want to, whilst adding a layer of jeopardy throughout.
“Ask The Host” is iffy, I hope it means they won’t stack the ladder with questions Clarkson is more likely to be able to help with that not.
I remember when the original ‘Win a Wok’ ads came out Tarrant said “you can even ask me for help!” Doubtless this was referencing 50:50, but still.
What a strange promo that was in retrospect:
https://youtu.be/7ji2Fs6jA7w
I’m sure I remember reading something years ago that they did consider an Ask the Host lifeline at one stage – and one where three sages would sit in the studio and offer advice (something later adopted in the States) – but both were binned in the final format.
Out of interest, is ‘player chooses second milestone’ done in advance, before a question, or can you do it during a question?
I’d imagine you do it before a question is asked
Yes this appears to be the case. Which makes the most sense.
I think what may make this interesting (or may not) is that you choose whether you want the next question to be a milestone, but you’ve still got to get the question correct for it to be a milestone – traditionally in games where you decide your own bank it’s after questions/tasks set at the level just achieved rather than the level to come.
On the face of it it sounds like an interesting mechanic. Of course if you choose to save it you still get to walk away after seeing the question, so you can still leave with £32,000 if you want, but there are some interesting plausible decisions to be made in terms of which question you want to make your free one.
The big problem with money tree shows is the normal distribution of the prize wins, which get very boring. Anything that can add some unpredictability into the mix is a good thing.
Of course if they’ve just made all the questions really hard so everyone stops at £8k then the show’s dead anyway.
IIRC, Italy used that make-your-milestone format at a point. CeleTheRef may confirm that 🙂
Ooh hangman! Is it The Sun?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/6179553/contestants-on-who-wants-to-be-an-millionaire-can-ask-jeremy-clarkson/
I can’t believe they brought back the 15 question version. The easy, unfunny joke questions dragged the game down.
Here is some of the original version of The People Versus.
Full rules of the new twists here – https://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/who-wants-be-millionaire-returns-itv-saturday-brand-new-twists
Nice one, ta.
Of special note: each contestant gets two PAFs and security people will be on hand for each one (to stop them Googling, presuambly).
12 “Independent Security Forces” dotted around the UK for each episode makes it sound like bloody Hunted.
And recording two shows a day, that’s a lot of security!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2018/20/hardball
BBC One’s Hardball hosted by Ore Oduba begins on 14 May at 16:30, an interesting time for it to air.
You can kinda see how this works from the press photo. It works a bit like one of those ballbearing clocks – the ball gets lifted on a ramp up to the top-left corner, and there’s a series of sloped shelves down which the ball slowly falls. Presumably the player’s position is marked on the screen behind, and the game is over when the ball passes that point.
I know Buzzerblog has shared a couple of pictures of the new Millionaire set, but there’s a seven-minute video of The Sun’s Andy Halls playing the game on a press preview junket here:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/6206281/jeremy-clarkson-talks-millionaire-host-pressures/
The takeaways:
– The set is extremely impressive, although hopefully it feels a bit less cavernous with an audience in there. As Jeremy points out in the accompanying interview, he does seem quite a distance from the contestant.
– Jeremy seemed to be a little unsure of himself at the start of that video, but he may have been taking things slightly less seriously given he was playing to the press.
– The lighting’s had a fairly major overhaul – the effect on the overhead gantry when a question’s answered correctly is nice.
– The original in-game music’s been resurrected, although one of the cues sounded off. New cues for Ask the Host.
– Shame they didn’t revert to Conduit for the questions and have stuck with Verdana. Money tree still in Copperplate Gothic.
I’m just going to copy and paste that in the Millionaire thread, Tom.