Weekdays, 5pm,
ITV
Well this is a brave move – taking off popular established quiz The Chase during what is probably peak advertising season and replacing it with a successful Summer alternative – but an alternative nonetheless.
It’s been a while since the previous series of Britain’s Favourite Tactical Quiz (TM), hosted and invented by Bradley Walsh, as unfortunately there’s only one Bradley Walsh to go round. The quiz show meets soap sees six people battling it out every day, but they all stay on the show until someone successfully manages to escape with their money in the day’s final. Meanwhile contestants can rack up tens of thousands – provided they don’t lose it all in an unsuccessful escape bid.
We like Cash Trapped. Series two improved on series one in some ways (putting the answers to the multiple choice questions up on screen) and made worse in others (it felt like nobody was ever actually able to Catch-up during the Catch-Up round, thanks possibly in part to the removal of the small money up for grabs on the buzzer questions). From the previews it looks like the small money is back, hopefully there have been other changes to make the Catch-Up round a bit more tense.
They recorded two series of this back to back last year so this is becoming a general Cash Trapped discussion post (you can read our comments on Series 1 and Series 2 here). Is this now as good as the format can get? Let us know in the comments.
The trailer for this show contains a contestant with £1,350. It was my understanding that correct answers added amounts in multiples of £100. I wonder what they’ve changed?
In the first series it was £50 and £100 in Rounds one and two, IIRC.
According to Tom H and Kesh in adjacent comments it was £100 and £200 in rounds 1 and 2.
“They’re running out of pants”, Bradley says in the trailer, seemingly referring to a group of contestants. It may well be the case that the group he is referring to stay on the show for A LOT of days, 10 at least.
30 episodes in the series, so what will be will be, I guess.
What on earth are ITV thinking?
The concept may work on paper but having the same contestants remain day after day until someone wins just made episodes feel all the same. It might go against the concept of the show but having at least one person leave every day (probably the winner if they don’t win) would at least mean something changes from show to show, rather than having the same people for most the series.
But to be fair Headhunters is this in disguise except they don’t all leave when the winning amount is taken. Repeat contestants tend to be the common now.
Good to see they’ve brought the small money back, praying that they’ve changed the music. It’s quite irritating and is the biggest turnoff for an otherwise decent show.
The scheduling of this in the run up to Christmas is even more bizzare, given the slow death of the X-factor, the loss of Jeremy Kyle from daytime and the fact that ITV have basically surrendered a lot of Saturday and Sunday nights to run of the mill stuff in fear of Strictly. Not saying The Chase is the be all and end all for ITV’s shareholders – however it’s one of it’s most reliable evening brands for now and did decent numbers this time last year – albeit helped by Anne in the jungle (nothing they can do about that this year, but the like for like’s could be brutal)
Has Cash Trapped generally retained The Chase audience. despite being over summer previously? Just struggling to think of any justification for running it at this time of year – unless it’s some contractual thing that they had to be shown by the end of 2019 in this slot.
It was doing two million in the Summer last time, which is very decent by Summer replacement standards – certainly the best performing show there since Tipping Point way back when, but 2m in November would be half of what The Chase is getting now, so…
Changes:
-Graphics are ever so slightly different, the font has been downscaled.
-Round 1 has been renamed to “Last One Standing” presumably for inclusivity reasons
-The music is different, it’s much less irritating now, thankfully. Sounds like a Paul Farrer score
-The buzzer question money is back.
-Categories on the board are now cryptic puns as opposed to what the question is actually about, in the style of Jeopardy.
-Head to Head questions are now worth £250 for the toss up and £1,000 for the category question
-Split screen shot for the Head to Head questions.
-There’s some brain teaser and connection questions (One example in this episode was Brad listing off hit singles and the player had to guess which artist performed them)
-Catch Up is now “The Accumulator”
-After The Escape, Bradley gives some final words and walks off set and the players have a short discussion on what just happened
-Bradley gives a piece to the camera from backstage at the end, before the postgame interviews.
The music is credited to Francis Macdonald (of Teenage Fanclub).
I think there’s just a few too many rules to make this show fit the timeslot. Bradders does a good job of the heavy lifting, but as a whole the package seems too much like hard work.
The Accumulator still doesn’t convince – there’s next to no chance of anyone at the bottom overtaking the entire pack. Maybe it could be 2 minutes of questions on the buzzer open to everyone that start off at £100/question, and then it goes up to £200, £300, £400 etc. with each correct answer.
And while the boxes are cool to look at, they still prevent you getting any decent mid-shots of the contestant reactions.
Whilst I’d usually agree with your second paragraph (Lord knows I banged on about it not being a catch-up round really in practice), I think the way the money has been switched around, so there’s more on the buzzer and less on winning the category (in round two) does mean it should go into the Accumulator a lot more tightly than previous, where it only needed someone to win 2x£2,000 then they may as well not bother playing the rest out. I’m keeping an open mind on it as today we had a bit of a runaway winner.
I think they’ve finessed the game pretty well, I like the cryptic categories, and although they’ve effectively halved the money in round two it does feel like there’s all to play for in Round three. And the league table shot is a good one.
I like the fact they’ve established the “if you buzz you must answer” rule in The Escape, although it still feels like quite a large gap.
My biggest concern is that it feels like a lot more chat in Round One than I think I’d like. I understand wanting to establish the players, but to the viewers they’ve not yet earned the familiarity, which ought to come out more as the episodes progress. I found it rather annoying today.
For whatever reason this is down as Series 4 on ITV Hub.
Also, on my Sky box, this is being marked as the 6th episode of the series (and following episodes continuing from there) – we didn’t miss a week, did we?
They’re just not showing them in production order- annoying though, as it means you know when a set of contestants will escape.
Monday’s episode begun with Bradley saying “welcome to a new series of Cash Trapped”, yet it was marked as being series 4 episode 6. Was this an impromptu decision after Elaine’s record score à la Kelvingrove Deal or no Deal, or just a mistake?
might be a mistake however with 2 seasons in the can they might have swapped oput which one starts first.
It has taken me 3 series to realize the irony of the contestants being supposedly ‘cash trapped’ in their boxes only to be shown roaming freely around the set at the end of the episodes doing their post game chat!
Did they use a similar style of questions in the previous series escape rounds where if the contestants intercepted Bradley there was such a high chance of them giving an answer then kicking themselves when Bradley completed the question?
I’m quite enjoying the them keeping up the fiction that they’re only recording one a day.
Re: swerve questions – it does feel like there are more this series. To be fair they help and hinder contestants equally in the final (it’s quite handy how the last question in both eps so far has been one that could go either way) although it does feel a bit cheap.
Official Twitter suggesting 4m+ for this yesterday. I don’t expect that to hold, although if it’s still doing 3m by end of run then it’s done well.
4m tuning in to The Chase and being disappointed.
As an aside, ITV did the easiest thing to replace Jeremy Kyle- starting in January. GMB is extending by a half hour, and so is This Morning…
https://deadline.com/2019/11/itv-extends-piers-morgans-morning-show-as-part-of-daytime-restructure-1202783681/
Having auditioned for this series, I’m a lot more into Cash Trapped than I ever was previously. But even though I got to the stage where I was sent a printout of the rules to study and sign, I still think Round 1 is far too confusing on screen, with everyone getting frozen and then unfrozen and cash trapped and two different levels of questions and what have you. When series one aired, that really turned me off.
But I’m intrigued to see how many groups of contestants actually made it to studio in this series….
I reckon when people get Cash Trapped vertical laser prison-style bars should fall across the front of the box.
I’ve always been fascinated by how this works for potential contestants – as I understand it they film three shows a day so they’ll need potentially three sets of contestants, but that’s a lot to keep on stand-by. How DOES it work?
My guess, and it’s just a guess, is that they’ll have a different team waiting in the wings each day and if you miss your slot then tough luck, and two teams they can call upon at short notice if people win too quickly.
Do agree there even if it is added in post-production than just a red blackout.
I had to be available for the entire fortnight of filming.
I booked the two weeks off work but arranged it so that I’d just keep going in until needed, and cancel any days I wasn’t in the studio, which turned out to be all of them.
Down to 3.3m yesterday Bother’s Bar UNDERSTANDS, still pretty good, but it will be interesting to see where it settles.
This is still holding 3m, Bother’s Bar UNDERSTANDS.
For those that care, Cash Trapped averaging about 3m this week.
It would be better if, in the escape round, the clock stopped immediately one of the others pressed their buzzer to avoid time wasting
A bit of a stunner today as a contestant decided to voluntarily (and somewhat tearfully) leave after eight days: (video at link)
https://www.express.co.uk/videos/6111172424001/Cash-Trapped-Paula-leaves-show-after-eight-days
Does the replacement contestant start at £0 or £15,000?
Also surely they must record 3-4 episodes of this in a day so she must have been really desperate!
I wonder how this will work, if they’ll bring in just one more contestant or start a whole new group. She will have only been there for 2 an a bit real days,she must be really worried to want to quit. It was suggested that she would be able to return some other time, interesting to see how they handle that.
MIND-BLOWING STUFF.
A fourth (or fifth, however you look at it) series of CT may very well be on the cards, due to a failed escape on what was the last episode of the series today.
Shall be interesting to see what happens from this point. I haven’t seen any contestant calls though.
Probably useful to point out that IIRC 2×20 (i.e. 40) have been recorded, but only 30 have gone out.
At the same time, it’s very unlikely that they will show just 10 episodes on their own so presumably there’s more coming.
All of the 3 episodes that WWTBAM have recorded are for Celeb only episodes. ITV press has confirmed this fact.
They’ve recorded some civilian ones too as I was at one but not sure when they’re airing now, I presumed over Christmas as Jeremy made a reference to tinsel during FFF but they’ll probably just edit that out…
Don’t know if this has already been commented elsewhere, but the show ‘Quizmaster’ that was talked about in July and August’s Stool Pigeons is due for transmission on December 29th at 7pm on ITV1.
Any update on when the next series will be and how many episodes will it be
There’s still 10 episodes from the most recent series to go out at some point, no idea about the rest.
Just spoke with Julie on Twitter. She has told me that she is still waiting on a decision from ITV on whether there will be a Series 4
well it be a bit awkward if they have to push the final batch of episodes on a one week scenario. Surely it can’t be axed. i prefer this better to the chase. (yes i know i have commited a sin by saying the show in vein).