8pm, ITV1
Matt Allwright challenges teams of two to enter a 26-room pyramid answering questions in each room for increasing amounts of money – £100,000 if they’re very lucky. But to keep the money the contestants must escape the maze by remembering every answer and their route.
I have been to a recording, I think is it quite a lot better than High Stakes that was in the slot previously, although I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of big winners (it’s the sort of end game where people are going to get stuck quite often towards the end), and I hope escaping the maze looks a bit more visually interesting on telly than it did from the audience.
Please leave your thoughts.
£55,000?!
Looks like he took it based on his face!
That’s exactly what I thought! Brave to turn it down, but a great result.
I was sure he would take it based on her reaction to getting the short straw, but didn’t actually think he’d taken it based on his reaction (which I couldn’t read); I *thought* I’d seen his hand on the right hand side of the screen (implying he’d pressed Reject) but the camera angle never confirmed that.
Wow, that was a near perfect game. Fantastically played.
I did notice during the Panic Room they seemed to have 2 seconds left on the clock at the end. So presumably if they say ‘Pass’ they can’t go back to the picture if they (unlikely in most cases to be fair) have time left on the clock.
The SPOILER! Oh. department notes that I am watching Tuesday’s episode right now, was interested to hear the contestant Scott suggest that he played American Football for a living briefly, did a Wikipedia search to find out who he is (Dr. Scott Couper, please!) and someone has updated his Wikipedia page already with the result of the show. Ah well, it’s the journey, not the destination, which is why I’m here and not too upset to be spoiled further by the comments above.
This also comes relatively high on the “celebrities appearing as civilians”-o-meter, surely? Granted, NFL Europe is long gone and was never all that high-profile in the first place, unfortunately, but the guy must be far more famous than most contestants, mustn’t he?
Also, I really liked Iain’s Two Ronnies FUNEX reference in the most recent Week.
There have been contestants on Celebrity Big Brother – actual celebrities, not just Chantelle – who didn’t have a Wikipedia entry before they entered the house. By that admittedly crude metric, he’s more famous than some people appearing on a game show as celebrities.
He’s not even the leading entry from this year, though, what with “Who Dares Wins” having had Montell Douglas on last month. (For what it’s worth, I’d probably give the top spot on that list to Clarke Carlisle.)
I guess after seeing the result, your reaction must have been “how did they manage that?” – it would certainly have been my reaction if I had heard about a £137k win!
Mr. Dickson wrote,
This also comes relatively high on the “celebrities appearing as civilians”-o-meter, surely? Granted, NFL Europe is long gone and was never all that high-profile in the first place, unfortunately, but the guy must be far more famous than most contestants, mustn’t he?
Minor celebrities who have turned up on civilian game shows clearly distinct from their day jobs, where they’ve been treated as civilians. Journalists Sally Jones (The Times) and Edward White (The Guardian) both competed in civilian Mastermind and won their edition a few years ago, and Paul Sinha may be the first person to go from The News Quiz to Mastermind. Stephen Pollard (editor, Jewish Chronicle) made the final of Counterpoint last year.
Masterteam (1) (the Angela Rippon version) had some celebrity teams mixing it with the amateurs, but I think they were specifically invited. Countdown’s had Jon Marsh (of indie chart darlings The Beloved), Alex Horne (comedian), Jon Diamond (writer), Clarke Carlisle (Burnley), Neil Mackenzie (Notts County), and Ayoola Erinle (Wasps and latterly England rugby). Fifteen-to-One was graced by Marcus Berkmann, as described in his book “Brain Men”, and Mr. Dickson has already noted the pairing of Montell Douglas (high jump) and Eddie Murphy (what? Oh.) on Who Dares Wins.
There’s a surprisingly large number of Big Brother contestants with some previous. Imogen Thomas (Miss Wales), Jonathan Durden (journalist and advertiser), Angel MacKenzie and JJ Bird (boxers), Ziggy Lichman (pop group Northern Line), Shabby Katchadourian (acts and sings), Derek Laud (politician), Jem Palmer (Gladiator), and – the yardstick for inclusion in this list – Ben Duncan (Australian Princess).
I’d say the four people in the first paragraph were the biggest names, purely because I could go “ooh, isn’t that..?” before anyone gave their occupation. Other contributors’ mileage will vary.
Not forgetting Michael Cule’s (Brother Mace, amongst others, on Knightmare, S4-5) People Versus appearance.
This show gets better and better. Particular credit to the contestant selectors.
Some of the reactions are so big – particularly among those who have made a deal and waited at the top of the maze – that I’m not sure that they haven’t been, well, dialled up for effect, but I don’t care.
It is, I suppose, a credit to the format (and the producers) that even a train wreck as bad as this week’s contestants can still be entertaining and even have a bit of drama at the end.
Final episode was again very good, and it’s only a shame that it doesn’t look like this format is at least going to chance to get a proper goodbye. I can’t help feeling that there was at least one episode excerpted in the opening credits that I can’t remember seing, so either I’ve missed one or they might have filmed one or more in excess of they’ve broadcasted. (Which would be par for the course for a pilot.) As the episode is about to drop off catch-up, I’ll permit myself a spoiler by saying that I appreciated-to-enjoyed the contestant, unsuccessful at reciting the Exit List, both wishing that their partner has taken the guaranteed money and hoping that their partner wouldn’t bet against them – and, yet again, there was a happy ending.
For me, this grew into a solid 8/10 series – at least on par with every new format of 2011, or 2010 for that matter, as far as I’m concerned. I’m glad that there wasn’t (or, again, if there was then I missed it) ever the unhappy ending of a contestant remembering the list perfectly and having their partner take the money. It may be that I enjoyed it more than most here because I was particularly taken by the music; if so, a clean copy (or discovering which library music CD it came from) would be worth tremendous appreciation.
I doubt it was library, it was suggested at the recording it wasn’t quite ready.
I did find it frustrating that the music that built up to the pair revealing the glass cylinders and therefore who would be reciting the list was almost always interrupted by a break, because the music was tremendous at building up to that moment.
Nope, no such unhappy ending.
The kids at The Onion’s Gameological Society dissect The Exit List and its flaws:
http://gameological.com/2012/05/british-game-shows-the-exit-list/
The subhead: “An almost-great show weakens its own drama for the sake of a time slot.”
Interesting read.
Good job the author spotted the main flaw was 10 questions dragged out over the 42 mins running time was just…..way……too…..slow…..for…..peak….time..ITV.
It also didn’t help that over the 8 shows there was 8 shows that featured 8 pairs of contestants. It may have helped, to add a bit of variety to throw in a couple of pairs of idiots and have a show with no winners. They must have recorded some loosers that lost it half way through the game – there was enough show recording dates.