So last night I watched new Irish show Brian Dowling’s Sassy Quiz Sitting On A Fortune (made in association with RDF Television) from TV3 and if you can get round the geolocation you can watch it here. In it, three couples try and win as much money as possible by sitting on a sofa as much as they can.
And actually in the main it’s quite good fun – In each round each couple must solve a puzzle on a touch screen about 20ft away from their sofa – in round one picking five pictures from ten which satisfy a category, round two working out a celebrity from clues given, and in round three colouring in a picture from memory. All the time they are solving the puzzle, the other teams are clocking up cash (they get what looks like 90 seconds, and the rate of the money increases the longer they take with a top value of €500, €1000 and €2000 in rounds one two and three). To lock in their answer they have to run back to the sofas to stop the clock. If they’re right the round ends, if not they have to run back and try and change their answers (there’s some Dowling chat between them sitting down and the reveal which I think is a bit energy sapping, it’d be more fun to be quickly back and forth I think, although the graphics and the smoke when the answers are revealed to be wrong are quite good fun). The team with the lowest amount after round three leaves the game.
It loses its way a bit in the semi-final, one player from each team answers multiple choice questions by sitting on one of the three sofas but it’s not very exciting to watch and loses the energy built up from earlier in the show- it feels as though it should be a bit more Runaround-esque. The first team to three correct answers goes through to the final – one more multiple choice question for the combined bank of them and the losing semi-finalists, if they both sit on the correct seat they win the lot, but they can split up and go for half the cash if they want. This at least makes sense.
It’s the Wipeout end game as its own show then basically with a slightly disappointing final third. Brian Dowling’s quite amusing in it. Worth a watch, it’s tonnes better than Crossfire.
news from Avanti Un Altro!
Gerry Scotti will take over from December, then in late Spring it will be time for a new show
He also said that this new show will not be a big money game because “they’re almost offensive in a period like this.
€3000 should be enough, so one can pay for a nice Summer family vacation”
Oh that’s very interesting. I wonder why Scotti’s taking over relatively early? Perhaps Bonolis is a bit overworked.
The more I think about it, the more I think with a few tweaks this could be a very useful utility show like The Lie. Provided nobody goes around calling it the next big thing, it’s the sort of show that could do quite good business on the quiet.
Speaking about tweaks, the first three rounds seem to be interchangeable. As in: new week, new games, think Five Minutes To A Fortune or Pressure Pad.
Rounds One and Two are always trivia games, the third a memory-based game.
Love it, will have another look tjis evening.