It’s been a long time coming but according to The Mirror Deal or No Deal is finally being let go with the final unaired episodes being shown in the Autumn.
Whatsmore is the suggestion that it will be getting a two week “farewell tour” which sounds like quite a fun idea and it’s a shame they didn’t think about taking the show on the road in the wake of the very successful live shows they did.
The UK version is/was one of the most successful versions in the world, based on the Italian version of the format (which is still running but has been axed and bought back in the interim) it has run for eleven years.
That sounds like what Noel was blabbing on about on his website the other month. I was always amazed they never did more than one live series as it brings out the best in Noel.
Like Millionaire, what killed it was format tweaks…the move from 45 minutes to an hour just dragged it out a bit too long, Box 23 was basically just a runner up prize for £0.01 – £5,000ish winners and took forever to explain and open every episode then could often provide a feel bad ending to an episode when it really didn’t need one (Congratulations Roop you’ve won £250,000, oh no Roop if only you opened Box 23 you could have had £500,000!), the less said about the offer button twist the better it just didn’t work apart from maybe a couple of occassions, even then if a game got exciting and the player didn’t have a ‘button game’ The Banker would still be telephoning with extra offers to try and stop the player regardless…
The final nail in the coffin became the constant stream of INCREDIBLY CAUTIOUS X UNLIMITED NOT EVEN 0.01% BRAVE POWER FIVE WINNER DENIED MASSIVE REGRETS (copyright Mark off the dond.co.uk forums) players who would exit the game as soon as they got between £10k – £20k
This is what I wrote about Box 23 almost three years ago:
https://www.bothersbar.co.uk/?p=7828
I pretty much stand by it, although I underestimated how badly you’d have done to consider it by the looks of things. I always thought the Magical Fairy Box just made a mockery of the actual game that had gone before, really.
Affari Tuoi returns!
this time it will be unacquainted pairs playing the game
Test comment (I just posted a comment and it hasn’t shown up, but when I went to try again it said I had already posted it)
Yes it was marked as Spam for some reason, can’t see why. If it happens in future do let me know as the spam is cleared on a nightly basis.
I’ve reinstated your original post.
Whilst I’m sad about its passing, and of course what the show meant to this place about ten years ago, a large part of me still wishes they quit this some time ago and to see what the production team would have made of Avanti un Altro.
http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/deal-or-no-deal-goes-on-tour-as-c4-says-farewell-to-the-dream-factory
An average payout of roughly £13,333 per show, has any day time show managed that in the past and lasted such a long time? Now Fifteen To One lasts 40-50 episodes per series and gives away £40,000
For me personally my top episode is probably Suzanne winning the £250k during the Cowboys and Indians Banker Birthday week, it felt the least manufactured of the jackpot wins (Later ones weren’t too bad but by then the banker had started to low ball the offers a bit more) and the fact she swapped at the end to win it just felt incredible. Wasn’t there an episode a week or so later too where C4 did a bit of a ‘will lightning strike twice’ and the contestant ended up declining a £100,000 odd offer on a £20,000 / £250,000 finish rather stupidly to decline it and end up with the £20,000? My memory is a bit vague on the episode for some reason!
And who would have thought despite Morris being so very close to being the first MQM (From memory again, that was the first ever one hour episode!) it would be a further 7 years of Noel mentioning it nearly every single episode before it finally happened!
You could actually write quite a long book on the highlights of DOND, a shame the copyright idiots cleared a lot of them off YouTube over the years!
Even when I was a die-hard fan of DOND during its early years (2005-08), I knew it wasn’t going to last forever. Indeed, I didn’t see it going on beyond 2011.
And, sure enough, 2011 is what I consider to be the show’s last truly good year.
Who agrees and who doesn’t?
It still had good moments with the games after that point but you no longer cared that much about the contestants who by that point may as well just have been a different set every day unlike the early days where you followed a lot of them. The celebrity specials managed to keep it on life support and surprisingly Channel 4 didn’t over do them either.
Having said that, I went to see a couple of games being filmed a couple of years ago and it really is a different experience being one of the pilgrims, the first contestant gambled a record amount on Box 23 (Around £14,000? It was beaten by James Corden later on of course) then the second contestant dealt at £12,000 or so only to then have the perfect round and end up with a £75,000 / £100,000 climax…ouch!
I was gutted when they had to axe the LTL competition as I always thought it was a nice little way to end the show having Noel doing a bit of audience interaction and laughing at how some of the blue box openers made such a meal of opening the things!