This show baffles me a bit. Playing it—and I use ‘playing’ in the loosest sense; this is barely a game at all—involves no skill whatsoever. No intelligence (or, more specifically,no general knowledge), no memory-skills, nothing physical. In fact, the only ability you need to play it is the ability to choose between box x and box y or £x and £y.
This almost total lack of play-along-ability (unless you enjoy picking random boxes, too), for us at home, means that the only reason we’re really watching this is for the tension i.e. mainly, those LAME calls from THE BANKER. Which makes me think: has any recent game show required such a suspension of disbelief as this one? Surely there is NO-ONE the end of that telephone?*
I was puzzled, too, by the fact that these people seem to all know each other., day in, day out. How long are they holed up in D-O-N-D HQ? And surely this calls for a top new reality show (ahem), wherein we all get to see them interacting, bitching, “strategising”.
Oh, and also: Noel Edmonds. (Or is that too easy?)
*Apparently, says my flatmate, one occasion the contestant and not Noel actually spoke to THE BANKER, but I’m not sure I believe this, tbh.