Really enjoyed tonight's episodes - it may have been lazy scheduling on C4's part but it's one of the few things we all watched and they did make the effort!
They did the selection the fairest way possible under the circumstances, letting the players decide who would compete in the £500,000 - though they probably ended up with the same player I'd have imagined the producers chose.
Along with that a couple of nice twists.
In the first (£250,000) show along with the offer the player was given the chance to open special gift boxes containing mystery prizes. She dealt at £2400 + 2 gifts, winning an extra £1000 and a weekend in Paris - and avoiding a rejected Christmas present from the banker - a pair of the bankers boxers!
The second show in addition to the £500,000 jackpot had a twist first used a few weeks ago of an offer after every box in the final round. Unlike last time though, the banker made it clear early on in the game that if the player continued to that point that scenario would play out.
As for the show itself - I'll spoiler tag it for the benefit of anyone planning to watch a recording or repeat:
I'm glad the £500,000 went pretty early on and by the second round we were back to a pretty much normal game. As I've said before I think the £250,000 is pitched about right meaning the offers cause genuine dilemmas. A bigger prize means bigger offers and you might as well take the first and go home!
P.S. Back to the first game and although the offers were stupidly small (£12 then 12p) it was nice to see the banker back to these ways. Lately players have been taking out the big numbers early on and still getting offers of over £6000 - in the early days losing the £250,000 in round one generally meant an offer in the hundreds rather than thousands!
P.P.S. Forgot the most important thing - we finally saw the banker at the end too!
