The National Lottery: Break The Safe

Only one of you needs to know the subject slightly better than your rivals (you can play the game just by bidding one answer higher than the other team), the other player can just sit back and happily think of what they're going to do with their tens of thousands of pounds. I've seen this happen numerous times and I think that's a flaw in the rather pointless exercise of bringing two strangers together to play as a pair.

There's too much false tension added when Nick's revealing if their answer's correct and IMO there's little in the way of excitement during the game which feels a bit off given how much money they're playing with by the BBC's standards.

I like Who Dares Wins - although the occasional question lends itself well to guesses, I think as a format it works well, and has a good play-along factor.

Secret Fortune again had a good play-along factor - probably even stronger than that of Who Dares Wins. It didn't have the slick feel of Who Dares Wins, and it felt a bit daytime at times, but I don't think that diminished the overall experience too much.

Perfection is a decent show too - again, the play-along factor isn't lacking (although it's better with more than one person in the room in my experience), and you do get a good mixture of questions - ranging from the (supposedly) obvious to relatively specialist.

Nick Knowles is a decent host of all three, and doesn't come across as annoying, or insincere. He also has some personality about him.

To be honest, I think the subject of hosts is a far more controversial one than the formats themselves (with the possible exception of Tipping Point) - I don't get why Dermot O'Leary or Ben Shephard get the hosting jobs they do, but I'm sure there are people that really like them.

Agreed


Neither In it to win it or Who dares wins record in Scotland and they account for 75% of the annual lottery shows.

McIntyre's new pilot is nothing like Noel's house party so stop repeating nonsense you've sourced from The Sun.

Nick Knowles does it again. Another good but not fantastic quiz/gameshow to add to his CV. It wasn't perfect and the breaks for the lottery don't help, especially the last one where they pretend the break was to 'verify the timings', but I quite enjoyed it and will watch it again next week.

It reminded me of a cross between Every Seconds Counts, 19 Keys, Breakaway, Million Pound Drop, Don't Blow the Inheritance and Blind Date.

Eamonn Holmes and National Lottery Jetset used to be good. The family flying onto the next destination if the studio competitor didn't win their chance to go out. Going back LIVE after the draw to guess whether the balls in the order they fell were higher or lower a number than the last ball.

I remember Jetset wasn't without it's problems, especially poor satellite links to the Jetsetters.
Incidentally wasn't that broadcast from TVC?

Actually there was a 20 minute break when they had to verify the timings. And actually the studio looks a lot bigger on the TV than it does actually being there. And by the looks of it they added some GFX when putting the money from the bank into the safe...

Is it impossible that the 20 minute break in the studio was for some other purpose? I'm no expert, but I'd say verifying timings wouldn't take that long.

I didn't think the studio looked that big on TV, so it must be pretty compact in real life.

I'm not particular keen on breaking the game for a lottery draw. Can't they satisfy both audiences and have the lottery draws first and hand over to the game show afterwards? I don't mind these game shows but they feel too long with the lottery breaks in between.

The shows are designed to be built around the lottery draws - I doubt Camelot would be too happy if the BBC shunted the draws to the start of the show.

It's kind of the same set up with the Dutch version of Millionaire as their Millionaire is based around the 'Lotto Weekend' and their Lottery draws. However I think the Dutch Lotto directly sponsors Miljonairs...

I don't think the shows are designed around the lottery. I can't imagine someone writing a format idea and including a note that 'The Show stops here for 5 minutes of unrelated content'. The only recent one that has anything to do with the lottery is Jet Set. Some of them are UK versions of existing formats too.

It's obvious that Camelot get more from the lottery deal than the BBC or their viewers. Even if the BBC continue to show the lottery draws, it is about time they stopped paying to show them. It's very telling that no commercial broadcasters have continued showing any of the draws for very long after obtaining the rights.