Channel 4 Renews “The Bank Job”
Channel 4 has picked up the Endemol bank heist quiz show, The Bank Job for a second series of episodes. George Lamb will stay on as host for the next set of episodes. The order has been extended to ten episodes, up from six. This sounds like there may be some format tweaks because of the increase in contestants, but more will be revealed as the time comes closer. The new series debuts in February. The first series of The Bank Job was shrouded in mystery at first, but the game, which takes place in an actual bank, only selected contestants who played the online game. The game received over 4.6 million plays. The first series of the show saw an average of over 1.2 million viewers.
Relive what was arguably the most memorable moment of the show below.
[flv]http://www.flashgameshows.com/wordpress/videos/bankjobfinale.flv[/flv]
Source : C21Media
Good on them. I’m a US resident who saw the episodes on YouTube, and I liked the format…at least of the first five episodes. The “prisoners’ dilemma” bit in the final seemed tacked on.
I wonder if there’s a bank in LA that would be willing to host a US version of this show…?
Who would host it over here? Also, the cash values would have to be upped significantly, and the game would have to be played at a faster pace. Too often during the live episodes I watched, there seemed to be many quiet moments between questions to drag out the length of the reveal of what was in the vault.
I can imagine this working well as two 5-episode tournaments. Keep the finals to just 4 players like the preliminaries, take out the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and just award all the cash to the sole winner of the finals.
I could see this be a stand-alone series based on the format of the first 5 episodes (yes, the prisoner’s dillema in the finale was good TV, but just didn’t fit in well with the rest of the series), with possibly slightly lowered stakes but a guranteed winner each episode (say 100K in the vault in rounds 1 and 2, and 150 K in round 3- that way you figure the winner would get 30-40K or so)…
I might be the wierd one, but was thinking of having it come to the USA as is, with just some very slight modifications…
1) Prize money values to be doubled (300k in vault rd 1/2, 400k in rd 3) making the magic $1,000,000 in play on each show. Also should make about a one million dollar final.
2) Pacing will be sped up, no dragging each suggestion out. This will also be done by making them pre-taped, and not live.
3) Leave the prisoner’s dilema in, but gear it more to the show’s theme, aka play it up instead of springing it at the end. Play the contestants up as crooks (BUT NOT TO PUT THEM IN COSTUMES (I’m looking directly at you NBC!)), and it’ll be fine.
4) Air this in a sweeps month, starting on the 1st of the month, so you have 5 of whatever day you air this on, making the final the day after (or 2), so the entire series runs within the sweep month.
Okay, getting off the soap box…