England’s New Show: “The Colour of Money”
A while ago we posted about a new British show called The Colour of Money, which is essentially just a single player edition of GSN’s huge bomb How Much is Enough. The first episode aired last week, and reaction hasn’t been good from the UK audiences. However, inexplicably, the US people who have seen the show seem to sort of enjoy it, which befuddles me. While the show isn’t as bad as I figured it would be and it is workable into something better and more coherent, it seems like sort of a one-trick-pony, more so than any show I’ve seen in a while, and the people that watched the show in England saw that. Will it come to America? I really am not sure not. I hope not, and I really don’t think it was counting that in terms of what the network, ITV, expected for it, it was a rather large failure. But who knows. Check it out; I’d really love to know if I’m alone in the fact that I just don’t find watching other people screaming at a screen with little action happening enjoyable.
[stream flv=x:/flashgameshows.com/wordpress/videos/colourofmoneypt1.flv width=630 height=343 bandwidth=med /]
But hey, it’s a got a really nice set. It seems like it’s wasted on this lacking format, though.
I agree. It is rather boring. Not as boring as pulling rods out, but boring enough. I’m assuming those alarms are loud to wake up the audience, yeah?
I watched it on YouTube last night, and I think I like it better than Deal or No Deal, as there’s a different strategy to it. I don’t like the “pick an ATM card” aspect – I’d kind of like to see contestants set their own limits within a certain range – say, a minimum of 50,000 pounds sterling. How much they chose above that would require them to be ballsier ingame. It was certainly better than it first looked like it would be – I like the individual “How Much is Enough?” feel, but I’d kind of like to see a button or something for the contestant instead of just “STOP!” as one contestant said “Should I stop?” mid-ATM, and it didn’t stop. I just feel like someday that might come back to bite someone – misinterpretation is never a winner.
Is this fantastic programming? No. But I think it’s more intelligent background noise than “Deal” – we get to look at averages! And, there’s some – albeit rather little – strategy involved. It’s not the British game show I’d choose to import, but it’s better than some of our crud.
To answer the question will this show come to America? Maybe, possibly a show that would air during the summer, but I wouldn’t count on it. While the gameplay itself is interesting, the show is rather boring.
This show is like watching the TPiR Range Game for an hour, and shows why the Range Game does not make a standalone show.
For some reason, I could see this show fit on Fox’s summer schedule. To take a page from a Game Show Forum poster, perhaps Fox could work out a deal with Crayola for a sponsorship deal (I’ll go with either burnt sienna or raw umber).
The Color of Money, sponsored by Crayola! HAH!
It’s a show that’s made for import and it shows – this is presented just like any number of US game shows and its format feels like it could be a US show too. The problem is most Brits (and most intelligent US game show fans) don’t like that!
Neville, it already has – the first episode’s second contestant had a taping stopdown after a shout of Stop right on the siren while they checked whether he’d got in on time. The US version would have a button for S&P purposes, that’s a certainty.
Personally, instead of the moving targets on display here, I’d like to see this done in the same(ish) vein as Winner Takes All on the US DoND. Two players play a complete game in an hour (yeah, right, we can dream), whoever gets the highest total gets that, the other gets ‘el zippo’. Do it in the same WTA style, or with both players on the same set at once using all 20 machines in a game.
Simpler change; non-linear distribution of machine amounts. Adds new strategies. Maybe I’m a dork now. :P
Like “How Much is Enough,” this show totally suffers from “DoNDitis” (it’s the same game everytime). However I enjoyed watching it a lot more than DoND. I also would watch “How Much” before DoND. I think because of the suspense factor. DoND has about a 80%/20% luck to suspense ratio, and that 20% is heavily manufactured by the production. The reason I liked “How Much,” and, “Colour,” was that the tension and suspense felt more real. The ratio was at least 50%/50%. On “How Much,” you could feel the emotions and thought processes of the players as they tried to assess their opponents and the amounts on the money clock. On “Colour,” As the cash machine values are increasing, you can feel the uncertainty, fear, and/or confidence that the player has about when to stop, and again it feels real. I found myself shouting at the screen, “STOP!” When I watch Deal or No Deal, I find myself shout at the screen, “CHANGE IT!”
“The Colour of Money” isn’t a perfect game, far from it, but as far as the “Luck ‘n’ Nerve” games go, I would say it was pretty good.
Neville: I was thinking the same thing regarding the ATM card. That one improvement (have the player pick the amount) and forcing players to either risk big or small reward would give the show a real boost.
Sadly, even that would still leave this show thin rather quickly.
I’ll bet somebody will give it a summer tryout. I’ll also bet that would be the end of it.
Alex, not only did they waste a great set but they also wasted the talents of a very good host in Chris Tarrant.
I think this game is too much like Deal or No Deal. All you are doing is letting the money go up to a certain limit before the money run out. This game show is just like picking cases from Deal or No Deal. This show is also like Set for Life too. People need to be original and stop copying game shows from other folks. This would never work in the US.
You know what this feels like? How Much Is Enough.
The networks really need to come up with their own ideas instead of coming out with imitations. See what Fox did to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? They turned it into Greed.
US audiences tend to like it? I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. I threw a bunch of friends in a chat room a link to the youtube videos. Granted, I know they’re not die-hard game show fans like some of the visitors here, but the general response I got back from them was that the show had to have been rigged, and the colors themselves are somewhat of a psychological trick, blah blah blah… In other words, they didn’t like it.
And I kinda agree. Although I have said elsewhere that the show “wasn’t as bad as I was expecting,” I still know it’ll be incredibly painful if (when) it makes it to the States. DoND always seemed kinda odd to me in terms of game play, and this is similar in some regards, but there was something about the atmosphere of this that just felt right. The pacing wasn’t snail-slow, Tarrant’s banter with the contestants makes him an excellent host (although yes, it’s kind of a jump from WWTBAM), and the set was (insert country drawl here) all nice and purdy. (/drawl) As soon as it crosses the pond, all of that will be gone, I’m sure.
I guess in other words, so long as it stays over there, where the Americans who wouldn’t enjoy it as much don’t have to see it pressed down their throats, then I think it’s not that bad at all.
Wow, what a set… as for the show, why can’t anybody come up with another good big-money show with, y’know, actual questions and answers (Millionaire is the only real “good” one left IMO – and that got messed up by making the questions slightly more difficult and the contestants less trivia savvy – Fifth Grader and Don’t Forget the Lyrics are rather blah)?
It does have the “shout at the TV factor” of most of other game shows. However i can also see them getting rid of the taget # and going for x# of bankrupt machines before you lose everything.As for a network FOX (if you want to make it big money,i mean at least its better then stupid hole in the wall) or GSN if you want to keep it relatively small.
Alex J, we HAD a good big-money show one time:
it was called “1 vs 100″, and we KNOW what happened there…
I actually liked the show. Someone said earlier its like DonD and I have to disagree. On DonD you can leave whenever you want because you’re too chicken to play on further on The Colour of Money you have to stay no matter what and that’s why for me it’s a huge jump over DonD. In order for this show too come over to the US they would need to take off all the crummy game shows (Trivia Pursuit: America Doesn’t Play). I think it could have a decently long run for a game show if the right people produced (not Endemol or any other NBC produced show). But then again it could just be me being simple minded.
To MikeSant318: Yeah, We know what happened. Little Benny Silverman happened. He ****ed up a good game show that was a couple of seasons away from greatness (OK, maybe that was way over the top).
As for this show, if I was a producer, I would make this show look a lot less Deal or No Deal-ish.
To George Smith: I respectfully disagree with you. TP:AP isn’t a crummy show. It just looks that way because Debmar Mercury…….well, look at the third sentence in the beginning of this comment.
Yeah, 1 vs. 100 was good… but it was screwed up pretty badly in more ways than one along the way to getting cancelled. Maybe American (or worldwide actually… seems like the pattern is global) audiences just don’t care for too much intellectual stimulation?
Not true or fair, the show has been fairly successful in Europe, although the most successful versions have been more like the original Dutch and less like the US one.
Whoops, I think I mingled sentiments from my first post on this thread and my response to somebody else’s reply and may have accidentally said something I didn’t mean to say. My comment about audiences not desiring intellectual stimulation in their big-money shows was a general comment, not meant specifically about 1 vs. 100. I just don’t get the worldwide appeal of such shows like DOND and, now, The Colour of Money. I guess I like my music fresh and new but I’m an old fogey when it comes to game shows in my desire to have them include some sort of Q&A or A&Q or puzzle-solving :)
Could be worse. Luck and guts and a minimum of brains required.
I actually like the set, although I’d add a mechanical stopping mechanism to the “ATMs” (to avoid “did she say STOP in time or not?”). Tarrant’s a fun host.
If it makes it to the US, the show should be co-sponsored by LL Bean, whose catalog probably exposed me to some of the most ridiculous color names ever… or Crayola.
This could be an easy show to produce for over the summer, plus, goodness knows there’s enough stories of folks out there who could use $50k or more.
[...] Yes, that’s the same company behind the UK network. And hey, they are the people that made The Colour of Money which, well, sucked, so at least we aren’t getting that. They’ve also given us some [...]