The British are Better Than Us: Painful Loss on “The Million Pound Drop”
The first (and hopefully not last) series of The Million Pound Drop came to a close this past weekend in London. It was an interesting series of six episodes that had many ups and downs. It resulted in one winning team, walking out with £75,000. The rest walked out with nothing. No team, though, was more memorable than episode three’s Will and Gemma. The team reached the final level of the game with a bank I never thought was possible under the format. They played the final question for over £500,000 which no other team came close to. What happened after that was one of the most gutting moments in game shows this decade. Take a look. Hope to see more of it (and preferably an American version) soon.
And also Davina McCall, the host, is awesome. Just saying.
Urgh. It's still just as painful as it was the first time. I don't think any other loss ever has been that crushing.
Talk about half a million pounds down the drain
…Literally.
Well, at least the last questions are difficult.
It's ridiculous though that people can't concede they aren't 100% sure of the question. Rational thinking means they guarantee over a quarter million.
If they were 100% sure, why'd they bet the whole thing? Risk is one thing…but, if you have the chance to bet less on a question that you don't know…you know what I mean?
I meant wereN'T 100% sure.
They HAD to bet the whole thing, the hostess explained going into the question that there were two choices and they had to leave one clear. It was designed to be all or nothing.
I hope this doesn't return to the air. It was a complete waste of time. The fact that the sole winners took home a mere £75,000 shows that one of the major flaws with this show was the casting. Had they bet more conservatively, they'd have for sure gone home with a six-figure amount. Better casting would have probably resulted in more winners as well. One winner in seven nights = Epic Fail.
It's very cruel to watch all that money drop and slide past the contestants under their feet. Ugh.
I'm actually tempted to make an MST-style riff at this clip.
Davina: Prince Charles and Diana Spencer; Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. The question is…
Me: "What is liederkranz?"
Here's my beef: That was an incredibly bad, trashy question. Aside from the fact that the two events are only a year apart and both occurred nearly 30 years ago, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne's marriage is celebrity gossip. 30-year-old celebrity gossip. When week-old celebrity gossip usually makes for lame trivia questions. Few if any people in their right mind would care about the exact year that the Osbournes married enough to know it from the tops of their heads.
From a gameplay perspective, they might as well have taken after Heads or Tails and had Davina's coin flip decide whether or not they won. It's like they were intentionally trying to avoid having a winner.
And yes, I am well aware that these kinds of questions also crop up on other shows, Millionaire included. They also make me cringe on any other show. But this is particularly irksome because failure on the 8th, unexpectedly obscure question completely invalidates any success on the first 7 questions.
I just have one word for this…OUCH. I mean, even with the spoiler alert, it was painful. I mean, even Ken Basin's million dollar fail wasn't as painful because the guy was both cocky and greedy.
I'll agree with you on the coin flip I didn't like that either, but I think it was simply because time was running short and they were really struggling to decide and Davina had to hurry them and therefore, my argument about why this shouldn't be done live
But as far as a "obscure" question goes: that's called luck of the draw, and it was a question worth 525,000 pounds you can expect it to be tough. You know they're not going to ask a question like "who's the current U.S. President?"
But I do agree the format invalidates the first 7 questions, if it were me, I'd give them a buyout option like say 1/4 of what they've accumulated to that point, or some kind of consolation prize for reaching the 8th question.
But back on topic, yes painful loss especially since Gemma wasn't so sure she wanted to go with people. 525K I believe that's the biggest "loss" in game show history.
The question format is similar to "Duel": Place chips on one or more of the multiple-choice answers, then lose the chips that were placed on incorrect answers. I'd rather see "Duel" come back than this game.
I have to admit, this has to be one of the most painful losses in game show history (in the world)!!!!! I totally feel for them, such a painful experience to bare.
Good-looking set, and a dramatic format. I'd like to see more of it, but it looks like it has promise.
Now, I'll have to see if there's any of "Duel" on YT, that I might compare the two.
And I didn't know that the name of "Jif" was changed over there.
There were originally two Jifs over here, the cleaner, and the lemon juice in the fancy lemon-shaped container.
Although that's not the main reason, I'm guessing it might have been one.
I actually wasn't complaining about the coin flip. I was saying that the final question might as well have been a coin flip.
And I agree that the final question should be expected to be quite hard. My beef is that the question was on something so ridiculously insignificant that nobody in their right mind would give a flying frak about the information they asked about.
For some examples of questions that I would consider both well-written AND sufficiently difficult, Millionaire has had quite a few million-dollar questions which fit the bill:
Bob House's $1,000,000 question: "Which of the following does not have a chemical element named for him?" – This is a great question because virtually everybody remembers having to deal with the periodic table in high school chemistry, and probably the first couple elements. Yet the ones named for famous scientists are the higher-numbered ones, the names of which everybody has seen on the periodic table but few can recall instantly. Had this question been on The Million Pound Drop, I think it most likely would've made the players stand there agonizingly trying to picture the periodic table, using up much more of their thinking time instead of dumping all the money on their first-instinct guess in no time flat.
Dan Blonsky's $1M question: "The Earth is approximately how many miles away from the Sun?" – Much like the previous one, I'm sure a lot of people have seen the number in physics class, but how many can recall it on demand?
Sam Murray's Tournament of Ten question: "According to the Population Reference Bureau, what is the approximate number of people who have ever lived on earth?" – What made this question good was actually the fact that the choices were spaced apart fairly well. (Incidentally, this would've made a horrible question had it not been multiple-choice.) If you ask anybody the question without money at stake, they'd probably have some kind of a rough estimate. As with the above two examples, this is another one which encourages players to spend some time thinking it over, and as icing on the cake, this is a great question for the audience at home to debate over while waiting for the reveal.
Here in the States, Jif is a brand of peanut butter (or "ground ground-nuts" if you will) marketed for at least fifty years by Procter and Gamble.
Poocy.EXE is spot on about the question. The problem with ‘event’ based questions is that for the question to be either A) posible to answer or B) an interesting question for the viewer it needs to be about events that ‘happened’ to you. In that respect; Charles and Diana’s wedding is fine – because it was a big enough historical/cultural event for most British people to know when abouts it happened. Ozzy Osbourne getting married to a woman who at the time wasn’t a celebrity in her own right was not particularly newsworthy in 1982, let alone nearly 30 years later. Pair that with the fact that the two weddings took place within 12 months of eachother – it did come across as a particularly unfair question. Most Brits I’ve spoken to agreed.
The other problem with the questions was that they seemed to get arbitrarily harder depending on whenever the producers felt it was appropriate. There was a huge leap of difficulty in Will and Gemma’s game. A good quiz like this will have questions that feel they are getting gradually more difficult
Well, the good thing with this show is that it is live, so they can get viewer feedback and implement it into the next day's show. I recall on the first episode that they opened drops one at a time; many people complained that it took too much time, so the next day's show, they had multiple drops open on the first couple of questions.
I thought you American's were a bit tougher than this – not every show should have a consolation game, and nowadays gameshows are more about the unfair than the fair.
It's a great concept – and a great show. You might not get it from the clips but it's one of those shows that when you watch the first episode, you can't help but come back for the next – something I'm not sure would have happened if it hadn't been live. As they say if a show is any good you can describe it in 15 words – and their mantra was "You must bet all your money, leaving one drop clear". Simple.
And it was absolutely a fair question to win the jackpot – a mix of both general knowledge and specialist knowledge. And this show is all about educated guesses and logically eliminating incorrect answers – it wouldn't work if it was more about actual knowledge.
I completely agree. I don't understand this need to make everything so soft and painfully nice. They are being given £1,000,000. They only have to answer 8 questions. You only win £75,000 on your version of Millionaire in 8 questions, and you only get $12,500 on our version. The Drop is extremely generous…it just involves some strategy and guts to play. If you lose, tough. The show is made so people lose money. It's a damage control show. Those first 7 questions generally have one throw-away answer so you're just about guaranteed to move on if you have any sense. The last question to win the money is tough and rightfully so.
Really hoping we see it in America, or at least I'm really hoping we see it return to 4. The ratings seemed fine for the time slot it was on so I'd imagine it's got a good shot. And I agree that the live factor helped hugely. I couldn't turn away.
I completely agree. I don't understand this need to make everything so soft and painfully nice. They are being given £1,000,000. They only have to answer 8 questions. You only win £75,000 on your version of Millionaire in 8 questions, and you only get $12,500 on our version. The Drop is extremely generous…it just involves some strategy and guts to play. If you lose, tough.
The show is made so people lose money. It's a damage control show. Those first 7 questions generally have one throw-away answer so you're just about guaranteed to move on if you have any sense. The last question to win the money is tough and rightfully so. The only fear I had was that no one was going to win at all during the series, and I could have seen that as a problematic situation, but someone did it. Fears and crisis averted.
Really hoping we see it in America, or at least I'm really hoping we see it return to 4. The ratings seemed fine for the time slot it was on so I'd imagine it's got a good shot. And I agree that the live factor helped hugely. I couldn't turn away.
Sorry to not post a comment about the show, but staying on the topic of British shows, can anybody tell me if someone has tried to bring Countdown to the U.S.? If they have, why wasn't it successful? That show is the best game show I've seen in a while; must explain why the schools may be better over there, because they've had kids on that show! U.S. TV needs a show like Countdown. Why is it not here?
someone did do a pilot in 1990, but they played around with the format so much and eliminated the numbers games. But ultimately I think it didn't sell because it was too "brainy" here's a link to a description of the pilot:
http://www.usgameshows.net/x.php?show=Countdown19…
All they needed to do was say "History" and they presumably would have gotten something a little more… academically based. It's no one's fault but themselves.
Hate to be pessimistic but Countdown would never sell in America. Too hard, even for me and I'm not stupid.
The last question is all or nothing