26Apr2009
Weekend Replay: Full Episode of “Millionaire: Hot Seat”
It’s been Millionaire mania around here the past few days. The show seems to be booming this year. We posted the first bit of Australia’s Millionaire spinoff called Hot Seat early last week. The show was competing directly against Deal or No Deal down under, and Deal is winning the battle. Find out why as you can watch the rest of the episode right here. The entire show just gives a feeling of, “eh”. Too soon.
wow…I just watched the first part you just posted and my only thought is, “Wow…this is really stupid.” It lacks the drama and the risk of the original. if this ever makes it to the US, I will surely not watch.
Three words: Jump the shark.
No wonder DoND is beating MHS in Australia.
Anyone else finds how unbalanced the game is having an order of contestants? The format makes it incredibly unfair, even if there is a random order.
It ain’t half bad, truth be told. The worst thing I saw was that they tried to compare it to the original show, which made it look really cheap. (think: Card Sharks 2001 compared to its predecessors) I rather liked the gameplay, though. It wasn’t the same tense, high-stakes game that we’ve all grown to know Millionaire as, but a more lighthearted spin which made its own name. If something like this were to come to the US, I’d hope that they’d market it without the Millionaire brand attached to it. If they didn’t, it cold work.
Would be half-decent without the millionaire moniker. If you have the WWTBAM title in it, it just has a high hurdle to overcome. This show doesn’t.
So, basically, it’s “ask 15 questions, whoever’s on the chair on Q15 is the only one who can win anything”. It’s trivia hot potato (no, not Hot Potato). Which is an okay format, if implemented a bit too simple for my liking here.
They’ve done the game a disservice by calling it Millionaire. This game is not in the same league as the original.
You’ve all hit on one of my big issues. By putting the “Millionaire” branding on it, they screwed themselves out of the gate. The show’s still popular worldwide. It’s too soon to be throwing a totally different show with the same name on there. Had the name just been “Hot Seat” with a different set, we wouldn’t have said that much beyond it being sorta similar. It was screwed from day one with the “Millionaire” branding.
The format forces people to guess at the answer. I suppose some excitement could come from a contestant guessing his way up the ladder. But they’ve already got a ‘guess-which-one-for-the-million’ show on the other network. Its not millionaire, it really should have been introduced without that label. And I’m assuming that she would have gone back down to $1000 if she got it wrong, am I correct? Did I miss that explanation of the rules?
Thanks for posting the clips from the show. I agree that it’s a poor substitute for the original WWTBAM. For the six contestants, most of the final outcome has already been determined before the first question is ever asked. The biggest factor for each person is which position they have been assigned in the order of play. If I were the first person in the hot seat, I would keep guessing all the way to the top (or to oblivion). I would never count on having another chance in the hot seat, and even if I got a second chance, the potential top prize would no longer be a life changing amount of money. For those who are in the later positions, their situation is even less desirable.
It strikes me as a dumbed down, cheapened, bastardized version of the show. But the dumbest part is that they have named the show after the instantly recognizable chair that is such a big part of WWTBAM, and then they changed the chair so it doesn’t even resemble the iconic hot seat that we all know and love.
I think the format is pretty much rot even without the Millionaire name on it. It’d be a bit better if the top prize was knocked down for using a pass instead of guessing, this makes people more willing to guess than pass, as if you pass you can still go for big bucks. The “penalty” of knocking of the top prize when eliminating a player doesn’t make much sense as the person who caused the penalty is not affected by it. Maybe if there was a seperate communal money pot at stake as well, or if instead of passing they could take the next person’s answer to the question a la 5th grader, but have to split the prize. I dunno, anything but this.
The Aussies can keep it. I hope this version never finds its way onto American soil.
Agree with the peanut gallery. If this show were called anything but “Millionaire,” I’d dismiss it as a mediocre show I may want to watch from time to me. But the fact it has the WWTBAM name just shows that it is inferior to the original version we know and love.
Eh, I still find it light years ahead of guessing random boxes/suitcases. At least there’s knowledge involved, even if it’s not as brilliant as the original.
I think everyone really hit the nail on the head with this one. It’s just not in the millionaire league. I think the biggest problem is the money tree. If they even just kept the standard millionaire ladder, at least the prize amounts might be interesting. With this format, the first wrong answer knocks $750,000 from the top prize? Goodness! The original tree would still add a lot of intrigue, with the money cutting in half with each wrong answer, and I’d suspect they’d still linger around the 64,000 range. And this music was exceptionally bad. The millionaire music can be touched up. I think what they did with Super Millionaire was terrific, and even the techno British upgrade at least has a pulsing feel. This felt like infomercial music.
Now in the interest of being fair there were a few things I liked.
I liked the host. He seemed uncomfortable with the time limits, but I think that kind of aggressive approach is good for this format. By the way, I might be in the minority on this, but I like that once a contestant says final answer the screen doesnt change immediately. I don’t know, that little moment between where they lock in an answer and the screen confirms it adds a little uneasiness to me. But anyways, the host seemed affable, and good natured.
I liked the added video screens. I thought the tickers surrounding the set were a little unneeded. But what really impressed me was the video wall where the the host comes in. Especially how it would go in flames when someone was eliminated. I think this is the next logical evolution of our set. I hope they’ll incorporate it.
I liked the graphics display, the fire line was a nice touch for the spin off. All I’d like to see would be the actual time left on display.
This format might be nice on GSN with a way scaled down money tree, but lets not try to throw this into a millionaire paradigm.