Weekend Replay: ITV2′s “Minute to Win It”
This past week ITV2 debuted their version of Minute to Win It, NBC’s now-cancelled stunt show. Our version had an interesting history. It started as a Millionaire clone in look and feel. Then after the first few episodes it developed its own voice and actually became enjoyable. And then something happened and the show went off the deep end this year (much like Deal or No Deal did towards the end of its run), and now it’s gone. ITV2 manages to fix a lot of the issues by ditching nearly everything from the original product and making it its own unique show. It ends up benefitting greatly because of it.
The new show involves two teams playing against each other in 60 second games. Each time they complete a stunt they score points and the most points at the end of the show wins. The winning team plays a cash builder round, where each point they score in 60 seconds scores them £1,000 in addition to a base £5,000. After that they are given one more challenge to complete in the 60 second time limit to win the bank. Completely new format and it works well. It carries a much more enjoyable competitive feel than a Millionaire clone. It has the competition feel of NBC’s best episodes, the Last Man Standing editions. It’s a welcome change.
Another change is the tone. The American version became a melodramatic overblown production, much like our Deal or No Deal. However, ITV2′s takes a more comedic, light hearted tone. The only catch is that it only works half the time, and most of this is due to the script host Darren McMullen is given. When he can be himself, he’s fine. When he’s forced to go off the prompter he sounds forced and borderline painfully unfunny. The celebrity captains work well for this, too. I know I’m probably going to get some negativity for thinking the UK version is better than the US, but it just is. They managed to correct a ton of tonal problems for us and create a show which stands upon itself, not on the shoulders of a look from 1999. You saw a clip of a game above. Here’s some more below.
One weird note: is it some sort of UK law for guys to wear low cut shirts? What was with that? Their shirts were lower cut than some of the ladies. That threw me off a bit.
Well they ARE in a band, in fairness.
Incidentally, I was at the recording and a little recording note – they stopped the second game of Pin Head after a few seconds after Joe intimated some of the sugar glass landed down the back of his clothes. The adjudicator suggested a redo for fairness.
Darren hosted NBC’s Love in the Wild and was really insipid in that show. He’s found a bit of character here, though. This looked pretty enjoyable.
I love how the voice of the instruction was decidedly NOT British. Hmmmm :)
I love how the voice of the instruction was decidedly NOT British. Hmmmm :)
Looked like a updated version of “Friends Like These”, one of (IMHO) the best British shows that shoulda made it to the states. I even suggested that to Davies years ago.
And Jeez that host was annoying.
Minute to Win It is not officially cancelled here in America. It just hasn’t been announced for season 3 yet. So let’s hope that we still get another season this coming winter.
Yeah!! I would be very disappointed of “Minute” were cancelled for real.
I’ve always said that MTWI was too overproduced, too tense for what should be a light-hearted game and shouldn’t have been played for $1 million. From watching clips of this UK version, the new format is a wonderful change of pace.
I honestly have not watched the last few episodes because of all the wrong reasons: too overproduced, too sappy/sentimental, too hyper contestants, and no one will win the million. Get to the games already!
This seems like a decent version. Agreed that it seems to fix some of the flaws with the US version.
Part of it seems contrived though. The way the audience would “ooh” and “aww” after each balloon in the first clip got annoying after a while. And I can appreciate some attempts to add humor, but the cut aways to the host’s jokes during the gameplay were just unnecessary.
I think I’d rather see a complete program before I make any kind of judgment. But the clips do not look all that bad.
I can’t tell when the host is “being himself” and when he is reading from the cue cards. Not that it matters all that much!
Interesting idea of having the “blueprints” delivered in a deliberately exaggerated “American” male voice. I suppose that turnabout really IS fair play after all. (Over here, the instructions are delivered in a coolly underplayed manner by a British female voice.)