Funny: Technology Fails Leads to Manual “Ask the Audience” on “Millionaire”

As you know by this point ITV1 brought Millionaire back to its roots this week with the special series of live Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?: The People Play.  Concluding tonight at 9:00PM UK (4:00PM ET), the series sees regular contestants, not celebrities, return to the Hot Seat and try to win £1,000,000 for the first time in two years. These episodes are live so literally anything can happen.  That was proven last night as a contestant used the “Ask the Audience” Lifeline.  On taped episodes viewers don’t see the actual wait time between voting and results.  It’s slightly edited.  When you’re doing it live you need instant and accurate results.  However, on last night’s edition the results were not working.  What does Millionaire do in this situation?

When the results would not display host Chris Tarrant quickly asked the audience to pull out cardboard cards with the corresponding letters to answers on them.  When you first see there’s a problem it almost becomes cringe-worthy, but the moment showed the strength of Chris, why the live format is fun, and actually, somehow, made the show more fun.  Chris effortlessly moved from the computer results to cardboard letters as if it’s something they’ve done for a long time, not just a last second glitch.  I never considered this could even happen so good job by the production team having a quick cover.  It worked well and created a funny, memorable moment.  Check it out below.

Last night’s big winners included Donna Hearnden from Birmingham who won £50,000; Russell Brown from Doncaster who won £20,000; and the carryover contestant Dawn Harkins who won £75,000. Denise Allsop returns tonight in the People Play series finale.  You can play along with the game by clicking here.  This series has been incredibly fun and well done…much more so than the celebrity shows.  I’m hoping we can see more of these soon.