Review: 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, BBC1 (From Blackpool Citizen)

Review: 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, BBC1

3:07pm Friday 16th July 2010

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IT’S Saturday night and the brains trust of the Beeb has been set a problem.

Richard Hammond on Total Wipeout has proved that audiences apparently love watching people make fools of themselves, particularly if they run the risk of getting injured in the process.

So now we have the joys of 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, presented by a demented Welshman who looks like he’s doing his best Uncle Bryn impression. It’s basically a simple quiz — with simple questions and arguably even simper contestants. But what the Beeb is banking on is that getting a question wrong means expulsion from the game in the wildest manner possible.

It’s a bit like watching a real-life version of the board game Mousetrap. Certainly the technical boffins have had fun devising ways to send hapless contestants into oblivion.

Unfortunately the whole thing fails because it takes so long to get to each ‘expulsion’. Let’s be honest, no-one cares about the answers or who might win the £10,000 prize. All we really want to see is grinning TV wannabes being dropped through trapdoors into icy waters or trapped inside giant balls and rolled into a swimming pool.

Just do away with the questions, and more importantly the presenter, and then we could see even more people meeting their fate.

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