WIN A MILLION (FROM HOME)!
And a French game + a British court show
WIN THE LOTTERY!
ITV1 and ITVX partnered with People's Postcode Lottery, a British subscription lottery which raises money for charities, to develop the interactive new quiz show Win Win!. In this show, viewers can play from their sofas for the chance to win the same prizes as the contestants playing in the studio. One contestant is guaranteed to win £1,000,000 in the final episode — and that winner could be a viewer who makes it through to the end.
Created and produced by Hello Dolly, the show will air on Saturday nights for six weeks. Comedy duo Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins will host the game, which is based on survey questions about the views of the Great British public. A group of 40 studio contestants and viewers will play to win prizes, including dream holidays, luxury cars and tickets to some of the world's biggest sporting and entertainment events.
If you want to apply for the game, click here (the deadline is 30 June 2025).
The other interesting thing is that days after scoring the series order in the UK, Win Win! is making waves in the U.S., where NBC is developing a U.S. version of the show that will be produced by Hello Dolly, together with Universal Television Alternative Studio.
Games involving interaction with home viewers are certainly nothing new; since the boom in apps, there have been many quizzes in which home viewers play alongside, against or independently of contestants in the studio. However, this case is certainly very interesting, given the guaranteed £1 million prize and charitable purpose.
FRENCH FOCUS ON GAME
Another game show, this time from France. Following the recent announcement of Sea Battle (see FE, 4 April), which is going to be produced in collaboration with DreamSpark, Satisfaction Group has announced Focus, a new primetime game show set to premiere on French channel TF1. The show will be hosted by Arthur, who is not only one of France's most prominent television personalities, but also the founder of Satisfaction Group.
In Focus, 50 contestants compete across six levels, each designed to test a different core brain function: logic, calculation, memory, visual perception, spatial awareness and language. External aids are eliminated from the show — there are no lifelines, devices or artificial intelligence — leaving contestants to rely solely on their own mental agility. The ultimate goal is to guess a hidden object using visual clues laid out on a table. Also worth mentioning “its sleek, futuristic, 360° visual design and play-along format, which appeals to a broad demographic”.
According to the producer, Focus, like the previous Sea Battle, is inspired by popular board games (in this case, those involving deduction and association), but no particular game served as the basis for it. Through this programme, Arthur aims to provide an interactive experience in which participants must use their powers of observation and analytical skills to discover the hidden answer.
It all sounds very interesting (even though games linked to various brain functions are certainly nothing new), but obviously before making a final judgement we need to see how the mechanism (and the set design) works in practice.
BRITISH SHORTCUT TO JUSTICE
Channel 4 has recently announced the commissioning of The Court (w/t), an interesting social experiment produced by Wall to Wall Media with a bold goal: to take viewers inside the civil justice system.
Tragic evidence provided the inspiration for the format. Civil cases in the UK currently take an average of up to 18 months. Furthermore, while the number of civil cases has increased to over 1.7 million per year, half of UK courts have closed since 2010 and funding for legal aid has been cut by 28% over the past decade. This has left the UK's civil justice system on the brink of collapse (and this is not only a British problem, of course).
This new format tries to provide a partial solution for those seeking to resolve their disputes. In a first for British television, The Court has been developed in consultation with some of the UK's leading legal experts to provide a swift, fair and legally binding alternative to the overloaded, drawn-out and expensive court system.
Set in a former courthouse brought back to life, the series will follow the stories of members of the public from across the UK who have chosen to fast track their cases through a televised, alternative court. From passionate pet custody battles and contested inheritances to online defamation and escalating neighbourly conflicts, each case will be packed with drama and the types of moral dilemmas that reflect real life in Britain in 2025. While the disputes will be varied, the need for resolution is something they all share.
Each side’s case will be prepared by an independent solicitor before two expert barristers go head-to-head on behalf of the opposing parties. After each hearing, an independent arbitrator will deliver a legally-binding decision, allowing each side to move on with their lives.
The fact that the final verdict is binding on both parties elevates the format above traditional court shows, which often use re-enactment techniques and therefore do not feature the actual protagonists of the court case. However, this is not legally permitted in all countries.
NEWS IN A NUTSHELL
Kanal D Romania has ordered seasons five and six of Jocul Cuvintelor, its version of the word-based game-show format Think. The format, owned by Bavaria Entertainment and distributed internationally by Sera Film, premiered in Turkey in 2009 as Kelime Oyunu. Until now, the format has been commissioned in
five territories: Turkey, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, and for Kurdish-speaking
audiences, showing its broad appeal. It also has recently been optioned in Spain, with increasing interest from other territories.
Filming has begun on Race Against the Tide, a sand sculpture competition set at West Sands Beach in St Andrews. The UK adaptation is being produced by Tern, a Zinc Media company, for BBC Two, BBC Scotland and BBC iPlayer. Blue Ant Studios created and originally produced the format, and also oversees global distribution for all versions of the series.
Channel 4 has commissioned Handcuffed from 72 Films, a Fremantle Company – a new series which takes eight pairs of strangers with completely opposed opinions, beliefs, lifestyles, and bad habits, and handcuffs them together 24/7.
Banijay Mexico and Banijay US Hispanic are developing the dating game show Star Crush. The format brings devoted fans face-to-face with their celebrity crushes, giving them the chance to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime date — and possibly more. Each episode features one celebrity meeting three superfans, all competing for a romantic night out with their favourite famous person.
In the last issue, we announced the programming schedule for Warner Bros. Discovery's (WBD) portfolio of channels for 2025–26. Now, we would particularly like to highlight Discovery's Dancing with Sharks (working title). This special will naturally air during Shark Week, the annual week-long programming event on the Discovery Channel focusing on shark-themed content which first aired in 1988. The special is described as an "unprecedented underwater dance competition between expert divers and their shark partners".
