Bank Balance

I thought as much. Life Stories has been doing dreadfully all series and it sounds like that was actually a series low. Both did terribly and neither should return.

I noticed in ITV's press pack yesterday that there's a Life Stories retrospective coming up to mark 100 episodes. Perhaps that could also be used as a send-off for the show?

The cast list this year has been poor - when they put Gemma Collins up front it kind of set the tone. I think they'd need to find Piers Morgan another primetime vehicle though.

Unlikely Bank Balance will return - it certainly shouldn't. However it's now established a relationship with the BBC for him both as a host (having been an ITV/C4 face for most his career) and also for the production company, and as such it's not really a loss for him.

I haven't seen every episode, just dipped in and out, but can I ask, has anyone actually won on the show yet? And by "won" I mean the prize at the end for getting everything on the board, not just the safe amount they guarantee themselves part way through? If not, it seems odd they would run it for so long and not have any winners, but going by last nights preview for tonight's episode it appears a couple may actually win big.

Nobody has yet successfully stacked every block on the table without it falling down in order to win the jackpot amount.
It's not a certainty that we'll see anyone win the jackpot at all, of course.
In 2016/2017, ITV broadcast a daytime quiz programme called Alphabetical , whose final round required a player to answer 26 questions correctly (one for every letter of the alphabet) under a time pressure. Nobody managed it over two series (true even after tweaks to the format post-series-one).

A lot of his primetime vehicles have struggled in recent years, I think perhaps a factual series that show his lighter side would be good or even a gameshow. I know he has a reputation of being boorish but I've seen and heard in other interviews and programme where he comes off quite well and even on GMB, he's quite good at the more frivolous stories.

Despite all the criticism it’s got I’ve stuck with this series. I have to say tonight’s programme was very entertaining. They finally had a couple who were both clever in intelligence and tactics and they got so close to completing the game. Gutted they didn’t do it. It won’t be recommissioned but I will watch the show till the end.

Yes if they’d have shown tonight’s episode earlier it might have had a chance of a recommission

I think the contestants are getting gradually less annoying as well

pic.twitter.com/wttUwFW15n

— Adam Devlin (@ad_I_am) March 6, 2021

I can't work out the problem with this show. In a way, it's similar to the Cube - a game which was quite unwinnable for a long time - but something isn't right.

Maybe it's because any winnings will likely only be from banked stacks, so a max of £25k for the luckiest players, which doesn't scream 9pm, as opposed to being able to cash out with what's on the board. They've built the format around completing the board but it seems virtually impossible and for £100k, hardly worth the hassle. If the jackpot was significantly bigger or you were given the chance to cash out after each 3 questions (when you get a credit you'd choose to play on til the next credit or walk away) then it might change the point of the game and increase the number of winners.

My mother is the best normal viewer for these type of game shows. She loves The Wall, it has Danny Dyer with his Cockney sayings, an easy to follow concept and a lot of visuals, such as the balls falling in each pot and an excellent casting of contestants. (She also liked the French version which used to be on TF1)

Bank Balance on the other hand is a more complex format, Gordon Ramsay is pure marmite. I like his cookery and restaurant formats, but he's not a natural game show host and I think running the format over half the week doesn't help.

The Cube works as it makes things look deceptively simple, and also up to 9 goes, unlike Bank Balance where one block falls and...game over

My favourite Cube moment by miles has to be this one from the most recent series



It just isn't very exciting watching people stack blocks, I'm sure it is a lot more exciting in the actual studio but it just doesn't translate on screen (an actual studio audience would have also probably helped but out of their control obviously), then if they manage to bank a stack the rest of the game just becomes 'ah well they're leaving with a decent chunk of change now anyway'

Compare that to The Wall which I watched tonight, which despite just being a giant game of Plinko has you on the edge of your seat, the game can change in seconds depending on the colour of the balls and then of course there is the cliffhanger of the contract signing at the end

BBC don't like giving huge sums of money away.

If it's a few thousand, that's fine with them, but not 100k.