Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - Review

Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - Review

I was really rather intrigued when I found out that Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire would be airing for a three night special this week. With the "trial" run of play-along-at home, a new studio and a new style promised I was hoping this Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire would be something of a trial run for a possible new series..............I was hoping for so much more.

Without sitting on the fence, Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire last night was one of the worst hours of TV I have seen in a long time. Perhaps it was made worse by the fact that I actually was hoping for better. I should have known, after ITV unleashed the painful Tipping Point on us last week, now its the turn of WWTBAM to get the naff treatment.

The show suffered early on from a mixture of factors - 

1) Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire seemed like it wanted to be Surprise Surprise. In typical ITV fashion Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was turned into a mixture between Cilla's famous show and X-Factor sob stories. Not the Millionaire of old and certainly no the Millionaire I want. I can see how someone, somewhere thought this might work (the underdog/hard-done-to person playing for cash to change their life) and maybe it is the quizzer in me that hates this and the general public will love it....time shall see.

2) Dumbing Down. Questions were hideous last night...utterly hideous. Everyone of them was painfully easy and I partly feel this was to do with a) the standard of contestants on show (no disrespect but for a Scotsman not to know the date, or even rough date, of Burns Night is bad) and b) the new play-along-at-home feature. They probably wanted to make the questions easy to encourage people playing at home to stick with it.

3) No fastest finger first means hand picked contestants more than ever. You need a story if you want to be on this show! I applied and now realise the "What would you do with the money?" box was the crucial one. The phone a friend "in the studio" was a nice touch but everything else about the show was terrible.

I also cannot help feel the last contestant was a bit "fixed" in the way it leaves viewers with an interest on a bit of a cliffhanger. 

All in all Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was a terrible show in my eyes and has moved away from being about the questions and large wins in favour of something else. I may watch Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to see if it improves but I cannot imagine it doing so.

Sadly, I was hoping Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire  would be so much more and as has been said before, the show has changed the way it wants to "draw" in viewers. The big prize and questions are now not enough for the producers...it is the age of the TV sob story. Thanks reality TV! Thanks very much!