★★★★★ 0/5

Minute to Win It

The crowd was pumped. The contestants even more pumped. And the shiny arena belied the nonsense going on within it.

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There are some shows that are just made for the great unwashed, while others become the great unwatched. The question for Seven is where will Minute to Win It fall?

The game show premiered last night with so much blood pumping through its vessels it was hard to take it seriously. Maybe it doesn’t want us to. Is there great drama in watching a million dollars slip away when all you are trying to do is land a few ping pong balls in a few bowls? Absolutely. There’s great drama in watching paint dry when there is a million bucks riding on it.

Last night the most we got to was $50,000 -not to be sneezed at, but Hot Seat handed out twice that on Monday with less fanfare and half the television time. On the other hand the biggest show on television can stretch $100,000 for several months on end, and still capture our imagination.

Minute to Win It is based on a US format where deceptively simple challenges must be completed in 60 seconds, as a contestant proceeds up a money tree to the big $1M.

The first contestant, school teacher Shane, was brighter than his bright orange top. He was positively pumped for the first challenge. The audience were whooping and hollering like they had just stepped out of the Jerry Springer studio. Humility goes a long way in Australian television, but there wasn’t much of it here.

Each game was described in “blueprint” by an emotionless voice over (with apologies to 2001’s “Hal”) and graphics. The first game required Shane to dip his nose in vaseline and transfer cotton balls from bowl to bowl. He looked pretty silly, but no more silly than contestants on Hole in the Wall or Wipeout. Shane finished with enough time for us to even be subjected to a Replay (just in case we missed it) and his Elvis impersonation (just in case we can’t miss it).

Several other challenges involved pasta, ping pong balls, eggs, nails, and bottled water.

Sometime MTV host Darren McMullen was affable for this rather long show, but has a tough job in describing challenges that are entirely self-explanatory: “Still got four to go… it’s rolling away, not good, he’s at the 30 seconds mark…I don’t know if he’s going to do this….Oh no he’s lost one…” One game was so tricky apparently it could easily easily turn “Catastrophic” -normally words reserved for victims of Haiti, 9/11 or reading the morning ratings for The White Room.

By the end of several games, a still-pumped Shane won himself $50,000. The second contestant, who struggled to balance half a dozen coat hangers, was left with $2,500.

The best aspect of the show is its “I can do that” playability. I can see kids across Australia attempting these seemingly-easy challenges in living rooms with their families. It costs nothing to reproduce these games (which apparently number up to 70). The truth is most of them have probably been sitting on the pages of dusty kid’s activities books for years, kudos to the producers who gave them a makeover and got themselves an international format out of it.

As television this is 30 minutes too long and takes itself very seriously. In its shiny Shine Australia arena the dramatic lighting and music belies the nonsense taking place within it. The satire of Wipeout hosts, buffoonery of It’s a Knockout and cheesy testosterone of Man O Man made them successful with audiences. If Minute to Win It leans more on having a sense of humour and less believing its own high stakes drama it may not feel such a paradox. And please pour a bucket of water on the audience.

But there will be thousands wanting to try their luck at this thing. What do critics know anyway?

Minute to Win It airs 7:30pm Tuesdays on Seven.

51 Responses

  2. I thought it was really clever – wholesome family fun 🙂
    but more suited as a half hour package in a 5-6 time slot

    – the show also suits my attention span ;p

    we normally watch MasterChef, but need something to watch while we avoid Donna Hay

  5. Found it very hard to watch, the ‘fake’ enthusiam from the audience was ridiculous.

    And yes Shane, has been on Deal or No Deal, and on that episode seemed to out w*nker AoK.

    What is it with these ‘casting’ companies now acting like Extra’s agents these days??? How do I get onto their books LOL

  7. I think if Channel 7 repackaged this into half an hour and aired it at 5:00pm on Wednesday it wouldn’t be so insulting to our intelligence, but at 7:30pm on a Tuesday up against Top Gear and MasterChef you really have to wonder who’s watching.

  8. I hope this show doesn’t take a minute to bin it. We need more game shows on aussie tv. The show is pretty good. The only thing I would change is the blueprint woman not mentioning elminiation every time, it gets repetitive. And everyone on the set needs to calm down a little! It’s a game show, not a footy grand final!

  9. Instead of the apologies going to ‘Hal’, I think they should be going to ‘GLaDOS’ from the video game ‘Portal’. A lot of the graphics used were also influenced by the game.

  11. Having just read your review, David, I’m not entirely sure that you ‘got’ Minute to Win It. If you check your brain at the door and give it another chance next week, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much fun this show can be.

  15. We watched * Minute to Win It * for a boring ten minutes then returned to MC.
    IMHO it was absolutely awful. I’m betting it will be ‘The Great UNwatched’. UGH.
    What ‘s going on at Ch7 ????? They seem to have lost the plot !

  17. Love the led screens behind the audience, ya just can’t see them, who balanced them and the pictures ? the cleaner ??? What a waste of money !!! it’s catostrophic the Americans can get it right and the aussie’s can’t ?

  18. The way I made it through the show was by imagining that the whole thing was just an elaborate prank; part of a large on-going satire skewering the fact that we as a nation are so dumb that we’ll even watch a guy hang nails on a string.

  20. I gave it a go but it didn’t do anything much for me, it was a bit over the top and the contestants were annoying. I’ve seen that Shane guy on other shows as well, it’s like he is a serial game show contestant or something. I doubt I will tune in next week though, I’m sure something else is on the other channels.

    On the other hand, Greys Anatomy was fantastic last night! That’s what drama and TV and suppose to be.

  22. Watched about 2-3 minutes on 2 occassions & have to say this is tv at it’s very worst.Not even pass the time tv.Seven you should be very ashamed to comission such crap.Axe it now!Host is cute though.

  23. As with so many hosts these days,Darren McMullen needs to stand closer to the razor when he is having a shave.It looks very untidy.Not quite as bad as George from Masterchef at least he was dressed respectably.

  24. I gave it 1 minute to win me over to watching it and 3 lives. It lost its first life with the opening monologue. I watched the first challenge and it lost another life. Finally, I watched the host and the first contestent, it failed.

  25. I agree with much of the review. It should be a 30 minute show. Even my father, who thought it was great, only watched half of it.

    I was embarrassed by the seriousness of the presentation. It feels unnecessarily uptight; which is obviously not a good fit for the programme.

    Cut it down to half an hour, and take the p**s out of yourselves; it could be enjoyable fluff.

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