Listen to me, you donkey! New BBC quizshow. BBC One. Primetime! Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance (Wednesday, 9pm, BBC One). Aim of the game: teams of two, OK, compete against the clock to answer questions, yes? If they answer the questions correctly – Hello? Sweetheart? LISTEN, OK! – they get to put bars on the central machine in the centre, OK. Gordon doing his “charmingly teasing” voice, more than his “shouting: arsehole!” one. Combination of a tentative Jenga tower and a torture device. Set made of lots of grilled metal and glowing yellow lights. Very Doctor Who! Gordon, of course, bringing that same energy he brings to everything, yes? That of a nativity Joseph who is in nervous need of a shit and is somehow, at the same time, also being held at gunpoint by several members of the mafia! Get that through your thick skull!
Is it good, the quiz? Is it good? Oh, for f– is it good? No, it isn’t very good. No, no, no. Pathetic. Bland. Slop! Bring some panache. Bring some heat. FLAVOUR, yes? The first problem is: nobody seems to know the rules. Nobody in this building! Knows the rules of the quiz! Too many rules! Busy, busy, busy. Get rid of all these rules. Players have to answer trivia and delicately place bars in the same minute of high-pressure questioning. Gordon has to keep reminding the contestants to place the gold bars of money on the central balancing apparatus. They’re laughing! They’re laughing at you! You idiot! You MORON! Have you ever run a quiz before! Have you ever even held a quiz!
Listen, yes? Stop crying. Man up, OK. You’re a good guy. But you’ve lost your way. You’ve lost your passion. Listen to me: do you want this? Because there’s the bloody door. Do you want this quiz? It’s primetime BBC One. This isn’t ITV, yes? This isn’t Channel 4. It’s BBC, yes? Big time. And if you haven’t got the nuts to host it, then hand me your prompt cards, and eff off. I’ve got a million Vernon Kays out there who could do this in a heartbeat! Dermot O’Leary’s out there, and he’s laughing at you. Do you want that, big boy? Hey?
Here’s your problem, yes? It’s eight minutes into the first episode before a question is even asked. People don’t watch quizshows to bond with the contestants, yes? They don’t come here to learn their hopes. Their dreams. Their names. No. What they come here for, is: to be asked questions, yes, and bark the answers at the TV, smug in the knowledge that if called upon, they could win a quizshow if they competed in one. But Bank Balance is too much chaos, and far too little trivia: teams of two, OK, running around, getting Shakespeare plays wrong, putting little gold bars in a stack on a machine. Keep it moving, big boy, OK? An hour-long quizshow and I only get to see one-and-a-half teams compete? This isn’t Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, yes? Wake up!
So what have we learned? OK: if you want a quizshow, yeah, watch Tipping Point. If you want Gordon Ramsay, all right, watch that one where he shouts at Gino D’Acampo. If you want to watch people balancing things in a prison of mild peril, OK, there are Jenga fail compilations on YouTube. Bank Balance promises all three, and delivers none. Wow. Shocking.
