The Golden Lot
Synopsis
Low-budget antiques valuation game.
There are three two-person teams and six antiques or collectables. One is valued at between £5000 and £10,000, the others are less valuable (in monetary terms, anyway). A terribly well-spoken young antiques expert, Charles Bickford, is on hand to tell us about the "lots". In the first round, we are given only the barest of information about each item, each team selects two of them, and whichever team has chosen (or, if particularly unfortunate, been left with) the lowest-valued object is knocked out of the competition, along with the object itself.
Charles then tells us a little more about the other five lots, and the two remaining teams each select one of their two items. Whichever team's chosen item is of lesser value is eliminated. Finally, the surviving team have to decide which of the four remaining lots is "the golden lot". If they pick the most valuable item, they win its market value. If they don't, they go away empty-handed.
This is very much a filler show, clearly made on a tiny budget, and most of that seems to have gone on far too much rouge for Ms Vorderman. We do get to see some interesting objets d'art, but the game just isn't very exciting. There's a bit of chatter with the contestants, but not enough for us to care who wins, or whether they go home with the money, and it's made even more impersonal by the fact that it's filmed in what appears to be an aircraft hangar (apparently it's a church), with the resultant echoey sound giving the programme a rather "cold" feeling.
It's not a bad show. It promises just enough to be watchable, and it delivers on that promise. It's just that by the time you read this, we'll have already forgotten all about it.
Trivia
Own to regional opt-outs, viewers in Wales never got to see this.