Deal or No Deal
Contents |
Host
Brian Conley (non-broadcast pilot)
Co-hosts
"The Banker, as Himself"
Alex Lovell (voiceover, uncredited)
Broadcast
Cheetah Television West (formerly Endemol West) for Channel 4, 31 October 2005 to present
Synopsis
"A quarter of a million pounds... 22 identical sealed boxes... and no questions. Except one: Deal or No Deal?'"
So goes the introductory spiel to this big money guessing game, of which international versions have already proven to be quite good fun. There are 22 numbered boxes, each one containing an unknown cash prize of between 1p and £250,000 and 22 contestants, who have drawn lots before the show to determine who gets each one. A 'randomly'-selected contestant is invited to sit in the hot seat and becomes the player for that show, bringing their box with them. The other boxes are then opened one by one, and an off-stage banker known as, er, "The Banker" offers the player money to buy back the box and leave the game, based on the values of the boxes left.
The amounts of money still up for grabs are shown on either side of the contestant.There is an offer after the first five boxes are opened, and then after every third box until there are just two boxes left. In theory, these offers should come slightly below the arithmetic mean of the remaining boxes; in practice, the early offers are artificially low. As a result, the deal almost always occurs during the closing fifteen minutes, which serves to place a lot more emphasis on the journey than the outcome. The commercial breaks usually come just before the 8th and 14th boxes are opened, something which contestants have now started anticipating. It's surely only a matter of time before they start pre-empting Noel and announcing the breaks themselves (see below).
The Banker's offer plummets when the big boxes get opened.It is, in essence, a game of pure chance - a lottery, or more precisely a series of lotteries, with the contestant merely choosing whether to reinvest their winnings in the next one or stick with what they've got. It's more watchable than that implies though, mainly because of the interaction between host and contestants. In a way, the game is only there to give the characters in the studio something to react to - almost the exact opposite of the maximum-gameplay, minimum-personality Fifteen-to-One, for which this show is Channel 4's first really convincing replacement. It is a show that could have been invented purely to showcase the skills of its host - chatting to Members Of The Public, talking on the phone, being generally affable, and having a beard that doesn't look quite deliberate, somehow.
"I think it's one of these blasted call centres again."Anyway, it's friendly enough, Noel makes us care about the contestants and it's nice to see likeable people walk away with a decent sum of money. It's perhaps not quite the great and mighty format that some folk have talked it up as (and it does seem to be one of those shows that either you "get" or you don't) but as daytime gameshows go, it's pretty good and a deserved hit.
Trivia
It's being produced by The Mole's Glenn Hugill.
We can't think of many shows that were on six days a week: I'm the Answer was one of them, as was Blockbusters back in the days when there were Champions series. Countdown also joined this exclusive club in January 2006, largely as a result of DoND's success. Stop press: Apparently Ask No Questions was also six days a week.
Discounting phone-ins, the show set a new daytime TV record in its third episode, when Anita Wallas took home £33,000. Prior to this, the record was £25,000 from the previous year's Beat the Nation, also an Endemol show. In the 11th episode the record went up to £35,000 when Maurice Cheshire took the chair. He dealt too early though, and could have taken over £100,000 had he played on.
In the 17th episode (18 November 2005), hot-seat contestant Jennifer Miller became the first person to win a six-figure prize on daytime TV when she dealt at £120,000. Jennifer was down to the final two boxes when she dealt. The £250,000 was in one of them and in the other was £750. She made the right call, as the £750 was in her box.
The 1p box was first won on 3 January 2006 by Nick Bain. He took out no fewer than EIGHT consecutive red numbers, until he was eventually left with 1p and £100. After turning down the banker's final offer of £30 (the highest was £9,000), he agreed to swap round the two remaining boxes - so that he ended up with the 1p box. On 1 March 2006 Trevor Bruce became the second member of "the 1p club" after turning down £9,900. Fadil Osman became the third member on 14 April and Dave Ellis the fourth on 25 April.
The lowest opening offer by the Banker was £6 to John on show 231. This was in reaction to a bad opening round, which transgressed into an even worse second round - so much so, his second offer was just £1!
The first seven letters of "Noel Edmonds" anagram into "Endemol", the production company's name. The first six letters anagram to "NO DEEL". Edmonds' name contains the letters DOND (Deal Or No Deal) in order.
The T-shirts worn by the studio staff have the slogan "What's in your box?".
Other hosts who were in the frame before Noel said he'd do it include Les Dennis and Brian Conley, apparently. Conley told the Manchester Evening News that he missed out because Channel 4 and Endemol disagreed on the direction the show should take, saying that "Endemol wanted it to be like the French version, which was a lot more fun and light-hearted and not quite as serious as it has become."
During an episode dubbed Sequencegate by fans, an observant reader at the Bother's Bar fan site noted that most games from early 2006 followed a small number of predicatable sequences. In fact, some of the shows had identical boxes. It was caused by a change in procedures by the show's adjudicators, using a pseudo-random Excel. They now use a manual 'picking balls out of the bag' method.
On the episode on April 29 2006, during Massimo's game, one of the remaining boxes was knocked on the floor. The box subsequently opened. All the boxes were re-shuffled with the remaining amounts. Curiously, this entire process - with the floor assistants coming on to bring the boxes on and off the set, and Noel reassuring Massimo throughout - was included in the programme's final edit.
During the end of the first season, Noel began to have special symbols written on his hand. In September 2006, the mystery was revealed. Far from being an object lesson in Noel's own psychology of cosmic ordering, as many had thought, in fact the final messages spelt out "www", "red", "box" and "club" pointing to this website. This contained all the symbols in sequence which, when solved, won a lucky person a VIP trip to the DoND studios including a chance to meet Noel and be one of the blue box openers.
Catchphrases
"Deal or no deal?"
At the start of play: "Channel 4 is all yours" or "It's your show"
"You're obsessed with the reds" when a contestant keeps on taking out red numbers
"You dealt at the right time... for Bob"
"Make it blue"
"Keep it low"
"I think you'll be there"
"We do not want to see the quarter of a million"
Key moments
In one game, the final box was shown to be empty. The £1 label had fallen off. (That's Poundstretcher for you.)
Chalk another one up for Denis Norden, there.Mr. Edmonds' increasingly predictable commercial links:
Noel: "Whatever you do... don't open a low box... whatever you do... don't open it until after the break!"
Noel: "Can you pick the box up for me, please? Can you guess the weight?"
Box-opener: "About half a pound."
Noel: "No, the weight is... about three minutes while we go to a break."
Noel: "Do not break her heart... did I say break?"
Box-opener: "I want this to be low", spurning Noel into placing the box on the floor so it can't be opened. Isaac Newton would have been proud!
"What the hell's he doing?" "I think he's trying to tell us it's time for an ad break"Theme music
Augustin Bousfield, apparently, although you'd be hard-pressed to tell it was the same person throughout due to the bizarre clash of upbeat jazz theme tune and thin, ambient tension music. (It has been speculated more than once that this is the result of a sudden, last-minute U-turn decision by the producers to 'darken up' the show, as opposed to playing it purely for comedy value (the European versions of the format tend to swing towards the latter)).
Inventor
Richard De Rijk
Merchandise
Web links
Bother's Bar Megastats Central - list of previous show results
See also
Pictures
Picture 1: One lucky player is selected.
Picture 2: The wooden underground club-style set.
Picture 3: As of episode 101, the boxes contain appropriately-coloured stickers.
Picture 4: As of episode 205, the stickers are raised, giving the boxes a stylish drop-shadow effect.FAQ
Q. How do I become a contestant on Deal or No Deal?
A. At the moment, the show has a backlog of 80,000 applicants. Therefore, they are not inviting any more people to apply at the moment. Keep watching the show to see if this changes in future.
