Wednesday 2 December 2015

Ten Years of Deal or No Deal: Part 5: The Classic Era is Officially Over

OK, time to carry on with this retrospective.

Well, it finally happened. After just under eight years, we finally saw a male win the jackpot. 18 year old Paddy Roberts won the Jackpot in early August 2013, thus bringing to an end the show's longest running storyline. So, how would the show cope with that?

Well, as I mentioned last time, the show was not in a terribly healthy state in the summer of 2013; the memories of Iris' cautious gameplay in late June were still hanging around, with the Banker making poor offers for the board, and most of the players being complacent enough to take them. And those who didn't, with the exception of Marlene and Paddy, crashed to a blue win, enforcing the cautious approach even further.

Indeed, like Marlene's game, Paddy's game had impact on this approach; almost all the players who witnessed his game cautiously backed out. We did eventually get a run of better games in early September, with 8 players in just over a fortnight getting the most out of their game (including four in a row). But this was covering up the fact that the show was struggling. Like last year, we seemed to be having an Autumn drought of Power 5 wins.

We could have had one if Mel Williams had dealt her fifth offer of £35,000, but she didn't, and crashed to just 50p. For once, (nearly) everyone was in agreement that she had bought it upon herself. But it was another low blue win the following week, that of Laura Dean, which set the standard for a while. She was not a gambler, but she felt obliged to turn down her ungenerous third offer of £16,500 (IIRC), which was a stick from the second offer, and crashed.

Seeing such a cautious player take an out of character gamble and crash horrified everyone, and the cautious vibe that appeared to have been lifting in the prior weeks came back with a vengeance. The weeks after Laura's game saw some of the most cautious deals of all time, including a record that will never be broken: Colin Harrison's selling of the £250,000 for just £5,000.

Even when Pat Morgan achieved a finish of £15,000 and £75,000, she cautiously bailed out with £33,333, denying us that long awaited Power 5 win. But, eventually, come early December, the run was broken by two £75,000 wins in just over a week: Nenad Raicevic dealt it on a 50p-£250,000 final two, and Gwyn Hughes won it from his box.

Still, 2013 had been by far the weakest year of the show's run. The format was beginning to run out of steam, so action was needed. And the action taken would change everyone's perspective of the show forever.

Come the first game of 2014, that of Joey Gilchrist, a brand new feature was added to the show: Box 23. After the final regular box had been opened, the player now had the chance to buy Box 23 with their winnings. Inside it was one of five options: DOUBLE (winnings are doubled), +£10,000 (an extra £10,000 is added to the winnings), MONEY BACK (nothing happens), HALF (winnings are halved), and NOTHING (winnings are wiped out altogether).

On the (not unreasonable) basis that it wouldn't have one of the bad ones in it on its first game, Mr Gilchrist bought the box for his £10,900 winnings. And got an extra £10,000 from the box.

But his game would prove to be the only time for months that someone would risk that much on Box 23. The following players, having not expected Box 23 to be there, had no idea how to handle it, and most ended up rejecting it. Only players who won blues would buy it, and most would not be rescued by +£10,000.

Then Tash Evans won just £5, but got the extra £10,000 from Box 23. And, from that point on, the trust of many viewers was lost forever. Now, a player could simply go all the way, win a very low blue, and suddenly get an extra £10,000 for no risk whatsoever. Deal would never be the same again.

Then, in late-early February, Roop Singh won £250,000! Like Tegen, no-one had seen it coming, especially as he didn't appear to be much of a risk taker. He was half tempted to buy Box 23, and try to become the show's first half-millionaire! But the possibility of losing the lot got to him, and he very sensibly kept the money. But if he had gone for it, he would've had £500,000!

Other good games included Annalynn Cook winning £75,000, Stephen Hosie becoming the first player ever to receive an offer higher than the highest remaining sum(!) (thanks to a twist), and Pat Crick's game, another that came from nowhere. She managed to pull off only the second LIVE play achieving of the £100,000-£250,000 finish! She dealt the resultant offer of £170,000 for the highest ever sum dealt!

We also had the first ever players to win HALF A PENNY! Dave Wart and Tendai Zitira both won 1p, bought Box 23 with it, and HALF was in it! Players who win an odd number of pence and get HALF from Box 23 get a HALF-PENNY certificate, which the Banker hates having to make, as it costs 10p to use the photocopier!

Nothing much else of note happened for a while. April saw only one memorable game, Earl Woods' well earned £65,000 win, though Sam Haste's £20,000 box win was good as well. Other than that, it was just player cautiously dealing modest sums, or winning blues and either getting £10,000 or not.

Even a long awaited Power 5 win, Rosie Head's £46,000 win, was overshadowed due to it being a poor offer on a £20,000-£100,000 final two. Then, something amazing happened: someone bought Box 23 with a red! Matt Chapman bought it for £8,900, but lost half of it. And then: it happened again! Peter Harding purchased it for £12,200, and got an extra £10,000. The latter stands alongside Rich and Scott from 2012 as one of the biggest base breaker games of all time.

Mercifully, around this time, the Banker's ungenerous offer trend that had been going on since last summer seemed to have lifted somewhat, with generally better offers for the board. Two Power 5 wins from generous offers in under a week seemed to show this, as did the fact that Stan Colling's £50,000 box win, which would have been received by open arms a couple of months prior, was met with a mixed response.

The traditional summer themed week did little to improve general discomfort, though, with +£10,000 being upped to +£20,000 for that week only further umimpressing purists. But better things were to come in August, with three Power 5 wins in a single week marking the show's best run for months, boosted further by two £15,000 box wins and a £20,000 box win the previous week boosting it more.

But this good run of games only made the show's traditional September slump even more disappointing than usual. High points of a dour September were a decent £7,000 win from future Big Brother 'star' Jack McDermott, and Grant McTaggart's £18,000 win, which was overshadowed by unsporting Banker behaviour.

Come October, though, another new feature was introduced: the Offer Button. Basically, the player gets to predict their first offer, and, if they are correct or within 10% of it, the offer button is active. They can press it whenever they want to receive an instant offer.

As good an idea as this was, much better than Box 23, it did little to improve the indifferent form: key moments of the early button era were Aaron Dell using it to win £32,000, and Carly Payne's game, which was notable not for what she did, but for the fact something went wrong and the final part of her game ended up showing twice and pushing the entire evening's schedule back fifteen minutes! (Something similar happened in late July, when a technical fault in Glasgow resulted in an edition of Deal being shown live at the Commonwealth games!)

But it wasn't all bad. Halloween bought one of the best games of all time, as Bill Richards won £80,000, thanks to a use of the Offer Button at 4-box with the Power 5 in play!

But after that, nothing of note happened for a while: we did see two Power 5 wins in just over a week, but 2014 petered out somewhat with a run of very ordinary games of little note, perked up somewhat at Christmas, with a run of specials where NOTHING in Box 23 was replaced by a piece of coal!

Going into 2015, the show's tenth year, most had accepted that the show had run its course, and were just going through the motions daily. Nothing of note in the early months of 2015, apart from Mandy O'Brian's £50,000 win, and John Cooper buying Box 23 for £15,000 (IIRC), and losing the lot!

We did, however, see a new idea for the show: couples playing Deal. We had seen something similar before, with twins playing the game as a single entity, but it was the first time the show had broken for a full, stand-alone week of couples playing the show. The idea would be repeated twice later in the year with grandparents and grandchildren and siblings playing the show, but that's for next time.

To be fair, the couples shows were about the only other thing worth talking about in the early months of 2015. Eventually, April picked things up somewhat with a good early run of games, which led up to the final week of the month, where we had two Power 5 wins in a row, coupled with a near miss with a £33,000 win.

A £40,000 win was the only real highlight of a dour May, alongside a purchase of Box 23 for £14,000! (Again, the extra £10,000 showed up). And the show ran slowly through June at a slow pace until, late on in the month, some intriguing news came up: the show was coming off the air for a while!

Yes, Channel 4 decided to put Fifteen-to-One 2.0 in the show's slot for the summer, giving the show a much needed rest. And, to be honest, it was needed: the show had been running non stop since August 2011, and even the most loyal of fans were beginning to tire. A break would give everyone a chance to refresh and rest up, giving the show a refreshed sense when it returned, in the run-up to the show's tenth anniversary in October.

And we'll get to that in the final part of this retrospective, next week!

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