Danny Dyer might be best known for his Jack-the-lad “hard man” persona or his erstwhile long-standing role in EastEnders, but these days you’re as likely to find him cheering on gameshow contestants as interviewing Britain’s “deadliest men” or chucking a punter out of the Queen Vic.
Anyone who switched on BBC One of a Saturday night over the past few years is likely to have witnessed him shouting at a ball tumbling down a large façade in The Wall. Nine months on from quitting the series and signing up for Netflix’s Cheat, he has direct comparison between working on a gameshow for the BBC and the streamer – and says there are “huge differences”.
“I felt like I could be more me,” he explains. “I could be a little bit more sweary, a little bit naughtier, and just not so PG. I really struggle with being restricted. This gave me a bit more freedom.”
Ellie Taylor, Dyer’s co-host, is nodding as he says this and laughs knowingly at his penchant for being “naughty.”
The pair are talking over Zoom from their respective homes – Dyer in a dimly lit room in Essex, Taylor in a bright open-plan living room in London – and their chemistry is immediately evident. They finish each other’s sentences, warmly exchange banter and back one another’s points of view up in an endearing way.
“You wouldn’t necessarily think we would be a combo,” admits Taylor, the comedian and presenter who made her name on The Mash Report and recently hosted The Great Pottery Throw Down, “but it works.”
Fresh from whirling round the dancefloor on Strictly Come Dancing, Taylor had never worked on a gameshow before, but proudly declares that her grandfather won the ever first episode of The Generation Game in 1971. “I’ve always liked the idea of doing a show like this – proper shiny-floor stuff is right up my street,” she says.
Cheat is Netflix’s first British gameshow. That the streamer is venturing into the world of Saturday night TV has been met with scepticism from some, but Taylor shrugs it off. “The great thing about Netflix is its sheer variety. If you want to watch ‘high-end dramas’,” she says, making air quotes, “there are shedloads, but this is just catering to a different taste.”
With Cheat, it is clear is that they are tapping into a very different market to the more serious, hallowed halls of Mastermind or The Weakest Link. Quiz questions are more accessibly pitched, though it wouldn’t matter for the contestants: in front of each is a button which secretly reveals the answer when pressed. Cheating their way to a win is not only possible but encouraged – as long as they don’t get caught by their fellow contestants.
Those taking part seem to be unfailingly young and cool; while there are undoubtedly some clever people taking part, this is a very different crowd to those who bring their intimidatingly high IQs to University Challenge.
“We have steered away from the nerdy aspects of gameshows,” Dyer says, happily. “Quiz contestants can take it very seriously. Just look at The Chase – that’s their whole life. They sit in rooms learning and absorbing loads of knowledge. That would only get you so far in this game.”
On more than one occasion, it is the contestant who has cheated the most who wins the prize. It feels scandalous, but perhaps this is part of the appeal. Cheat comes hot on the heels of BBC’s The Traitors, a drama-filled reality competition in which certain contestants are saboteurs faking their way through. The series won over millions of viewers and became a talking point when it aired at the end of last year.
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With any luck, Cheat might attract some of its fans. But why might watching people bluffing be so popular nowadays? “The psychology of it is fascinating,” says Taylor. “There are so many great shows around, but for whatever reason at the moment I think we’ve become interested in testing a difference type of intelligence. It is about our intuition – can we read other people?”
Dyer nods. “I also think that as human beings, we do all blag our way through life, don’t we?” he adds. “So that’s got to be part of the appeal. We all get tested, and in many different scenarios – especially in this industry – it is about blagging and luck.”
While Cheat rewards both brains and bluffing, if Dyer were to take part in the show, he has no hesitation about which side he’d veer towards. “I’m a blagger all day long,” he says firmly. “I like to think I’d be good at lying and cheating and all that stuff.” Taylor squirms at the question. “I’d have to very loosely say brains,” she grimaces. “Only because I’m rubbish at lying. You can see right through me.”
I ask when they last cheated or lied in real life. Dyer says it astonishes him how much we deceive children about “the made-up geezer” that is Father Christmas, and Taylor chimes in that she recently told her toddler daughter she had eaten a carrot, when in fact she had been digging into a jar of Nutella.
Dyer is clearly thinking a lot about family at the moment. He has three children and one grandchild, and his 26-year-old daughter Dani, a TV personality, is pregnant again – this time with twins. His decision to leave his role as Mick Carter on EastEnders after 10 years, 1,145 episodes and 118 “doof doof” cliffhanger moments, he explains, is about making more time for his family.
“I’m really excited about this new chapter of my life,” he says. “I had a wonderful time on EastEnders, but my journey came to an end. It was sad, but it excites me to be sort of free. I feel I need to be a bit more present at home and around a bit more with the kids, doing more school runs, that kind of thing. Especially with grandkids on the way. It’s about freeing up my time and getting back a bit of ownership of my life.”
In contemplating this big life shift, nostalgia has been creeping in. “I think I’m in a slight midlife crisis,” he admits. “I can find myself at 2am watching old episodes of Grange Hill. The other day I was sitting through an old episode of Blockbusters on my own thinking, ‘What the f*** have I become?’ There is something about that at the moment. I’m 46 this year, and so that nostalgia… it takes me back to that warm time in my life.”
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Could he ever see himself, further down the line, feeling the same about EastEnders – and wanting to return? “Well, you never know, do you?” He thinks for a moment. “They did leave [the storyline] slightly open. But right now, I feel like that chapter is done and it is about looking forward.”
For Taylor, the future feels equally exciting simply because it is so open. “I’ve got such a varied career – stand-up, acting, presenting, writing – that you never quite know what will happen next,” she says. “I feel so lucky that I’ve done so many of the things I wanted to do when I started out, but the goalposts constantly move.”
What, then, does success look like to them both? “I don’t know if it’s about money, although it does come in handy,” Dyer muses. “I think success is about trying to find inner peace. If you don’t beat yourself up too much, or you are not waking up anxious, then I think you’re winning. So I would measure my success with how I’m doing brain-wise.”
“Definitely,” Taylor agrees. “It is about inner peace and self-satisfaction. And for me, being a good parent. Like, did I do my daughter’s bath time in the way I’d ideally like to parent? Not always. But it is that sort of thing, where you’re just trying to do and be better every day.”
As my time with the pair runs out, I put one last question to them – what is their hope for Cheat? – and it fittingly comes back to a recurring theme. “Gameshows are about families,” Dyer says thoughtfully. “At a time when everyone is in their own rooms on their own phones, I really do hope this will bring families together.”
Cheat is on Netflix from 1 March