Anyone with motion sickness, or taste, should have avoided Michael McIntyre’s stomach-churning new Saturday night series, The Wheel, on which seven celebrities, each armed with a specialist subject, sat in a chair in a spinning ring, a contestant seated stationary in its centre. When the wheel stopped, an arrow pointed to the celebrity who would help the civvy answer a question in order to win a cash prize.
Famous faces offering their expertise in the first episode included Joey Essex (specialist subject: dating), Susie Dent (Words), Mel B (Spice Girls) and Gok Wan (fashion), as well as Dermot O’Leary, who received a ribbing for purporting to know a lot about the Second World War (God forbid a TV personality have interests and hobbies outside of his job).
There were various nonsensical complications to the structure of the game, including dry ice, an irritating theme song and a confusing light system, all of it tedious and protracted, with only eight questions posed over the course of an hour and none of them exactly rocket science. McIntyre was on his usual bobble-headed form, prancing around the wheel and forgoing jokes for his preferred trick of shouting observations very loudly.
Game shows are difficult to get right, and formulaic by nature. Ah, but that’s the point – the joke here is that McIntyre and co of course know they are “reinventing the wheel”. But given it was neither original, nor challenging, nor entertaining, they instead proved that old idiom and the pursuit entirely pointless. Which is, coincidentally, a much better way to spend your Saturday evening.
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