And so the autumn battle for Saturday night viewers begins. In the ITV corner, The X Factor, which will drag on interminably til December. Over on the BBC, the corporation has decided what the world REALLY needs is another “comedy game show” to accompany the latest in a long line of “what will the public do for money?” National Lottery shows, Secret Fortune. (Note to BBC – we don’t care, please just give us the lottery numbers, OK?)
And so we have the increasingly ubiquitous Alexander Armstrong smarming his way through Epic Win, a truly bizarre hybrid of Britain’s Got Talent, The Price Is Right and You Bet!, No deluded singers here, just people with a particular ability (“talent” is pushing it a bit) who are desperate to show it to the nation and win cash in the process.
Naturally no talent show is complete without a judging panel, which this week consisted of stand-ups Micky Flanagan and Jason Manford, plus EastEnders’ Nina Wadia. Their job is to assess what each contestant’s talent is worth, up to a maximum of £1000. Then the act has to guess how much they have been “valued” at, egged on by the braying studio audience (“higher, higher!”). Guess the correct (or lower) total and they take home the money; go over and they lose it all.
An Epic Waste Of The Licence Fee
The range of “jaw-droppingly senseless superpowers” on display included a man who can blow up hot water bottles like balloons, a Take That fanatic doing her very own version of “I can name that tune in one note” and the “loveable eccentric” (ie the one we’re all supposed to laugh at) who can identify a type of lawnmower simply by inspecting a strip of freshly-cut grass.
There are also a few X Factor touches, such as videos of the contestants at home hard at work honing their skills, while announcer Joe Lycett does his darndest to imitate voiceover supremo Peter Dickson.
Not Even Ant and Dec Could Make This Work
From the cheesy gold-plated “Epic Win” trophy and rickety set to Armstrong’s naff catchphrases (“Let’s turn powers into pounds!”) the whole thing feels like a a sketch-show spoof of just about any 70s quiz show you can think of, from Blankety Blank to The Generation Game. Is creator Andy Brereton attempting ironic retro-modern, or was he simply unable to come up with any new ideas for a quiz show?
The kindest thing that can be said about Epic Win (Saturdays, 5.25pm, BBC1) is it’s an undemanding, park-your-brain-at-the-door way to spend half an hour. With three comedians on the show, it’s just a shame none of them are even remotely funny. Could the show’s four writers not have come up with one decent joke between them?
Arlene Kelly - Born and raised in a small prairie town, by the time I graduated high school I decided I’d had enough of Manitoba winters and headed ...
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