Oddetorium

Now that Simon Cowell has saturated the prime time talent show concept, he has quickly moved on to big-budget game shows in an attempt to corner yet another market.

It arrived on ITV1 on Saturday night in the form of yet another Ant and Dec vehicle, ‘Red or Black?’.

Having already gifted £1 million apiece to two lucky winners in the opening weekend shows, this week long marathon of inane guessing hasn’t won over critics and viewers also appear to be deserting the show.

Having slumped by almost 2 million viewers by its second episode, alarm bells must be ringing in the ears of ITV execs and advertising agencies up and down the country.

The premise is simple. Contestants must choose either red or black in order to pass to the next round. Yup, that’s it. Cue tumbleweed. Lots of it. Admittedly it does have a bunch of challenges, celebrity appearances and glitzy musical performances in order to pad the show out to 60 minutes (followed by a half hour results show), but in essence, that’s the programme.