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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Unanimous

15:58 / 29.10.06

Watching the recorded first showing of Channel 4's Unanimous from t'other night.

It sounds a little like a more obviously venal Big Brother with SAW stylings; and it's more than a little bit reminiscent of that thing Liza Tarbuck hosted where a panel had to decide which of three contestants most deserved to win a largeish sum of money. Essentially, nine strangers are placed in a slightly scary-looking underground bunker (claustrophobic, with no natural daylight or way of gauging time passing) and told they're there to decide which of their number ought to win the million pound prize. Only one person can win, all nine must vote unanimously for the winner, and they cannot strike deals or opt to share the cash. Every time someone walks out, the prize money is halved.

Those seem to be the only rules, so far. Obviously, people can choose to lie and/or be selective about the information they provide about themselves.

It's quite low-key, and I've no idea whether this is going to turn out to be gripping television or unbelievably mediocre. Being partly Big Brother-inspired, there's a couple of fairly obvious gayers (Pip and Alex), a trio of blond women and some possibly-not-on-the-birth-certificate names ('Lusipher', for fuck's sake).

Anyone else watching?

16:22 / 29.10.06

I'm not. But I did like the Aliens lite credit intro.

So, is the idea that they do stuff, then nominate a winner at the end of the first week, and if all nine pick one person, they win, but if not, they lose someone, half the money and continue for another week?

17:20 / 29.10.06

Not quite. No one is told to leave by the producers. They either decide to leave or not.

From wikipedia:

Nine strangers are locked in a bunker and told they cannot leave until they unanimously choose to award one of them the grand prize money. Contestants are isolated from the outside world, and have no access to any time references. If a contestant leaves the bunker, the amount of the available prize is cut in half.

Votes are cast by each contestant taking a ball and selecting the name of one of the other contestants via a roller inside of it (a person's own name is not included in their ball). If a vote is not unanimous, something negative happens to the players in order to increase the pressure to reach a unanimous decision.

Hydra vs Leviathan

12:46 / 30.10.06

Votes are cast by each contestant taking a ball and selecting the name of one of the other contestants via a roller inside of it (a person's own name is not included in their ball). If a vote is not unanimous, something negative happens to the players in order to increase the pressure to reach a unanimous decision.

If a person's own name is not included in their ball, then how the hell can a vote be unanimous? The best possible would be 8-1...

This sounds like yet another post-Thatcherite "let's make a bunch of random people screw over and hate each other for cash" game show, of the type very well satirised by that recent episode of Doctor Who, and therefore i'm almost certainly not going to watch it. But if i was in it, i'd simply say to everyone "if you all vote for me, i'll share out the cash equally as soon as we get out", which would seem a really obvious way of getting unanimity very quickly [they can't possibly, in UK law, determine what the winner is "allowed" to do with the money once they win it, can they? after all, once they've won it, it's their money...]

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:15 / 30.10.06

Yeah, but if you promised to do it the people FILMING YOU would know about it, and you'd be screwed. I imagine, despite the "people choose when to leave" thing, they can still boot you if you break the rules.

Hmm. Sounds intriguing, though, much as I love BB (curse you, elephant-boy!!!), I think if I watch it'll be more due to the SAW overtones.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

17:48 / 30.10.06

Would collectively choosing a charity that the winnings can be contributed to, and then everyone's a hero, count as "fixing" the results?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:40 / 03.11.06

I'd guess collectively choosing anything would be cheating. And have you ever tried getting a roomful of people to agree on a charity?

11:27 / 07.11.06

How is this actually going? I can't imagine the detail of what's happening in this bunker - are they just talking to each other? What about?