Bradley Walsh talks about why his new teatime quiz Cash Trapped is all about finding the right time to leave the show…
With The Chase having won this year’s National TV Award for ‘Best Daytime Show’ and it about to reach its 1000th episode, plus Bradley Walsh's variety show Tonight At The Palladium, a ratings winner, things couldn’t be going better for the presenter.
ITV are currently utilising that Bradley magic once more with Cash Trapped (Monday, August 1). It's a teatime quiz hosted and created by the man himself, where players battle to leave, not stay on the show!
TV Times caught up with Bradley to learn a bit more about his groundbreaking new game show and hear the story behind it…
Cash Trapped is a brand new and very different type of game show, can you tell us how it works? “It’s literally a never-ending quiz show; you must win on the day to be able to leave the show. If you don’t win or if you don’t beat the other contestants who are trying to knock each other out throughout the show, you don’t leave and everyone comes back again.
"The person with the most money at the end of that particular episode gets the chance to leave, or at least to have a go at leaving.
"If you don’t leave and the other players beat you, they keep their money, you go back to zero and they roll their money over to the following day and you have to start all over again.
"So if a contestant keeps deliberately not winning on the day and keeps rolling their money over and over and choosing when they want to leave by really working it out, then they could leave with hundreds of thousands of pounds. That’s the brilliant concept of it. It’s a great show.”
You could get quite attached to the contestants, potentially… “Yes, that’s exactly what it is! It’s a narrative across days and weeks and we wanted to find out more about the contestants as we were going on."
What inspired you to create Cash Trapped? “I just wanted a show that was never ending where you could find out about people, so it’s been an amalgamation of both really. I had the idea originally when I was in Corrie about 10 or 11 years ago. Then I worked with one of the companies at ITV, Possessed, who worked on Deal or No Deal and other shows like that, and they’re very good.
"So I worked with the team and developed it to see how we could move it on. We just made a pilot run of 10, I don’t know how it’s going to be received, but so far it’s going well.”
How will Cash Trapped be different from The Chase? “Players in The Chase get knocked out, so you never really get to know the players. The difference is going to be that there are no Chasers; it’s members of the public and you can get to know them across the days and maybe weeks, so that’s the main difference.”
Are we going to see some kind of rivalries and deception going on between the contestants? “Oh, it’s strategic! When you watch it you’ll see that it’s definitely strategic!”
You just filmed the 1000th episode of The Chase, how was that? “Very good and very entertaining because it was a slightly different format where all of the Chasers took part and not just one. We had some great contestants; they were fabulous! It was great fun.”
What will make this particular episode so special? “Every Chaser has taken part and it’s not just one Chaser throughout the show. They’re all here and they’re all dressed up. We’re all thrilled that it has come this far. To do a thousand hours of daytime television and still after the 1000th show to be at the top of the tree and be the leading light in daytime shows is fantastic.”
