CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: Without a studio audience, even £1million can’t buy you suspense

The Million Pound Cube Celebrity

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The Bridge

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As lockdown restrictions on live audiences hold up the filming of many favourite shows, television chiefs appear to have just one solution to the problem: throw money at it.

Jeremy Clarkson and the makers of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? were almost hysterically excited to have a jackpot winner last month. Yet the big prize did little to compensate for the lack of genuine tension in an empty studio.

Presenter Phillip Schofield is trying the same desperate trick on The Million Pound Cube Celebrity (ITV), with a seven-figure prize on offer for the first time.

That’s four times more than the only previous winner, Mo Farah, collected in 2012 when he completed all seven challenges (and made the game look easy).

The Cube is a gladiatorial gameshow, with players locked in a plastic box to tackle tests of quick reactions and dexterity. It ought not to matter whether it is played in front of a studio audience. But the absence of an eager crowd, and the knowledge that the gasps and applause are all canned, leaves the suspense feeling forced.

In this celebrity edition, comedian Jason Manford and his brother Stephen threw themselves into the format, starting with a game called Cascade: one player stood under a deluge of 999 red balls and endeavoured to grab the single white one.

Jason managed it first time, arms outstretched as if he aimed to catch the full thousand. ‘That was like my daughter being born,’ he gasped. ‘It was so exciting.’

With the Government urging entertainers to take up new careers, let’s hope he doesn’t retrain as a midwife.

The brothers reached £100,000 before quitting, afraid they were about to fumble and lose the lot.

They left us in no doubt that they were determined to win for their charities, including one that sent children from low-income families on holidays . . . just like the ones the boys had enjoyed in their own schooldays.

Bafta-winning stand-up comic Mo Gilligan and his mate, Holby City actor David Ajao, scarcely seemed bothered by comparison. 

They played the games like a pair of petulant teens. ‘Oh my gosh!’ grumbled Mo as he lost another life. 

‘That is so unfair. This is so annoying.’ 

Perhaps the lack of an audience sapped their competitive spirit. They threw in the towel at £10,000.

The Cube airs every night this week, with members of the public playing to win the million for themselves — which ought to guarantee that competitors try a bit harder.

The best reason for watching, though, is the incredible slo-mo, used at moments of high drama. 

The action freezes, and the camera seems to spin all the way round the outside of the cube, showing us the shot from every angle. 

How it’s done, I can’t guess.

Money is the motivation in The Bridge (C4) too, as 14 campers collaborate to build a bridge to an island in a lake, where they think £100,000 is buried. In fact, ten grand of the cash has already gone into the backpack of one of the team, Luke.

He carelessly failed to burn an incriminating note that came with it. A cynic might almost suspect Luke and guilty girlfriend Laura are meant to get caught, as if it’s scripted.

The gang were making such a hash of building the bridge that two newcomers have been drafted in — one of them an Afghanistan veteran and ex-Commando with lashings of experience at just this kind of job.

Suddenly, it looks like they’ll get the money after all. Although the set-up is so artificial, it’s hard to care.