Bradley Walsh's Million Pound Shot review: All bets are off in Bradley Walsh's game show with a major twist
This was a game show with a twist, we were told, and to be fair Bradley Walsh's Million Pound Shot (Channel 4, Sunday, 9pm) didn't disappoint on that front.
Even if you hadn't managed to avoid spoilers beforehand, the programme makers did a pretty good job of making this game show appear as if was exactly that – all shiny floors, flashing lights and big screens full of bright colours and snazzy graphics.
Much like those 'fun' games you see advertised so very, very, very often on TV.
You know, the ones which look like the fruit machines you used to see in smoky pubs back in the day, the clink-clink of the coins going in punctuated so very, very, very rarely by the clink-clink-clink-clink-clink of the coins coming back out.
And here, of course, was the real target of the show – the modern gambling industry and its tricks and tactics designed to lure in the casual punter and turn them into hardcore gamblers.
All the while emphasising the 'fun' of course, the community you can find in the online bingo halls, the frisson it can add to the 3pm kick-off when you've just placed your 'acca' in the company of Roy Keane and Micah Richards.
And so Bradley introduced us to three 'contestants', two of whom were dispensed with in double-quick time.
This left us with Reese, who a little VT told us was a teacher from Yorkshire, someone like many of us, has a decent job but would always like that little bit extra, to help pay down the mortgage, or get a new kitchen, or pay for that repair job on the car.
Apparently playing with his own money, Reese staked cash to answer questions with the show doubling, tripling or quadrupling his stake if he got the answer right.
Each answer would give him another chance in the end game to play what was basically roulette with a chance to win a million pounds.
Of course, Reese lost more than he won, with his winnings cheered and the losses glossed over.
Eventually, he went chasing the losses on the roulette wheel, encouraged to spend more and more, being told he was 'in control', and could have a 'free bet'.
By the time he was willing to bust his overdraft, any sentient viewer would have twigged that Reese was not a real game show contestant and the woman who shouted out objections wasn't a real audience member, and, let's face it, this wasn't a real game show
But, as a coda explained, whether you were taken in or not didn't really matter. The aim was to illustrate the way the gambling industry lures you in and keeps you hooked.
It shows the ease with which you can be parted from your money, the ways in which you can be made to forget your losses, and the methods used to tempt you back when you have stopped.
And if none of that put you off your annual flutter on the National, the story of the real-life Reese an unassuming, intelligent man called Patrick, hopefully would have done.
He built up debts of £250,000 and a when a last-gasp attempt to make good the losses on the Cheltenham Festival failed, he contemplated suicide, only saved by his partner.
And, as this made very clear, some people don't have a partner to stand by them, to save them. A stat at the end of the show revealed that one-in-11 suicides are gambling-related.
When even the gambling industry itself runs ads which suggest that sometimes it's better to just stop gambling, something must be wrong with that industry.
And this game show might not have been the subtlest warning against gambling, but the subterfuge – cloaking itself in the tactics of its target – will hopefully have a bigger effect than a sober documentary.
My 18-year-old son tells me it's gone viral, and if it can put the new generation of punters off betting, it can only be a good thing.