It’s an oddly cold August afternoon and I’m sitting in a TV studio feeling the heat. In front of me lie 22 boxes, a screen filled with a multitude of prices, ranging from 1p to £100,000, and a telephone. “Looking at your board, I think the banker has to be worried,” host Stephen Mulhern tells me as we mull over the tumultuous events of the last 10 minutes. I could only be playing the ultimate game of chance, Deal or No Deal.
Earlier this year, game-show enthusiasts were ecstatic to discover that ITV planned to reboot the immensely watchable Channel 4 series that closed its last box seven years ago. More than 11,000 people applied, with a fresh crop of contestants selected to duke it out with the mysterious banker in the hopes of winning a jackpot prize.
