Friday Format Sweep 25 Sept - Is the Box ITV's Failed format no 10?

The Friday Format Sweep, 25 September 2026

No instructions, one rule: why Hot or Cold might work where The Box didn't

News of new and returning formats to a screen near you.

TL;DR: Netflix has commissioned Hot or Cold, a game show with no instructions and a single feedback signal. The same week, ITV's The Box, another no-instructions format, looks set to stop at one series. Elsewhere, DR is dating in costume, Belgium has celebrities bluffing about secret missions, and ZDF has put YouTubers in a real-world capture-the-flag game. MIP London is closing. The lesson for MIPCOM: sharpen the one rule that unlocks the behaviour.

The lead: Hot or Cold (Netflix, UK)

Netflix has ordered six episodes of Hot or Cold from Zeppotron, the company behind Last One Laughing UK. Bob Mortimer and Richard Ayoade lead a line-up of comedians and celebrities. Pairs work through a maze of rooms, each with a challenge. They are never told what the challenge is or how to solve it. The only guide is the room itself, which glows red when they're getting warmer and blue when they're getting colder. It was announced on 24 September at Netflix's first UK Upfronts.

It takes a childhood game and turns it into a visual engine. The audience gets the rule at once. The players have to work out what game they're actually playing.

Is The Box heading for one series?

The contrast is ITV's The Box, which also sends contestants in with no instructions. Wheretowatch.tv reports that ITV is understood to have decided against a second series, though ITV hasn't confirmed it. That would make it ten attempts in the search for the next big thing. Read about the nine previous one-series formats in my post.

The numbers point the same way. The launch drew 1.7 million, and episode 2 lost 300,000 of them. ITV also held back the full boxset on ITVX, so the show relied on live viewing alone. By 17 September it had moved to a Sunday 7pm slot.

Public reaction still leans negative, although some game show fans defend it. Across the reviews and online discussion I found, three complaints come up again and again:

• Confusion outweighs curiosity. Viewers struggle to understand what contestants have to achieve and why the results matter.
• The treatment promises more tension than the tasks deliver. Dramatic editing and music sometimes overwhelm fairly modest games.
• The mechanics lack consequence. Specialist discussion questions how much the individual rounds actually affect the outcome.

Both shows withhold the rules. Hot or Cold gives players, and viewers, one signal they can read. The Box gave them nothing. Withholding the rules can work. Withholding the feedback doesn't. All three complaints are development problems, visible on paper before a container was ever painted yellow.

Have a look at my posts The Box Where did it all go wrong? a format teardown. And perhaps how a bit of extra development, with the aid of my premortem, could have addressed some of the issues, have a look at The Box Premortem case study.

New this week

Date Knight (DR, Denmark)
DR has commissioned Date Knight from Banijay Nordic's Nordisk Film TV. Singles recast as knights, elves, witches and warriors date entirely in character, then gradually drop their personas, guided by DR P3 host Jannik Schouw and couples therapist Julie Houe. The castle is the headline, but roleplay is the mechanism. It gives nervous contributors permission to behave differently, then asks whether the connection survives without the disguise.

Mission Accomplished? (VRT1, Belgium)
From Woestijnvis. Eight celebrities take on secret missions, then face a studio showdown where they make their claims, question each other and try to expose bluffs before the real footage shows the truth. The tension sits in the gap between what people say they did and what the camera saw.

Celebrity Sequence (in development, USA)
Keller/Noll, the creators behind Chopped and America Says, are working with Goliath and Perfect Game to turn the board game Sequence into a studio show. Teams claim cards on a giant board by answering polling questions with help from one of three celebrities, and the winners play a final round for $100,000. Dave Noll calls it "part Match Game, part Family Feud". No broadcaster yet.

On screen

Wisdom of the Crowd (BBC One)
This launched on 19 September with John Bishop, straight after the Strictly launch. It comes from the makers of The 1% Club. Players aren't hunting for the right answer. They have to beat the studio audience's average, with three chances to win £10,000. The idea comes from Francis Galton, who found that the average of 800 guesses at an ox's weight beat the best single guess.

Terrain: Battle of the Flags (ZDF, Germany)
YouTuber Freshtorge created it with Roses Are Blue. Ten content creators in two teams defend their flags in a purpose-built game world in the Scottish Highlands, self-shooting and wearing third-person camera vests for a video game look. The first three episodes launched on ZDF's streamer on 24 September, with episode 1 on YouTube the same day. It borrows the language of gaming without trying to put a video game on television.

Wonka's The Golden Ticket (Netflix)
Now streaming. Twelve golden ticket winners, each with a partner they chose, face temptations and challenges built to test them physically, mentally and morally. It was shot in Australia.

The bravest idea of the week

The Last Laugh (VRT1, Belgium)
Also from Woestijnvis, and also heading to MIPCOM with Primitives. It pairs people who are terminally ill with a comedian, who gathers stories from them and their families to write a one-of-a-kind comic eulogy. It is a factual format built around agency rather than observation.

Deals and adaptations

• Banijay has taken global rights to Temptations Under the Sun, a spin-off of Canada's longest-running reality romance show, Occupation Double.
• Telemundo has named Mexican comedian Facundo as host of Juego de Villanos, its Spanish-language version of House of Villains. Banijay Colombia produces it, and it launches in October with a $200,000 prize.

The development view

Each of this week's new formats can be explained in one sentence: follow the temperature, date behind a character, prove the mission, capture the flags, beat the crowd. The complexity comes afterwards, from people.

So the question to take into MIPCOM: are we spending enough time sharpening the one rule that unlocks the behaviour, before adding more format?

A few pressure points I'd test:

• Date Knight: each couple can only take the costumes off once. What carries the series after the reveals?
• Celebrity Sequence: would the polling game still hold an audience with the brand name taken off?
• Wisdom of the Crowd: if the science holds, the crowd usually wins. How do you keep players winning often enough to keep the stakes real?

Market notes

MIP London closes. RX confirmed on 23 September that MIP London will not take place in 2027. In its place is MIP Talks, on 16 and 17 March at ExCeL, running alongside The London Book Fair. Its theme is IP to fandom, and fandom to global business. That makes it a conference, not a buying and selling market. VideoAge has the announcement and RX's statement.

MIP London was, in effect, the successor to MIPTV, which ended in Cannes in 2024. MIPCOM is unaffected and runs in Cannes from 12 to 15 October.

The numbers explain the decision. RX reported more than 2,800 delegates in 2025. In February 2026 it reported almost 2,000. The London TV Screenings, running in the same season, was likely competition too.

Where RX has moved it matters. Placing it beside a book fair and building it around fandom says the organisers think the next formats will come from IP that already has an audience, not from a sales floor.

US unscripted incentive. Deadline reports that unscripted producers spent much of the summer lobbying to be included in a US federal incentive, to slow the move of big competition shows overseas.

Jonathan Glazier, format creator and executive producer | altmedia

I'm dyslexic, and AI helps me make this readable. The thoughts and opinions are my own. There are no auto-generated articles, and I read and research with rigour.