Dave

24 Hours To Go Broke is another exciting new show from the channel Dave, that I was gutted to only catch the last two episodes of (though I will be catching up with the others online). The concept of this show is interesting: a celebrity pairing are shipped off to a foreign country and given £10,000 (or that country’s equivalent) to spend in 24 hours (with the catch that all money must be spent on experiences so they can’t have anything to show for their money once the time is up and they can’t spend more than £1000 on one experience). If they fail to spend the entire sum of cash, they will be forced to do a humiliating forfeit. But they are not completely without help: each pair is given a few contacts who live nearby and who are willing to give advice on how to spend the money but also give suggestions of memorable ways there may be to get rid of the money.

Episode Four was a particularly strong episode as it followed a couple of television personalities that I really like: Countdown‘s Rachel Riley and comedian Joe Wilkinson. They regularly work together on 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown so I was intrigued to see how their friendship had formed and also knew that they were very funny together. I wasn’t disappointed. Rachel and Joe were sent to Thessaloniki in Greece to spend their money and I absolutely adored seeing the couple’s friendship develop even further as they shared these completely wacky experiences. Rachel and Joe had many quirky tasks that they had set themselves, such as Joe paying for pole-dancing lessons and the two of them running an electoral campaign so they can put on an annual vegetable festival (I said it was weird). There were moments in this episode that made me laugh out loud, for example when Joe Wilkinson was attempting to pole dance and he exclaimed: “I’m like a dainty horse!”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AriXb76TAoQ

Not only was what I saw of this series entertaining, it also taught a fair amount about the cultures of the people the celebrities met. For instance, in Greece it became apparent that they did not like to be overpaid for things as it was, in fact, rude in their culture: it was clear that the celebrities learned a lot. We also got to see many beautiful sights such as in Episode Five with Susan Calman and Phil Tufnell’s trek up a glacier in Reykjavik, Iceland (this was after a spot of elf therapy of course).

The money obviously came from the company at Dave but the concept still troubled me somewhat as it did seem terribly wasteful. However, when I thought about it further, it became clear to me that all television shows cost money to create, its just that the money had a different destination in this case. I personally don’t know how much the making of the series cost Dave but would expect it can’t have been too much more than that of your average show, especially as Dave isn’t as big as many other channels. This made me worry less about the ethics of the programme although I still wouldn’t say I was comfortable with it.

The nature of 24 Hours To Go Broke clearly allowed the contestants to create wonderful memories for themselves and have experiences that pretty much nobody else would ever have and for that, I think this programme is entirely unique. The bizarre events of the show actually really inspired me due to their surreal but achievable nature. At the end of Joe Wilkinson and Rachel Riley’s trip, Joe confirmed: “I’m definitely going to be less miserable for about forty five minutes”.

Catch up with this wonderful programme here and let me know what you think!