I am going to try and create some discussion.

If DOND did come back who would you like to host it?

I always thought Jimmy Carr could be a good host? I find him funny, and I think he could be quite good when it comes to the serious stuff as well.

It’s difficult to come up with an obvious name... but I would welcome it back now it’s had a number of years’ break. If Noel wouldn’t do it again (though there’s older presenters than him on TV!) it would be different, but Countdown’s on its sixth full-time host, Millionaire’s relaunched with a change in the chair etc. so it could definitely work. Would have been great lockdown TV, though maybe impractical to film under the circumstances!

Whoever it might be, I’d like to see a “back to basics” 2005-06 type approach, with plenty of involvement from the waiting contestants and very few gameplay gimmicks. Saw a thread lower down suggesting that the budget might be too much for daytime TV these days, without the mid ‘00s viewing figures, which is a fair point.

It'll never truly come back in a 'proper' form, it's not fondly recalled enough. Harsh truth. There was demand and £££ in Millionaire and Weakest Link returning It'd return in the same way Bullseye returned with Dave Spikey hosting it, I.E full to the brim with self referential acknowledgement at the show's cringetastic infamy and gimmicks. It'd be little more than a pastiche that wouldn't retain any sense of the intensity the original 2005-2006 (2007 if we're being kind) run had. And that would be the case *even if* Noel returned, which he wouldn't. It would actually be quite sh*t, Noel in full on 'acting' mode as himself.

As for the budget, even back in the heyday it was given a very helpful nudge along by that LTL 'blue boxes' thing. The show would still have broken even, but it was a juicy little side asset and its absence in the 2008+ era is keenly felt by the lack of offer generosity.

Agreed with Power5, Millionaire took a break for 4 years and it's come back very fresh indeed! Think it's time for DOND to do the same too! But if Noel decided not to return as host, Jimmy Carr would be very good Davao! There'd certainly be no shortage of humour with him in charge! I was thinking maybe Phillip Schofield? He's certainly no stranger to shows with a lot of tension involved (i.e The Cube) and he would no doubt have a lot of great banter with the contestants! Another name I thought of, and I know this name sounds so unlikely because he's a singer and therefore he has no experience of TV presenting at all, but for some odd reason One Direction's Louis Tomlinson just sprung to my mind. I know you'll all ask WHY? but I can actually just picture him for some reason really making a good fist of it. Besides, there's no doubt he'd definitely really want all the players to do well! (Not to mention there would be the odd cuddle or two involved as well!) Then again, Clarkson certainly sounded like the most unlikely replacement for Tarrant on WWTBAM? but 3 years on he's really doing a good job of it, so there's no reason why Tomlinson wouldn't do a good job on DOND. I'm sure he could also be very firm and serious indeed when it gets down to 5 or 8-box with a lot of the reds still left on the board.

Agreed also with Power5 on the show going back to how it used to be, The Banker actually making fair offers and not dumbing them down to force the players on, more focus on the game, less gameplay gimmicks, no Box 23, no Offer Button etc. Just back to how it was played that got 2-4 Million people watching C4 on the edge of their seats. Also, when the 1p is revealed can we PLEASE not have the contestant do the compulsory kiss or arms slung over the shoulders dance with the person who revealed it? Don't know why they insisted the need for that to happen but if DOND does come back, don't do it again! And finally, would love to see the Viewer's Competition return. (the one with the blue boxes) Does anyone know why said competition was taken off air in the first place?

From memory, I think ITV landed in serious swill from actual rigged phone-in competitions. The loss of DOND's version was just a result of a clean sweep across the channels to banish all phone-ins. There was one complaint that it was similarly 'rigged' cos the amount to win was already pre-determined by virtue of the show being pre-recorded, but how that made it fixed is a serious reach of damnation.

There was a funny two week period where the 'Blue Box Opening' didn't take place at the end of the episode, but was *very* clumsily spliced at the end of an advert break (so you KNEW what you were phoning in to win) because obviously the recording of this segment took place when it usually did - after the game had finished. This would almost always give away the result of the game itself, Noel's body language and cadence coupled with whatever faces the audience were wearing would be more than enough to denote a GOOD result or a BAD result.

Eventually, after some insanely convoluted alternate method (postal votes??) they just scrapped the whole lot. Think Noel's on record for stating that he hated the competition for cutting through the atmosphere and he probably had a point there.

Ahh right OK thanks for that

Interesting question as to how “fondly recalled” it would be... obviously it wasn’t a prime-time show like Millionaire etc. other than the odd experimental run, but it was something of a phenomenon in its own way in the first couple of years, I think it was about the top-rating daytime show on TV for a while.

I bet they never banked on that (pun intended!) when they launched it, so advertising takings must have exceeded what they budgeted for, but the LTL must have been a big part of covering costs. And I don’t think it would really work with a much lower top prize. Million Pound Drop came back as £100k Drop, but don’t think it had the same draw...

Gameshows come and go, some last 40 years like Countdown, others burn out quickly. Very few come back for a new generation successfully, though there’s many that I think they’d be better off bringing back than launching the latest ill-conceived new idea. Still, they’re always after the next Pointless or The Chase, even if it takes 10 flops to get there.

DoND is a simple and potentially addictive format, which always gives it potential to resurface. The fact it’s pretty much pure luck maybe counts against it, the anti-gambling lobby tends to have something to say... but who knows, maybe we’ll see it as a one-off in an Alan Carr gameshow revival series or something one day!

I may be in the minority here, but if DOND did return, the host would have to be watchable and not annoying as Noel became in the mid-latter years. Alan Carr / Jimmy Carr (though clearly not brothers) would be just that, Alan with a load of double entendre and that voice, and Jimmy with the laugh and probably insulting contestants for their dress sense or something.

As others have said, DOND was indeed best at the beginning, where there was real tension and jeopardy hand in hand. To host it, you would need someone likeable but down to earth like Steve Jones from F1 or Rick Edwards from Impossible. The other thing you would need is contestants with some character. I quite enjoyed the games where you got to know something about the player as the games progressed before they played their own, as you were really looking forward to seeing them play.

It would be a difficult show to revive as all businesses nowadays are looking to cut costs, and DOND was an expensive show to run, even with sponsorship. What other show has to put at least 20 contestants up in a hotel plus food expenses etc. I’m not even sure the studio exists any longer, Paintworks certainly doesn’t as a location though I really enjoyed visiting there.

I'd like to see Bradley Walsh do it, he's got the right level of satire and contestant interaction