Mine is 2011 because it had many great games and players the best player being Suzanne because she won the £250,000 with the dream finish which was never repeated and after 2011 deal or no deal kept getting worse in my opinion.

The old school forumites are gonna be spamming the thread with "2006 BY FAR, DEAL DIED WITH LAURA'S JACKPOT WIN! LONG LIVE KES!!!"

While I understand that opinion, 2006 wasn't quite peak Deal for me. My favorite years were 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2014, the last one mainly being because I was active on the forum throughout that year.

I think I'm gonna go with 2007, though. Laura's jackpot won started off the year and the aftermath of of it produced insane gambles galore to an extent that wasn't seen before and since then. Then that eventually stopped at the end of May (1k Lynn's game being a turning point for the gambling tendencies and Sarah's game that month ending the trend of insanely generous offers from early 2007) but there was still plenty of characters and players that were willing to play the game aggressively afterwards.

Anyway, what's Deal? We didn't call it that back in our day, you know...

Think I'll go with 2009

2017-2022.

2006! So many consistently great characters and games throughout that year. 2007 and 2008 had plenty as well but I think 2006 edges it for me.

2009 was pretty decent too, although I feel a bit weird about it, probably because I was part of the first quarter.

So you've enjoyed my personal DoND series then

I'm really not sure - the way the show evolved over time both from its own history and the background in which later episodes were made (and especially the way those two conflicted!) was fascinating to me.

If 2006 was the best year - and I think in some ways it was while in others it very wasn't - it was from the atmosphere, the way the show's cultural impact was clear and spilling out in liquid enthusiasm and it just felt big. This was also sometimes the worst part of it! 2011 is a decent shout from ACB, as the show started to get settled into a new post-2007 approach then; 2012 may have been when that really settled down, and the move to HD meant those episodes started looking better too, but arguably none of those Bottle Yard seasons should have happened because the end of Paintworks was as logical a time as any to pull the plug.

2006

2007, followed by 2010. 2011 is overrated, far too many big wins felt telegraphed than normal and the cheap deals increased to unbelievable amounts that year.

2005/06 - Great era for nostalgia, but everyone seems to think of March 2006 as the pinnacle of DoND, which I honestly find hugely overrated.

2007 - In my opinion, the best year of DoND, even if things started to get a little murky towards the end, with the sob stories becoming a permanent fixture of the show, starting from around Christmas

2008 - The worst year for DoND during the former half of it's run. It became really tedious with all the bad luck, tears, sob stories, fearful/pessimistic players and extreme caution (almost all of which resulting in huge squanders) that plagued much of the year like a rash. Though the last month or so of the year showed signs of things finally improving.

2009 - My second favourite year of the show. It felt like a BIG breath of fresh air after the misery of 2008. Though it did seem to slip back into 2008 again for a brief period during the middle part of the year, but then we had another spate of classic games during the last couple of months of the year.

2010 - In my opinion, the last good year of the show. I feel like it started to go downhill after Ramesh's game in April, and by September, it was becoming quite tedious, as DoND began to show signs of struggling financially in the post-recession era (something that would ultimately haunt the show for the rest of it's run).

2011 - For me, this was when the show really started to go downhill. The new hour-long format made a lot of games feel like a chore to sit through, especially with unprecedented extreme caution suddenly taking over and big wins becoming increasingly few and far between from here on out. DoND basically spent the latter half of it's run feeling like it was trapped in the 2008 recession's shadow, and the only things really keeping me interested were the forum and nostalgia for the early days of the show.





.

You know what? I actually loved the show throughout the autumn and winter of last year coming into this year. There were moments of mediocrity of course, and the financial stakes could never match those of the previous incarnation of the show for high drama, but in many ways I felt that Stephen could take the show to places Noel couldn't, because Stephen seems to truly care about and be interested in other human beings.
At times, as in Wendy's game and a few others, I felt compelled to almost wax lyrical about how gripping and engaging, and tense, and exciting, this show still is; I remember writing that this version wasn't only living up to the previous show's reputation, but in my opinion exceeding it. While I think that might've been raw emotion speaking more loudly than rationality, the fact that such a strong reaction existed was testament to the point I was making; with the benefit of a few months' hindsight I still maintain that - in patches - Deal Or No Deal is as good as, and occasionally better than, it ever has been.

Ever the contrarian, I'm nominating 2024-25.