TV Show: The Cube

I downloaded the first episode of this new show and to be honest I was surprised how addictive it was to watch. Its a very simple concept, do a task which most people could do then put it in the cube, crank up the pressure with large sums of money with a large drop to zero if your limited number of tries/lives end.

What makes the cube even more impressive to watch is the use of high definition and high speed footage with 360 degrees of views. So one of the tasks was to drop a ball into a tube and catch it at the other end before it hits the floor. Seeing how close it gets in HD on a super highspeed camera is something else. Its not just close, its nail biting eerily close. Another aspect of the cube is the lateral thinking which goes into beating the cube. So in the task mentioned earlier the guy knocked the ball up in the air with one hand then got into a position to catch it on the way down. In the most recent one, a guy striped down to his pants to complete a task which involved walking over two barriers without being able to see anything.

If this came straight from the production of ITV then I'm sure this format will appear in other countries very soon. Its also got legs for a gameshow, so you can imagine a celeb version at Christmas and New Years then even a doubles version further down the line. There's also a almost unlimited amount of games you can play in the cube. Everything from Basketball with a square box to flicking a ball into a small glass of water. You can even have the same game with different levels. So the flicking the ball into a glass of water means at 2k a bucket of water, while at 100k its a pint glass and at 250k it could be a large test tube. Clever stuff, although I would love for the voice of the cube to be a little more like the computer in Portal. The Body also looks like something out of Ghost in the Shell, nice move.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io