The Box

“On paper, The Box sounds frankly awful. A cast of C- and D-list celebs, including former Speaker of the House John Bercow, presenter Ranvir Singh and – surprise, surprise – Joey Essex, are placed in boxes and then taken to various locations (a castle, a racecourse, a church) to take on various challenges. In the opening episode, for example, they are dropped in the middle of a sprawling industrial state and tasked with finding a small yellow hexagon each. In the next one, their boxes open onto a stage and they are given an hour to come up with a performance for a battle of the bands challenge. In reality, though, it’s actually quite fun. The celebrities live together for the duration of the show, giving us a Traitors-esque insight into their tactics and backstabbing (whoever is on the winning team must decide who to put up for elimination), and the unpredictable “anything can happen” nature of the challenges keeps you wanting more.”
Emily Baker, The i

“The Box isn’t so much a gameshow as a sustained howl of existential confusion. A gameshow that scoffs in the face of convention yet seems bewildered by the bedlam that such showmanship inevitably unleashes. A gameshow in which John Bercow bellows “Orderrrrrr!” while showing us his nipples.”
Sarah Dempster, The Guardian

“It’s the same contestants throughout but at the end of each episode one of them is sent home in reality TV’s tedious time-honoured way. But since one of those “challenges” required walking briskly with eggs on spoons around an empty horse racing track, we were hardly in SAS: Who Dares Wins territory. We weren’t even in Crackerjack territory. If there had been a few wild boars thundering behind them, that might have spiced things up a bit.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Lineker is a likeable host and a very steady pair of hands, but even he cannot confidently steer a show as scattershot and downright confounding as this one.”
Kate Rosseinsky, Independent

“You can see that the programme-makers are drawing ideas from The Traitors, because every game show does now. The production is slick, so slick that you will find yourself wondering what they’ve missed out of the edit. How long do the celebrities spend in the boxes, which are a sort of cross between an Ikea wardrobe and a miniature shipping container? How are they ferried to the various destinations without getting wind of where they’re going? And what are the chances of Ranvir, who can’t swim and nearly drowned as a child, being the contestant who has to face a challenge that involves jumping into a body of water?”
Anita Singh, Telegraph