The Inheritance

Thirteen contestants are summoned to a house where they have to work as a team to complete a series of assignments left by The Deceased in which she has also left a will for one person to win a cash prize. It turns out that The Deceased was a high-end businesswoman, and had her fingers in a lot of pies. Fashion and society balls and luxury make-up kits, of course. But she was also involved with farming, and antiques, and held her own music festival on the estate grounds.

In order to wind up her business affairs, the contestants are asked to complete some last make-up boxes, or sort out the sheep from the goats, or restore some of the antiques for collection, or pitch tents so that guests can sleep in them. Each item successfully completed will earn "release some money from the inheritance". Partial success is usually rewarded; if the team complete 40 of the 100 make-up boxes, they'll earn money for those 40; if they find six of the eight prize chickens, that will earn some dosh.

To complicate matters further, the players are usually split across two or three locations. They might be able to talk to each other over walkie-talkies, or they might have to rely on each other to do the job. Transport may be provided, or it might not. No individual player is able to see everything that goes on; that is a privilege reserved for us viewers. We can see who's pulling their weight and who is taking a more lackadaisical approach to their tasks.

Eventually, the Request comes to a conclusion, it's filled about half of the one-hour show. Then the players split off into little groups, talk amongst themselves about tactics and plot who might put themselves forward as a Claimant.

Claimants emerge at "The Division Ceremony". Robert Rinder, the Executor, confirms how much money was released. That cash is in a locked box, placed in the middle of the room. Anyone who thinks they were the day's strongest link can put themself forward as a Claimant, and make their case.

The other players - those who don't wish to be tonight's Claimants - form a jury. They're entitled to ask questions, tease out what happened, assess whether someone appears to be telling the truth, and work out in their own mind who the most deserving player was. By some means - democracy, draw straws, beating each other into a bloody pulp - the jury works out which Claimant is the winner.

That winning Claimant becomes the Prime Beneficiary, and takes sole charge of the cash. Down in the privacy of the strong room, our winner has a choice. They can keep the entire amount - and are obliged to retain half of it. But our Prime Beneficiary can gift up to half of the money to members of the jury, in whatever proportion they think fit. Claimants who failed in their claim are not allowed to be gifted anything. Prime is at liberty to disclose what they did, but they do not have to, and they do not have to be truthful. Prime can say that they gifted someone £400, and that lie will hold - until that someone goes down to the strong room, opens their own money box, and finds no gift from Prime.

An unspoken rule of the show seemed to be that gifts had to be in multiples of £200. When Prime is dealing with relatively small prizes, like £2800, and there are eight people on the jury, someone is mechanically going to have to come away with nothing.

From time to time, the Prime Beneficiary is also asked to "cut" a player from the will. That player is eliminated from the game, though they do keep the money they've earned so far. Only the players with the least money are at risk of being cut before the final.

Although it was made by Studio Lambert of The Traitors fame, they failed to capture any great sense of fun. We put that down to the host: whereas Claudia Winkleman holds out the promise of scones and adventure, Robert Rinder is formal and stilted, while Elizabeth Hurley was somewhat under-used: she'd recorded all of her pieces to camera before becoming The Deceased, and never appeared on screen for more than a minute.

Cam, who opted to split the £100,000 prize equally with the four other finalists.

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