One To Win (Channel 5, 2000-2001)
For about the first five years that it was on air, Channel 5 produced a wide variety of cheap but quirky daytime weekday game shows, and this is another one. Firstly, this show has no connection to the 90s BBC1 game show called One To Win that I reviewed a while back (which was a revival of the classic Bob’s Full House format), this is actually a revival of Going For Gold, as if nine years of people trying to be the best that they can on BBC1 wasn’t enough. It seems in this case the title meant “only one person can win”, rather than “only one more correct answer to win” in the other one.
Another curious thing about One To Win was the host. It was originally hosted by Paul Roseby, but after a while he was replaced by Robin Houston, who also hosted what seemed like thousands of editions of 100%, another daytime Channel 5 game show. However, on that show he was out-of-vision, unlike here, so the gimmick of him providing the mysterious disembodied voice asking the questions was somewhat lost. But it was good seeing him interact more with the contestants than he did on 100%. 
One To Win had a slightly different format to Going For Gold. Firstly, only contestants from the UK took part instead of from across Europe. Also, there was no preliminary round, so the first round was the first round, if that makes sense. So to fill the timeslot the rounds were stretched out a little, with the four contestants having to choose if they wanted to answer a question on a category for one, two or three points, but they had to score nine points to progress to the next round instead of six. The buzzer noises were the same though. 
The next round was just about the same. Contestants had to pick one of four categories and then they were asked questions for 40 seconds, they had to get four consecutive answers right, with more questions being asked on the buzzer if there was a tie. The two highest-scoring contestants then went into the final, which again was slightly different. 
Again, the idea was the same but the scoring was stretched out. Contestants had to buzz in and answer a question, but there were fewer points on offer for the longer it took to answer, and you could only buzz in when you were in control. This version had five time zones instead of four, and the winning target was 21 points instead of 9. The daily winner received £200 and the option to return and defend their title on the next show (and contestants won a bonus £200 for winning five shows in a row), the beaten finalist got a CD-Rom. 
This ran for about a year, but that still wasn’t the end. About seven years later, Channel 5 revived the format again, this time under the Going For Gold name, and it was extended to an hour, so it had to be padded out even more, with most of the time being used to plug an interactive viewers’ game which was rather painful to watch sometimes. One To Win was definitely the better revival.
ADAM'S NOSTALGIC MEMORIES 