The Button is a box that talks and has a big button on top, like a primitive version of Amazon Echo or Google Home. It might arrive in your family home; a sure sign is if your family home suddenly becomes framed in pulsating neon.
When the button turns from green to red you have to hit it, and it will set your family a challenge – make a tower out of books, tins and pillows that is taller than you are, or recite the alphabet backwards missing out the vowels. Something like that. And if you complete your challenge successfully and faster than the other four families who are also taking part, then you win points, which could translate to actual money at the end of the show.
It’s a gameshow, then, in which the contestants, like the viewers, don’t leave their own living rooms. OK, they might have to go into another room to find books, or forks, or to open the front door to find what’s been left there. (A ping pong ball, perhaps, that has to be bounced into a cup, or lots of inflatable things that need to be squeezed into your house – the show is certainly impressive logistically.) But they’re at home, Gogglebox style.
The Button is the host and the judge. It has the voice of and was co-created by comedian Alex Horne, who you may also know as the creator and co-host of Dave panel show Taskmaster. There’s more than a hint of that too, in the tasks, though this is more of a family thing.
In this opener, the McCulloughs in Streatham are up against the Halls in Pontypridd and the Marchants in Castleford, which doesn’t really seem fair as there are more Halls than there are McCulloughs and the kids are bigger, which makes pushing inflatable objects into the house easier. It doesn’t really matter though – it’s not about fair, it’s about having a bit of laugh. And they’re all pretty rubbish at it. No one completes the tower task, mainly because of a sad lack of books (“Why don’t we read more?” shouts someone), which are better for building towers than pillows.
It is a bit of laugh. A silly, family one. Not as much of a laugh as Gogglebox, but that’s about casting, and because eavesdropping is more interesting than watching people rush around gathering forks. Unless you’re a kid. Kids will probably like this.
