The NAtional Lottery Winning Lines

Saturdays, 7:35pm BBC1. Hosted by Simon Mayo. Interesting Fact: Since Winning Lines started onm BBC1 the ratings for the Lottery Show have plummetted.

"But we only want the draw..." Bugger off. It's a sad fact that despite the fact that for the past three years the National Lottery draw has always been between 8:00 and 8:05pm on Saturdays,people still insist on complaining that they tune in at 7:30 for the draw. What do you bloody expect? Instead of complaining, why not try watching a different channel and get the results there? You could watch Man O Man or something and get the results during the break. You could look at the results on Teletext (page 123 or 127). You could even go out! Or you could try watching the show for what it is. You have choice. Use it. If you're going to give away £7-£8million, I think you should build it up, at least a little bit.

Right, rant over. Simon Mayo, fresh from his old Saturday evening show Confessions and vampiric haircut (see Room 101) he's finally sorted his hair out and has bounced back in the new lottery show, taking over from Brian Connolly's We've Got Your Number and made by the same people who invented Who Wants to be a Millionaire? whilst cunningly nicking bits from Talking Telephone Numbers, although it's not really nicking because Celador made both shows. Do you see?

Round One introduces the 49'ers but only six can go through to round two. To sort this out a series of questions are asked, picked randomly from the computer. Each player is assigned a umber between one and 49 and if the answer to the question is their number then they press their button. At the end of the fifteen seconds thinking time we see who has played. If it is thier number and they are correct then they are through to round two. If they play and are wrong then they are out and if they should have played but didn't then they are also out. Ahh. Some people may think that it is unfair that it is somewhat random which contestants are selected or not but hey ho, that's life.

The player through decide who can play in next weeks show. The last digit of all the player's numbers that got throught to round two are collected and if they form the last six digits of your telephone number you can call in to register for next weeks show.

In Round Two, 'Looking After Number One' each player keeps their number from Round One and all of the answers are those numbers. As soon as the player thinks they know the answer to the question they buzz in. If it's their number then they stay in the game. If it's someone elses number then that person is knocked out and if you buzz in and get it wrong, or if you don't buzz but should do then you are out. This round is often quite good fun because people begin to buzz after a couple of words of the question because they can see where the question is going. Good.

The person who loses in the head to head wins a holiday in the country, the winner goes onto the Wonderwall where they could win a three week round the world holiday.

To make up for the fact that they lost though, the second place person gets to start the new Thunderball draw which has has rather cool machines in it.

The Wonderwall then: the player gets asked a load of questions, all the answers to which are on the the wall behind him. The player not only has to know the answer but they have to find that answers number on the wall. The player has 3:00 to get as many answers correct as they can the more they get right, the further the flight. To make things easier, the player is allowed two pitstops during the three minutes which freeze the clock for 15 seconds so that they can scan the board. These can be taken at any time. Sadly, the only way they can simulate the effect of the wall for the players at home is a scrolling screen that scrools back and forth, automatically jumping to the correct answer when it is announced. It doesn't matter too much though because this game is brilliant fun, and it's accompanied by a stonking soundtrack, yes, I said stonking. Very electro industrial gothic, something that Celador seem to be very good at doing. And showing the people at home which of the holidays the player currently owns was a stroke of genius.

This player also gets to start the National Lottery draw, which is nice.

At the end of the show we find out how many players have already been selected for next week and what time the computer thinks the lines will close (once all 49 contestants have been selected). Occasionally Simon will speak to some of the contestants coming in next week.

No boring Lottery news then, just a gameshow that is quite good.

Overall: 6.5/10 Good fun, if not particularly deep and meaningful.