In a world where Deal Or No Deal is considered a good game show, I think we should be thankful that we have Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Simple but effective, it works because you can play along, shout at the contestants dithering over a £500 question, and finally prove yourself to be superior to everyone else watching it with you. Hopefully. As such, apart from ironing out a couple of issues at the very start, ITV have, happily, been willing to leave the format alone.

Until yesterday, of course. As we reported a while back, WWTBAM (as it shall henceforth be referred to) has undergone some changes, and, being quite a fan of the show, I was eager to see whether they would make it better or worse, and to try and work out whether falling audience figures was the only reason these changes were being made.

The first thing you notice as the credits roll, is a new theme tune. Well, not new exactly - it's fundamentally the same meoldy, so you can still sing "Whoooo wants to be a millionaaaaaaire" along to the last eight notes - but this is a tranced-up version. In fact, it's a Eurobeat version, like it's been remixed by Gemini. Lord knows we don't need that. My first impressions of new-look WWTBAM were not good. You'll be happy to know, (if you're like me, anyway) that the set is the same, however, and the lights go down in that foreboding manner just as they always did. So they haven't gone completely mad.

The fonts, colours and graphics are very slightly different (and I mean *very slightly*), but the next big difference is the prize levels. Gone are the £100, £200 and £300 prizes, now it's just £500 and the guaranteed £1,000. Now, I see the reason for this - the early questions are generally stupidly easy, and if you happen to get one about Corrie and don't watch it, then you you've got the audience who will get it right. So skipping these just speeds things along a little bit.

But what about the aesthetics of the board, huh? No-one thought about that, now, did they? Now it just looks silly, all unbalanced, with two questions in the first section and then five in the other two. Ridiculous.

Haha. The prize levels then continue thusly: £2,000, £5,000, £10,000, £20,000, £50,000 (guaranteed) and £75,000, £150,000, £250,000, £500,000, and the jackpot £1,000,000 - 12 questions in all, rather than 15.

Last night, John Culshaw and John Thomson were the first to try out the new system, and we saw quite quickly the problems and advantages. As I said before, it means we get down to the nitty-gritty earlier, as the questions reflect their value, not what number they are (ie. the second question, for a grand, is as easy/hard as the old fifth question was, for the same amount of money). But it also means that the contestants get to the questions they can't do much quicker. Both celebrity couples left with £20,000 for their charities last night, having answered just six questions, and spending half an hour in the chair. It all just feels a little rushed, like they're looking for a quicker turnover, and it makes for rather less satisfying viewing.

The new format needs time to bed in, of course, and I'm glad that ITV have tried to make the show work, rather than just axing it, as was the rumour at one point. But at the moment, I'm less than convinced. [annawaits]