Gary Lineker’s first major British entertainment series since leaving Match of the Day has received a bruising welcome, with critics calling ITV’s The Box confusing, tedious and one of the worst game shows they have watched.
Daily Mail television critic Christopher Stevens described the format as “moronic, infantile, dull” and declared it the worst game show he had encountered. The Times called it “indescribably boring” and “brain rot,” while reviews in The Guardian and The Independent struggled to find enough structure or stakes behind its deliberately mysterious challenges.
Several reviewers largely spared Lineker himself. The Independent described him as a likable host and “a very steady pair of hands,” but argued that even he could not steer a format it considered “scattershot and downright confounding.”
The critical reaction was followed by an early ratings drop. The opening episode drew approximately 1.7 million overnight viewers on ITV1 on Sept. 5, while about 1.4 million returned the following night against a repeat of Antiques Roadshow watched by roughly 3.3 million people.
Christopher Stevens Told Readers to Witness the Disaster Themselves
Stevens’ Daily Mail review urged readers to watch the series on catch-up and see for themselves why he considered it so spectacularly ill-conceived. His complaints included the simplicity of the challenges, the lack of meaningful stakes and the amount of time spent watching celebrities sit inside yellow containers waiting to discover what they were supposed to do.
He also questioned how much Lineker could contribute while observing contestants who themselves had deliberately been given almost no information. Katie Rosseinsky called Lineker “a very steady pair of hands,” but said even he could not confidently guide a show she found “scattershot and downright confounding.”
Her review argued that the bigger problem was not simply that contestants were confused. After watching two episodes, Rosseinsky said the audience was left with little narrative, few stakes and almost no momentum despite someone being eliminated at the end of each installment.
The Contestants Leave Their Boxes With Almost No Instructions
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ITV introduced The Box as a six-part celebrity competition adapted from a Norwegian format. Ten contestants are transported inside large yellow boxes to mystery locations, where the doors open without warning and reveal a physical, mental or logical challenge.
The cast includes Joey Essex, former House of Commons speaker John Bercow, Good Morning Britain presenter Ranvir Singh, Dragons’ Den investor Sara Davies, singer JB Gill, comedian Ellie Taylor, former footballer Graeme Souness, The Chase star Jenny Ryan, YouTuber Danny Aarons and former Love Island contestant Shakira Khan.
ITV’s original description makes the confusion part of the concept. The celebrities do not know where they are or what awaits them outside, and the challenges can arrive with “minimal or no instruction,” leaving them to work out both the objective and the solution.
The first episode included a search for yellow hexagonal pieces and a variation on an egg-and-spoon race. At the end of each installment, the two lowest-performing contestants face The Duel, with its loser eliminated from the competition.
Reviewers Found Chaos but Few Reasons to Care Who Won
The confusion is intentional, but reviewers argued that withholding information from both contestants and viewers sometimes made the competition difficult to follow. The Guardian’s review contrasted its randomness with Taskmaster, where eccentric instructions still build toward a recognizable objective.
One of the strangest sequences involved Bercow performing Pink’s “So What” shirtless while an audience joined in. Elsewhere, Joey Essex smashed wooden crates, Souness examined an egg and contestants attempted tasks before they completely understood what counted as success.
The Independent made a similar comparison with other reality formats, arguing that the challenges lacked the strategic intrigue that drives The Traitors or the comedy and clearly defined tasks that make Taskmaster work. Its verdict was that the individual games felt too slight to create a larger narrative.
However, The Guardian gave the show three stars and found entertainment in some of its absurdity, while other reviews credited the celebrity casting with producing occasional moments that worked despite their reservations about the central format.
‘The Box’ Lost Ground on Its Second Night
The premiere’s estimated audience of 1.7 million represented approximately a 19% share of viewers watching television in its time slot, according to overnight figures attributed to industry publication Broadcast. That left it roughly level with BBC One’s 40th-anniversary episode of Casualty.
The Sunday episode slipped to approximately 1.4 million viewers and a 14.6% share. Broadcast reported that a repeat of BBC One’s Antiques Roadshow drew approximately 3.3 million viewers in the same hour, with a peak of about 3.8 million.
ITV commissioned six episodes of The Box. The remaining celebrities will continue through the mystery challenges and elimination duels as the broadcaster finds out whether later viewing can recover from a launch weekend.