A machine appears in the grocery store of a small town that calms to be able to predict your true life potential.

I was well disposed to The Big Door Prize to start with. I love Chris O’Dowd (one of those actors who you just want to be mates with) and the premise is an intriguing one. No one knows where the ‘Morpho’ machine has come from, but for fifty cents it will read your finger prints, check your Social Security number and tell you what your destiny in life ought to be.

Cue much debate about whether being told your potential (or lack of it) will shape you, or whether the drives we have to succeed are rooted in ourselves. It’s the age-old battle between pre-destination and free will.

It’s amiable enough stuff, and the first episode ends with a beautiful twist, but shortly into the second, I started to have doubts. Indeed, I started to feel sorry for O’Dowd, whose character keeps repeating the same lines ad nauseum – questioning pre-destination etc – all the way through to the end of the third part, by which time the premise was starting to feel decidedly thin, as if the writers didn’t really know where else to take it. There are certainly amusing moments, but the scripts aren’t nearly funny enough to sustain the sort of repeating format you might find in a sitcom.

Verdict: There are ten episodes in total, so hopefully it does go somewhere more substantial but I’m not sure I’ll be committing the time, given that three episodes in, The Big Door Prize is already going around in circles. 6/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com