Global Schadenfreude: How ITV’s ‘Win Win’ Became the Planet’s Favorite Morality Play
ITV’s “Win Win” and the Global Glitter of Manufactured Hope
By “Lucky” Lachlan Grimble, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker
Somewhere between the collapse of the Turkish lira and the re-election of a man who sells $60 Bibles in the United States, ITV quietly rolled out “Win Win,” a game show that promises contestants a lifetime salary if they can simply guess which sealed briefcase contains the golden ticket. The prize? A modest £5,000 a month until death—an annuity so perfectly calibrated that it outlasts most marriages but probably won’t outrun inflation. From the air-conditioned misery of Dubai’s labor camps to the glass sarcophagi of London’s banking towers, the show is being streamed, clipped, memed, and dissected like a frog in a GCSE lab. Why, in a year when glaciers are suing governments, does the planet care about a mid-budget British quiz? Because “Win Win” is not a game. It is a global allegory wearing a cheap tuxedo.
Let’s zoom out. In Manila, call-center agents watch bootleg uploads between shifts that pay them less per day than the show’s hourly lighting budget. In Lagos, university students place informal bets on which contestant will crack under the strobe lights. Even in Davos, where billionaires sip melted polar ice in crystal tumblers, an oligarch’s bored nephew live-tweets the finale because, apparently, watching strangers gamble on basic dignity is the new blood sport. The format has already been licensed to seventeen territories, from Poland (where they renamed it “Wygraj albo Giń,” literally “Win or Die,” a branding choice the marketing department shrugged at) to South Korea, where producers added a K-pop interlude and a mandatory sob story about an orphaned corgi.
The genius is in the cruelty disguised as kindness. Contestants who lose don’t go home empty-handed; they leave with a “consolation ladder” of diminishing monthly payments—a slow financial strangulation that feels suspiciously like every gig-economy contract ever drafted. Viewers from Bogotá to Brisbane recognize the setup: work hard, smile harder, and maybe the algorithm will keep you alive another month. The show’s host, a former children’s-TV presenter whose eyes now hold the hollow sheen of a man who’s read the climate reports, repeats the mantra: “You’re always a winner on Win Win!” Translation: even your defeat is monetizable content.
And here lies the worldwide implication. As nation-states pivot from governing to merely narrating, “Win Win” offers a convenient morality tale: prosperity is a raffle, society is a studio audience, and justice is whatever fits in a 30-second ad break. The IMF could save itself years of austerity memos by simply syndicating the program to debtor nations. Why impose structural adjustment when you can hand out scratch cards and film the tears for syndication? In Greece, austerity-weary pensioners reportedly gather in tavernas to watch, half-horrified, half-hopeful, proving that Schadenfreude is the last truly borderless currency.
Meanwhile, crypto bros in Singapore have tokenized the outcome, trading “$WIN” coins whose value spikes every time a single mother loses the final round. Environmentalists calculate the show’s carbon footprint—each confetti cannon equals a week of Amazon deforestation—but the credits now include a reassuring shot of a potted fern, so balance is apparently restored. Even Beijing’s censors approved the format after editors agreed to blur any tattoos that might suggest individuality.
Of course, the real winners are ITV Studios, which has franchised the concept faster than you can say “late-stage capitalism.” Merchandise includes a home edition where families can play along until the actual electricity bill arrives. There is talk of a “Win Win Cruise” where passengers compete for drink packages while sailing through the plastic gyre currently sunbathing in the Pacific. Tickets, naturally, are non-refundable.
In the end, “Win Win” reveals what we already suspected: the house always wins, the planet always loses, but the audience keeps clapping because the alternative—turning the TV off and staring at the encroaching void—is simply too expensive. So we watch, we tweet, we gamble, and we tell ourselves it’s just harmless fun. After all, someone, somewhere, is getting £5,000 a month until they die. And in 2024, that counts as optimism.
