Channel 4 challenge contestants to ‘Double the Money’

Best on the Box choice for May 9th…

Sue Perkins presents a brand-new reality competition, where pairs of contestants are challenged to double their money using their entrepreneurial abilities and doing anything they can think of.

Starting with £250, the stakes get higher until one team ultimately wins a life-changing £20,000.

Every penny the teams make, they keep. The only rule is that they can never use the same money-making idea twice, and anyone who brings back less than double the money is eliminated from the competition.

In tonight’s first round, viewers will meet the teams as they assemble in The Vault – a gilded banking hall in central London – where they’re given their starting sum of £250. They have 36 hours to double it to £500 and get through to the next round.

Each team reveals a different money-making idea, from cake sales and cocktail classes to buying and selling flowers and flogging gaudy glasses. In the Midlands, father-and-son team Dale and Harvey open a car wash, but could a potentially poor choice of location work against them?

In Liverpool competitive publicans Cath and Lynn try to double their money by selling picnic boxes for a punchy £15 each. Meanwhile, best friends Radhika and Seema think that the key to a fortune is an immigration-themed walking tour of London’s East End – but at £25 a ticket, can they find enough customers? As the clock ticks, will booty workout classes in the park prove profitable for Leeds twin dancers? And will selling cold drinks on the beach threaten to be a wash-out for a granny and her grandson in Kent?

When the clock finally stops, the teams return to The Vault to find out whether they’ve managed to double their money and keep their place in the competition. Who’ll be rolling in it and who’ll fall at the first hurdle?

Double The Money, Channel 4, 8 pm