Mel Giedroyc draws on ‘a lot of laughs’ for ITV game show

Win, lose or draw…

Following the two Christmas specials Mel Giedroyc returns to host the world’s most popular drawing game Pictionary. Airing in a half-hour slot on ITV1, STV, STV Player and ITVX the format is based on Mattel’s popular board game of quick-fire sketches and hilarious guesses.

Pictionary will follow the same rules as the familiar at-home game and will see two teams battle against each other. In the classic sketching and guessing game Mel will be joined by two celebrity team captains who will lead their teams of contestants. Their mission is to draw images to match a word or phrase from a specific category and the teammates will have to guess correctly to score.

The show proves you don’t have to be an artist to draw and in fact, if you can’t draw, it makes it even funnier. With the chance to win an incredible prize, the stakes are high. The format previously ran in the 1990s as Win, Lose or Draw from Scottish Television with hosts including Danny Baker and Shane Richie.

Pictionary is a brand-new series for ITV, how excited are you to be hosting it and how did it come about?

I’ve long been a huge fan of the game and it’s something we’ve played forever in our family. I was so thrilled to be asked by ITV and Whisper North to do this gig!

Audiences will likely be familiar with the game itself but are you able to explain how the show will work?

It’s fiendishly simple. You’re given a word (in secret) and you have to draw it within a specific time, and your team members have to guess what it is that you’ve attempted to draw. Simple!!

Can you tell us a bit about what we can expect from the new series?

It’s very free flowing and there are a lot of laughs. We have a brilliant array of celebrity team captains playing along with our contestants. I think it’s safe to say that everybody had a really good time. It’s impossible not to get totally involved in the game. And hilarious to see everybody getting genuinely invested and competitive.

The new series of Pictionary will also feature celebrity captains, do you have any fun stories from filming that you can share with us?

Each captain brought such energy and fun. They got hilariously competitive. Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen can draw and conduct at the same time; Scarlett Moffatt is a stealth drawer; Jeff Brazier is a great captain and should probably manage the England football team; Hayley Tamaddon did everything on tiptoes; Eddie Kadi and Jeanette Kwakye were an absolute hoot and of course, being an Olympic sportswoman, Jeanette brought her A game to the Pictionary Podium. She was explosive!

If you were to play Pictionary yourself, who would you want on your team?

I was going to say Picasso but he’d be too abstract maybe. I’d like Alex Horne and Sue Perkins, I think. They would bring their lateral brains and excellent drawing skills to the fore.

How good are you at drawing?

Beyond terrible. But I’m an enthusiastic guesser and get ridiculously competitive, so I think that would carry me through.

Pictionary begins next week, Monday, January 6th, at 2.30pm on ITV1 and STV