Richard Bacon & Dermot O’Leary Join Forces For ‘Silence Is Golden’ Gameshow

Richard Bacon‘s Yes Yes Media has landed its debut commission, a gameshow hosted by Dermot O’Leary in which the audience must remain silent to keep £250,000 ($320,000).

Silence is Golden has been greenlit by British channel group UKTV and will air on the U&Dave channel next year.

At the start of each episode, the network gives the huge prize to the studio audience and all they need to do to keep it is remain silent. With every audience member mic’ed up, all hell breaks loose as a green room of 30 acts, led by three returning comedian captains, headed up by Katherine Ryan, wage war on the audience, with every sound forced out of them bringing the total prize money down.

The series is one of UKTV’s splashiest for some time, with former X Factor host O’Leary a major coup for the network, and it is This is My House co-creator Bacon’s first commission under the Yes Yes banner. Yes Yes launched last year and has high-profile backers including Courteney Cox, Snow Patrol’s guitarist, Chernobyl producer Sister and French group Satisfaction. Deadline revealed several months later that it had bought in a former X Factor showrunner and Hidden Light production boss.

Bacon said he “commends U&Dave for boldly commissioning a show that will cost them a quarter million a week – if the audience is better at playing the game than we are.”

Commissioner Cherie Hall added: “This is a really original premise for a show and I wish our audience the best of luck as they try and resist the temptation to break the silence – viewers at home will love watching the chaos unfold.”

Silence is Golden was commissioned for UKTV by Mark Iddon and Jason Dawson. The series was ordered by Cherie Hall, channel director, and Hilary Rosen, director of commissioning. Bacon is EPing with Mark Siddaway. Tim Dean (Late Night Lycett) is series producer.