Chance is such a funny thing. Only the other day, I was politely written to by a potential employer and told that, while I had qualified to be shortlisted for a job, they'd picked the interviewees at random, and sadly I hadn't http://enemiesofreason.co.uk/2011/09/07/unlucky/)" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onkeypress="window.open(this.href);return false;">made the cut. My bingo ball hadn't come up. Such is life. This is the world of Red or Black?, the gameshow that everyone's talking about this week.

We're not really talking about it in a spectacularly good way, though. We're talking about it, saying "My god, I never knew television could be so bad." I had thought that, with Epic Win, the BBC had succeeded in doing the impossible - making an updated version of You Bet! that was even worse than the days of Brucie's sofa-chewingly execrable "don't fret, get set" rap, but no, this was worse.

This is everything about gameshows that vaguely involves skill, or knowledge, and boils it down to a binary choice: red or black, 0 or 1, on or off. "The show where luck, and luck alone, can win £1m," chirps Dec, as if it's something to be proud of. People cheer the lucky (or unlucky) wheel, which has its own, somewhat sinister, rococo leitmotif.

Luck, lucky, luck. That's all it is. It's not just me, surely, who finds something a little unsatisfying about that, something that verges on an insulting whiff of pointlessness.

When you're watching some gimp blunder through a gameshow's multiple choice with guesswork, at least you know there's something slightly better than total and utter blind chance deciding whether they're going to progress or not. They're making educated guesses. With Red or Black, you could just submit your guesses before the show. Red black red black black red. Save time.

It's easy, I suppose, to call a turkey a turkey. If it looks like a turkey, it's probably a turkey. And for the avoidance of doubt, I'd say this turkey is a turkey. Gobble gobble. But I'm more interested in the odd debate that sprung up this week about the morality - or otherwise - of letting a convicted criminal win a million pounds. The first winner was revealed to have been previously convicted of an assault, allegedly against a female victim, which led to a bit of red-top mock outrage about whether he should be allowed to have his cheque. That led to more background checks being done on contestants, and others being http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14811555)" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onkeypress="window.open(this.href);return false;">sifted out.

I suppose we want to believe, wrongly, in some kind of natural justice. We don't like stories like the one about 'lotto rapist' Iorworth Hoare and we want to think that only the deserving will be winners, or should be allowed to be winners. But an awful lot of undeserving people luck out all the time, every day, in every field. It might be unpalatable, but there it is. Luck doesn't morally censure.

Personally, I think if you're going to have a random show, make it a random show. Don't hone it down to a few contestants who are spotless enough not to have embarrassing things in their pasts; open it up, wider, to people who've really done wrong. Robbers, muggers, paedophiles, all sorts. Imagine one of them with a big beaming grin as their lucky numbers come up.

That's luck. It doesn't care who you are; it just rewards the lucky.