Years ago, in my capacity as a TV producer, I became obsessed with a gameshow called Craft Corner Deathmatch. It was a show on the Style Network where vaguely arty people went up against each other in macramé-type challenges, with a crochet hook twist that the whole thing was done in the anarchic, high-octane tone of a WWF wrestling match. It was MAD, and I loved it. I tried to get the BBC to buy it as a format, but they thought I was as insane as the show. More recently, inspired by the wonderful Netflix series Nailed It! (crap bakers copy complicated cakes and cock up), I devised a contest called ‘Hamfisted’, where competitors watch experts make stuff (e.g. a sandcastle or an ice sculpture), then try to do it themselves, with predictably laughable results. Again, no one wanted my development fool’s gold, but I always retained a fondness for dumb-cunning gameshows. Silent Library. Touch the Truck. Sexy Car Wash. Which brings me to Floor is Lava.

I was attracted by the title, because about 476 times a day, one of my sons shouts this phrase, and they both immediately leap onto whatever item of furniture is nearest and balance precariously on it until the ground arbitrarily ceases to be molten rock. Now, a production company has taken this concept and not so much run with it, as jumped onto an oversized sofa, teetering above lesser development mortals who missed out on this platinum premise and were left languishing in their creative magma.

In case you haven’t guessed how it works, let me enlighten you. Three teams of friends/family compete to navigate rooms flooded with lava by leaping from chairs, hanging from curtains and swinging from chandeliers. If they fall in, they’re immediately liquified – from a competitive point of view. I mean, it’s not real lava. It might seem unnecessary to point that out, but in these days of gems like Labor of Love (hunks fight to knock up a single woman) and Hot Ones (people answer questions while consuming increasingly spicy sauce until they shit themselves – or something), it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to imagine a channel going full Hunger Games and insisting unsuccessful contestants leave in a sizzling body bag.

In this show, the only jeopardy is losing your grasp on a slippery chaise longue, and falling in the water – sorry, ‘lava’. Format-nerds amongst you may be wondering why it is different to that other excellent obstacle course contest, Ninja Warrior, but let me reassure you that in keeping with the theme of the original game, FiL has a (loose) domestic setting, the water is helpfully dyed red and bubbles occasionally – you know, to remind you of volcanic matter. We’re all set for a scorching showdown!

I was fully behind this madcap caper, until I actually watched it. Each bout takes place in an approximation of a household room, but in the episode I saw, the ‘basement’ featured mummies, Easter Island heads, an ark and a pyramid. Indiana Jones’ basement, maybe, but not mine. After far too much contestant intro chat, the first team (annoying mother and teenage twins who really should have had better things to do) made their way erratically around the course. They were quite… slow. Less Ninja Warrior, more Ninja Wobbler. Then the next team (obnoxious triplets) had a stab at the same thing. Also slow, and made worse by their lame attempts at comedy banter en route. By the time the third team (three youth pastors? Wtaf?) turned up, I was losing the will to live, and if my own floor had been spuming would gladly have given myself to the fiery flow. Without a studio audience, it’s hard to generate the levels of excitement and hysteria that make this kind of show fun to watch. The lack of pace, repetition, inane chat between contestants, and general low production values combine to make it a bit of a damp squib.

Anyway, the first and third teams both managed two successful exits, but the first team were fastest, so they won - $10,000. At that point, I did a double take, having assumed there would be some sort of grand finale where they had to wrestle a supreme lava-master on a kitchen peninsula as burning embers rained down, but that was it. You slid on your arse down a fake pyramid and didn’t get wet; here’s ten grand. I’ve exerted myself more in a soft play. I watched another episode to check, and it was the same – a weak vesicular-fart of a battle, this time in a ‘bedroom’. The third team all ended up submerged, so the second team won retrospectively, in a triumph of shoddy formatting.

Having come up with a grabby, heat-seeking title, it felt like the creators couldn’t be bothered with much else, agreed on a lava lamp as the trophy, and dispatched themselves on a back-slapping long lunch. They ignored the number one rule of development: it’s 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration (and damn near 100% rejection). But fair play, my kids loved it, and it’ll probably do the business. It’s big, it’s droolingly-dumb (without much cunning), but they’ll churn it out like Mount Vesuvius.

• Floor is Lava, Netflix, 10 episodes