'The Briefcase': CBS's New Reality Show Offers Families Cash, and a Big Decision

Here’s the premise of CBS’s new reality series The Briefcase: Two financially-challenged families are given a case filled with $101,000 and asked to make a potentially life-changing decision: They can either keep the entire sum, or share some (or all) of it with another family whose life could also be dramatically changed by the cash.

Think you know what you would do? Not so fast… what if the other family held social, political, or religious beliefs that were anathema to your own? Would you consider sacrificing financial security to help fund a family whose goals or lifestyle you didn’t support?

The Biggest Loser producer Dave Broome is the creator and executive producer — and de facto “host” — of The Briefcase, so we put all of these questions (and more) to him.

What is the inspiration for the show? There seems to be a bit of game theory involved…
No, it’s really not. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of that. It’s as real, raw, and genuine as you can get. It’s the anti-game. There’s not even a host in this show. There’s me… my ugly puss delivering information to the families. We break the fourth wall, because we don’t want this to be a game. It’s the 2.0 of where I think unscripted television needs to go. I love making shows that have socially-redeeming qualities, where somebody has the opportunity to transform physically, emotionally. One of the areas I wanted to tackle in a really big and very loud way deals with our values. Imagine if you can get a family or spouse to really define what matters most in their life. That’s what The Briefcase is about. It’s figuring out what matters most in your life by putting this financial windfall in front of two families that have no idea that they’re both been given a briefcase. It leaves them with a dilemma. They’ve got 72 hours to make this life-altering decision. It’s like, “Congratulations. You’ve just won the lottery. Here’s a mirror that comes along with it. Now, you’ve got to evaluate your life.“

Why $101,000 specifically?
Great question. The first thousand dollars is given to the family on top of the briefcase. It’s there for them to do whatever they want with, right then and there. They could pay a bill. They could take their kids out to some adventure they haven’t been able to afford in a while. We wanted to inject some levity into their life, if that’s what they wanted to do. The $100,000 is then left for them to decide what they want to do with it. I came up with that number because it’s enough to change your life. The average household income in this country is right around $50,000; $100,000 is a lot of money to most people in America. It’s the right amount of money, I think, that will make you evaluate what you want to do.

I’ll tell you, some of our episodes have some wild pairings that are going to push a lot of conversation. We have an episode, for example, that deals with a Texan, right-wing, conservative, Christian, God-loving, gun-toting family. The family who they’re considering giving this money to is a lesbian married couple who is struggling with money to be able to [afford] in vitro procedures. That’s where the show pushes, and it’s incredible.

Were you surprised in big ways by the decisions people end up making regarding the money?
Massively. I don’t want to sound like a hype machine; the enthusiasm you’re hearing in my voice is based in the genuineness of what we got. It is very immersive, because the audience is going to sit there, going, "I can’t believe they’re doing that!” Or, “Well, I would do the same.” Or, "You’re telling me you would give them money? No way.” That’s a conversation I can see people sitting in front of their televisions having, with their partner, husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend. And that’s the great thing about this: there’s no right or wrong. The results are shocking. I would sit there every day going, “They want to do what?” It also made me want to evaluate my own life.

I’m guessing the challenge of making the decision causes conflict within the families, and that the couples don’t always agree.
Most don’t. I have not seen one yet who was completely on the same page. These families, all of them, are debating and learning about each other as the show goes along. “Oh my God, I thought you were more generous than that”; “I thought you didn’t care about that.” It’s forcing conversations that haven’t taken place in 20 years, in some cases. That’s what The Briefcase is all about. It’s not about the money. At the end of the day, it’s got nothing to do with the money, and that’s what the audience is going to see. If you can entertain an audience and emotionally move them, and get some cool takeaway that you never saw coming, that’s not just a homerun in our business. I think that’s what we have here.

The lineup of families is diverse, with people from different areas of the country, different professions, cultural backgrounds, values. As a result, there are probably going to be people we love and some that we’re not going to like so much.
I say yes, but again, there’s no right or wrong in the show itself. You can justify anything. I don’t think anyone’s a villain in the typical reality show character sense. You’re definitely going to see some people who’ve got some stubborn views that you are not going to like. What’s really amazing is that some of those stubborn views, when they start to scratch at it a bit, they learn. They evolve. They evolve in the course of 72 hours.

Do the families meet each other or interact during the 72 hours?
No. They get information [about each other] over the course of the episode. They start to learn a little bit about the family on paper, then they secretly go and see each other’s lives. They visit them, they fly to each other’s cities, kind of like a surveillance. They don’t know that the other one’s there. They walk into [each other’s] home when they’re gone. They see their life. They put the pieces of the puzzle together. Then we tell them, “OK, now your 72 hours are up. Make your final decision. Whatever you’re going to do, you’re now going to meet this other family face-to-face in Los Angeles.” That for the first time is where they learn that the other had a briefcase full of money, too, which is a jaw-dropping moment.

Why The Briefcase as the title?
I wanted that to be a representation. The families have no idea when they open that briefcase that there’s $100,000 in it. They think they’ve signed up to be in a documentary that’s following the lives of struggling middle class families. The briefcase is a representation of us going through the journey with them.

Do they get to keep the briefcase?
[Laughs.] No, they didn’t, but they can now maybe buy their own.

The Briefcase premieres May 27 at 8 p.m. on CBS.