Kaun Banega Crorepati is a phenomenal television serial in India, that started about a year ago, hit the top of the ratings thena and has stayed there head and shoulders above everything else till now. I believe this serial is a clone of Who wants to be a Millionaire, but I've never seen the original thing.
Basically the structure is that of a fancy quiz. The person in the hot seat needs to answer 15 questions to win a crore of rupees(A crore is 100 lakhs or 10 million). Each correct answer increases the prize money you get. If you give an incorrect answer the game ends and your prize is reduced to the level of the last 'plateau'. The prizes start with Rs. 1000, then 2000,3000,5000 and 10,000. 10,000 is a plateau in the sense that even if you give a wrong answer after that you will still end up winning 10,000. After that it goes as 20,000 , 40,000, 80,000 , 1,60,000 and 3,20,000 which is another plateau. Finally we have 3,20,000 ,6,40,000, 1,250,000 , 2,500,000 , 5,000,000 and then the grand prize of 10,000,000.
The show is hosted by the Hindi movie superstar Amitabh Bacchan and he does a rather good job of it, adding a lot of drama in the process.
Every question is multiple choice with 4 choices and one correct answer.There is also this concept of lifelines. Every contestant gets 3 lifelines. One of these is called 50-50 and using this causes two incorrect options to vanish leaving behind only two others. The second is called 'Audience Poll' which is what its name says. The audience is asked to vote on the question, and the contestant can view the results and decided what he wants to do. The last one is called 'Phone a Friend', which allows the contestant to phone someone and take help(within 30 seconds). We have had only 1 person who's gone all the way though quite a few reached the 25 lakh mark and one other who reached the 50 lakh mark.
Recently the show introduced a variation in which couples instead of individuals are involved. So instead of having one person in the hot-seat there is a husband-wife couple. Theyr going to start a "Junior KBC" and I'm sure they'll come up with other variants -"Father Son KBC", "Mother Daugher KBC etc etc!