Rob Rinder breaks down "explosive" new show The Inheritance: 'At its core, it's a social experiment'

The 12-part series kicks off on Sunday 31st August, and follows a group of 13 strangers as they are summoned to a stately home and tasked with competing for part of a fortune left by The Deceased, played impeccably by Hurley.

But it won't be easy for the players to get their hands on the money as they must work as a team to complete the final requests of The Deceased through twisted challenges that are just as clever as they are cunning.

And that's where Rinder comes in. He acts as The Deceased's executor and trusted legal, which is very apt given Rinder's career.

After the games are played, Rinder oversees the dramatic twist in which only one player can collect the money released from the will, and to claim it, they just need to convince the others that they alone deserve to take all the cash.

"The stakes are high but it's not just about deception by any stretch of the imagination," Rinder exclusively tells RadioTimes.com.

With so many variants of TV shows about back-stabbing and secret-keeping, The Inheritance certainly stands out from the crowd, with Rinder acknowledging that while it "blends together all of the elements to those games", this series has "something really deep and psychological".

He continues: "The core [of it is] a real social experiment. So that idea where it's asking deeper questions about fairness, about what you do when people aren't really looking, about how money can interfere with people's emotional and moral chemistry, and it does so in a way that's never been done on this scale."

Rinder likens it to the prisoner's dilemma, in which two rational individuals can either pursue their own self-interest or cooperate for their mutual good.

As viewers will see, an eerily familiar atmosphere takes hold of the contestants as they enter the room where they must fight for their chance to win the money – and it's the show's authenticity that'll keep viewers coming back each night.

Rinder tells RadioTimes.com: "This is totally authentic. This isn't by any stretch of the imagination some kind of put-together, faux piece of TV artifice. They live together, they're doing the challenges together and they invest a s**tload of energy into what they're doing. And above all else, they kind of want to win.

"Ultimately, it is a game, and the alchemy of all of that results very quickly in people becoming explosive, especially when they're tired, when they feel like something that somebody has said is unjust."

Rinder would urge you to think how you'd behave if a stranger, or even someone you knew, said something about you that was completely unjustified - would you sit back and take it?

"I was, from time to time, surprised by how intensely people felt," he adds. "But then I had the luxury of living in my executive quarters, whereas they were living and breathing alongside one another. It's fascinating to see what took place, and it only becomes more explosive and complex as the journey of the show continues..."

The Inheritance airs on Channel 4 on Sunday 31st August at 9pm.

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