Game Shows

Game Shows, television programmes in which contestants take part in a competition, usually with a view to winning a prize. The television game show concept was pioneered in the United States after World War II.

The archetypal game show was The $64,000 Question (1955) broadcast by CBS, in which members of the public who correctly answered general knowledge questions won large cash prizes. This format was successfully adopted in the United Kingdom by ITV (see Independent Television) as Double Your Money (1955-1968), hosted by Hughie Green, who went on to front Opportunity Knocks! (1956-1977, ITV), and The Sky’s the Limit (1971-1974, ITV). Such shows were crucial to ITV in its early years, when the channel was more confidently populist than the relatively conservative BBC.

The popularity of these cheap-to-make shows led to their mass production from the 1960s onwards. A variation on the theme was The Generation Game (1971- , BBC1), in which family members try out various expert tasks for points in front of a studio audience. The programme’s original presenter was Bruce Forsyth. Another important British game show personality is Bob Monkhouse, host of The Golden Shot (1967-1975, ITV).

As it developed, the genre broke up into various sub-groupings. The basic big-money-prize show, as epitomized by The Price is Right (1984-1988, ITV), also based on an American format, spun off into dating competitions such as Blind Date (1985- , ITV), more high-brow general-knowledge quizzes such as Mastermind (1972-1997, BBC1; 2001- , Discovery Channel) and, later, ironic, self-parodic forms, exemplified by the irreverent news quiz, Have I Got News For You (1990- , BBC2), the spoof celebrity panel game, Shooting Stars (1995-1998, 2002- , BBC2), and the comedy-sports quiz, They Think It's All Over (1996- , BBC1).

1998 saw the birth of the UK's most successful ever quiz show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (ITV), which offers contestants the chance to win up to £1 million by answering 15 general knowledge questions correctly. A general knowledge knockout quiz, The Weakest Link, was launched by the BBC in 2000, in which contestants compete to become the so-called “strongest link” and win up to £10,000. The show, which quickly became something of a phenomenon due to the caustic put-downs of presenter Anne Robinson to losing contestants, was remade by the American network NBC beginning transmission in 2001.

The latest sub-genre to evolve, dubbed “reality TV”, is a hybrid of the game show and the fly-on-the-wall documentary, in which contestants audition to become part of a pop group (Popstars; 2001, ITV), co-exist in an isolated house (Big Brother; 2000- , Channel 4), or are marooned on a desert island together (Survivor; 2001- , ITV). The pool of candidates is then systematically whittled down either by expert jury, telephone/Internet/text-message voting by the public, or a ballot among contestants. Audience/viewer participation is also an integral part of Stars in Your Eyes (1990- , ITV), This is My Moment (2000, ITV), and Pop Idol (2001, ITV; remade in the United States in 2002 by the Fox network as American Idol), variants on the talent show format, in which the general public ultimately decides the winner.