You might have seen this pop up on my Twitter feed yesterday, the first broadcast episode of Family Fortunes with Bob Monkhouse. Forget how really pared back the format for the first series was, what I found most interesting was the great pains he was in to point out how much skill is involved, from back in the day when the IBA would frown quite hard at shows based around luck. Did Play Your Cards Right, a show with a significant and obvious luck element, get Brucie to do the same thing when it first started?
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Interesting to see the mistakes with the rules Monkhouse makes – at the 9-minute-ish mark, says the family will get 93 points for stealing rather than 90; 15-minute-ish mark says that 86 people said “Go to bed” rather than 43 (doubled). It’s perfectly understandable when hosting a brand new format, but surprising (by modern standards) to see them left in the final product.
Mmm, it also feels like one of Monkhouse’s least slick performances that I can remember and he was usually so brilliant at new formats.
In a parallel universe Brucie and Bob swapped these formats, I wonder how that would have gone?
They were down to do those shows in this universe weren’t they?
That then leads to the ‘geeky’ thought that as, Bob was an ATV presenter, and Brucie as an LWT man – how different in terms of pace and set design FF would have been coming from Studio 1 at LWT (wHere of course the Vernon Kay celeb shows were recorded) and PYCR from Studio D at ATV Elstree (now BBC Elstree – and temporary home to Children in Need and the BBC Election/Referenedum studio).
The first Family Fortunes is a facinating peer into the past.
Watch one of the Richard Dawson US Family Fued shows from the same era – and it’s quite clear ATV made our version by looking at the tapes sent over by Goodman/Talbot and ditched the ‘freeze frame’ family introductions, but kept the fiddle arrangement in the theme tune, and getting Bob to dress in a smiliar style to Dawson.
Loved the padding for time after the first contestant gave the answers in Big Money. “Mr Babbage in analysing your answers and the scores, ready to display on the board”
As the board operator is manincally typing in a computer the size of a shed the contestants answers and scores!
By the way – in answer to your question. I think it was a wise switch of presenter and formats.
Family Fortunes (as we saw with Sir Bruce hosting that other timeless US format The Price Is Right) is too quick for Bruce to do and explore his ‘riffing’ with the contestants as he wandered up and down the lines – unless LWT streched the show out to a hour to allow for this.
Bob as host of PYCR would have worked. He’d have been good at mugging up on the questions with double (or even single) meanings, getting value out of it. And of course, the end game would have been bread and butter to him.
“We are looking for a card – HIGHER THAN AN EIGHT…..”
Re: “Was there a skill element to PYCR?”, I wonder if that funny general knowledge question they would have before the end game was part of it? That wasn’t part of the US format, was it?
No it wasn’t, the money cards didn’t have any questions at all in the US.
So I’ve just watched the new iPlayer lottery draw, it’s like someone decided to make the lottery draws as a Playstation 2 game. Eerie empty studio and they’ve very obviously cut and paste Alan’s commentary.
It’s weird that The Health Lottery seems to have better production values – similarly cut and paste but at least it has a human face.
All manner of good things on the gbgameshows YouTube channel to which you have linked. (It may be wise to point out there is no connection between gbgameshows and ukgameshows.com, and the difference is more than just nigameshows.) Most of them come clearly from Challenge or, occasionally, ESPN Classic, but a very handy catch-up which isn’t available nearly so conveniently elsewhere. I enjoyed watching three episodes of Superteams and three very old episodes of The Golden Shot, including one hosted by original, pre-Bob host Jackie Rae. Under Jackie’s hosting, it’s a surprisingly calm show, to the point where it might have needed more Monkhouse pace and excitement.
There’s a wonderful Blankety Blank tiebreaker starting at 25:45 on this that’s worth a watch:
It’s been bought to my attention there’s a Brazillian drama on Netflix called The 3% which sounds like it’s very much of interest, a future dystopia where people take part in Survivor style tests in order to improve their lot.
Am going to try and watch during the week.