In the first episode, Bradley meets Bruce Forsyth, who says: “What I love about game shows - or any show- is if things go wrong. I love things to go wrong. Then I have to put them right, and that’s what ‘The Generation Game’ was all about.” Bruce also reveals: “The other show I really liked and I wanted was ‘Family Fortunes’. That was the one I wanted.” Bob Monkhouse had already bought the rights to the show, so Bruce asked if Bob would be prepared to make a swap, “They said no, Bob’s got to do Family Fortunes, there’s no way he’ll do anything else.” Self-confessed Bruce Forsyth fan, Vernon Kay, says: “If you watch Bruce closely, and trust me I have, because he manhandles my wife on a regular basis, but what he’s good at is - he’s his own floor manager, so he bosses the stage, and when he’s with a contestant he’ll literally grab their arm and drag them to where they’re supposed to stand.” Ant & Dec reminisce about one of their favourite game shows from their childhood, ‘321’, saying: “I always remember when I was a kid, I would think, ‘If I go on ‘321’, I’d like to win Dusty Bin.’ I couldn’t understand why they were so disappointed! And then I realised, they didn’t win the actual Dusty Bin when it came on and wobbled around, they just won a bin.”
This second episode takes a look at the brainiest member of the game show family - the quiz show. Bradley hears the intriguing story of how Mastermind came to be created and is interrogated himself in the famous Mastermind chair by host John Humphrys. He meets Fred Housego to find out how the London cabbie became Mastermind champion in 1980 - and the first quiz show winner to become a household name. We also hear how quiz shows were hit by scandal in the late Fifties - long before Millionaire’s Coughing Major - and how Who Wants To Be A Millionaire changed the course of TV history when Judith Keppel became its first million pound winner. Quiz show hosts Bamber Gascoigne and Nicholas Parsons help explain how the role has changed over the decades; and we meet some of the quiz show’s most prolific contestants, who have now become the ultimate stars to beat on hit daytime series like Eggheads and The Chase.
In episode three, Bradley looks at the role played by contestants in creating game show history across the decades. He meets the family whose bizarre answers featured in one of the most memorable episodes of Family Fortunes. We hear how Bullseye brought a new level of frustration to game show contestants when host Jim Bowen showed them ‘what they could have won’. We meet members of the public famous for their losing appearances on British game shows – including the teacher labelled ‘Disastermind’ by the Press and the founding member of the Deal or No Deal 1p Club. Meanwhile, Bradley teams up with three of British TV’s top serial quizzers to take on all-comers at a pub quiz.