Quiz - ITV

[southeastdweller]

It's a three part drama about the Who Wants to be a Millionaire coughing scandal in 2001.

www.radiotimes.com/news/2020-04-08/quiz-itv-drama-air-date-cast-trailer/

Anyone else planning on watching it?

Absolutely brilliant. My dad worked with Major Ingram briefly and hated the bloke, he could be a nasty man and I remember getting to visit his office as a child and they had his face printed and stuck up in the office with the words 'MAJOR CHEAT' written across his forehead in big red letters.

The internet wasn’t that well established in late 90s, nothing like it is now. Def dial up from home into early 2000s. I remember the tone.

I enjoyed this.

I certainly didn't have an internet connection at home in 1997.

People didn't just 'Google' answers (I had to expain this to my DC earlier).

I liked it and I remember the scandal very well.

Michael Sheen was fabulous as Tarrant. It is very telling of the early 21st century, the smoking inside etc and the types of telephones handsets.

There was a former Guardian journalist, who believes Ingram is innocent. Quite the read.

I really enjoyed it, I was little when WWTBAM was on

It's still on now.

Typical hammy ITV drama which is tbf what I was after tonight. I particularly liked the bloke talking about international escape plans while wearing a fair isle jumper and an anorak.

I had no idea there was a syndicate! I remember it being popular just because it seemed like anyone could get on it and anyone could win it. That's what had us all hooked. I think they might have overplayed it a bit because I definitely remember ringing the number a couple of times and the questions were really easy - you didn't need a syndicate to get the answers. That's why people kept phoning, because it seemed accessible.

Interesting to see the wee machine. I had a friend whose old boss went on it and she said that everyone else on there had been practising with fastest finger first machines. We all thought she was talking out of her hole because after all it's not like you could buy them anywhere. But maybe she was right? She also said that everyone else who'd got on had rung up hundreds of times and that it was like a campaign for them, like the money they spent on phone calls they balanced against what they were going to win. Who knows?!

@bakedcam
You're thinking of Jon Ronson. He wrote about it in his excellent book 'You've been publicly shamed'. (I think that is the title.)

Fascinating watching the actual programme from that link upthread. The (seeming) risks that Ingram took are absolutely insane; most people wouldn't have risked losing even £7K when they had no idea of the answer, let alone much larger sums.

I really enjoyed this, loved the background about how the programme started and how huge it was.
The voice of Tarrant was uncanny but I think they’ve made him fat too cheesy, I can’t remember him smiling to the camera with glistening teeth or having such shiny hair and tanned skin, that would be my only criticism though.

The Syndicate was real so had to be shown. And indeed, no googling in answer super fast then.
I think the Gilbert and Sullivan scene was meant to be cringey, I read they are trying to portray Ingram as a bumbling Tim Nice But Dim type (although I saw pp's post that he wasn't!) and this added to that.

I know nothing about the Ingrams' background but the house they're shown living in is beautiful - detached, large, big garden, picture postcard village. Affordable on a major's pay, or was there family money on his side? It seemed to me from the dramatisation that his wife and her brother were perhaps from a less posh background.

I thought I heard someone mention the house was rented. A conversation about the hot water?
I phoned a couple of times and the questions were easy, I think it’s the phoning back question that needed a syndicate, or a least you had a better chance with a syndicate.
I enjoyed it will watch the rest.

I enjoyed it. The things that people under about 40 won’t realise, or have experience of are 1 - that home internet was not that widespread, fast or reliable at the time and 2- how HUGE WWTBAM was at the time.

Of course people under 40 will realise.. I'm 29 and remember home internet not being accessible, dial up etc. We had AOL if I remember rightly on a disc.
And we used to watch WWTBAM on Saturday nights

OK, maybe 40 is too old, but the point is that “just googling” the answer to a question wasn’t anything like as quick and easy as it is now.

When you rang in for the first time you got through to an automated machine which asked you a single trivially easy multiple choice question. They then picked a random selection from all the people who got it right and rang them back in person to ask them an all but impossible number based question to select the final ten to be on the show, and it’s that second one that we see being “gamed”.

I thought it was interesting the way that they showed how the (so far) legal activities of the Syndicate had the effect of making the show too homogeneous which was both unfair and bad telly. But surely Celador should have worked out at the time of the brother-in-law’s fourth appearance what the problem was with their selection mechanism
and changed it.

Under 40 wont realise
I'm 26 and remember both well. I also remember watching the weakest link with my grandparents every time I slept at their house and being terrified of Anne Robinson but also really wanting to be like her I think that came out a year or two after WWTBAM?

It was far hammier than I expected but also more interesting - as IDefinitelyHaveFriends says
I thought it was interesting the way that they showed how the (so far) legal activities of the Syndicate had the effect of making the show too homogeneous which was both unfair and bad telly. But surely Celador should have worked out at the time of the brother-in-law’s fourth appearance what the problem was with their selection mechanism and changed it.

I was shocked to see the 'phone a friend' actually just being to the home phone with no production staff there, no asking the quizzer sister and them not even watching it.

I was the phone a friend for the Australian version in about 2005. All that happened was when my friend made it through to the game the TV company phoned me to confirm i was the phone a friend and that I'd be available for the next however long. I was sat in my living room

Yeah I don't think there was much overseeing of the phone a friends here. I still remember one poor bastard whose phone a friend was his boss, and when he got on the line and said hello she greeted him loudly and effusively and said that she'd just got out of the bar having had a really great night with loads of cocktails and how nice to hear from him and how was he doing.

She didn't know the answer to the question.

They are very tight with their security now on Millionaire. DH went on last year and I had to give my phone in before I sat in the audience. When he won the fastest finger bit they took me out of the audience and put a microphone on me so that they could hear everything I said, pick up every movement I made and I was sat so his back was to me.

I seriously doubt they would ever get this occurring again.

Hubby won £64k which was nice

I had no idea about the whole underground network of people and the syndicate. I spent a lot of time last night snorting at the silliness of it - all skulking around like they were secret agents and code breakers at Bletchley. But if that part is true then that does change things for me as I was just finding the whole thing very far fetched.

It is still so hammy - trying to think of a good title for the show and they hear a workman whistling "Who wants to be a millionaire?" was a major cringe. Also the excitable man with the orange tanned face who created the show needs to pipe down. A lot. I don't actually think that Michael Sheen has got Chris Tarrant quite right either. It's just a very good impression of what we all think Chris Tarrant does, but he should have taken it down a notch.

I saw the real Chris Tarrant interviewed by Piers Morgan on GMB and he said he wasn't that happy with the drama as it tried to portray the Ingrams as innocent victims when they absolutely were not. I feel the show is going in that direction of showing them as bumbling fools who got swept along by the shady syndicate and I don't believe that was the case at all. They got found guilty didn't they?

It's perfect as distracting nonsense for us all stuck at home though so I'll give it a chance.

Wow @Walkingtohealth congratulations!

It all seems so different now. We believed it was actually live for ages!

I thought it was brilliant. but the titles were written like killing eve (tick) and Michael sheen can do no wrong in my eyes (tick) and I love Claire fleabag's voice (tick tick) and I thought it was fantastic (tick tick tick tick tick).

Even though it said that helen mc crory (however you spell it) is also in it (no ticks. I find her massively irritating that peaky binders programme)