Full Swing

Revision as of 23:48, 10 April 2008

Host

Co-hosts

Broadcast

BBC1, 25 May to 27 July 1996 (8 episodes in 1 series)

Synopsis

It's golf does Big Break does Bullseye. You can't beat a bit of bully can you? And Jimmy Tarbuck was as unthreatening as they came. In terms of structure and style, Full Swing was Big Break (not surprising when John Burrowes was producer of both shows.)

Three normal civilians teamed up with pro-celebrity golf players to win what they could.

Cyber-drive

In the first round, the golf players did a bit of 'virtual golf'. They whacked a ball at a sheet and the results were transposed onto the virtual course. This wasn't as good as it could have been - the ball was so small you could hardly see it on screen, so it had to be specially marked via a special effect in post-production.

If their player could answer a question correctly then they got a bonus shot. Then they had another shot. Whoever was furthest away from the pin was out, but not before Virgo's Trick Shot! Oh, wrong show.

There was very little skill involved in this, but it did use a whacky Crazy Golf machine. If the player could putt a ball from about a foot away, it would go all round the machine and go in the hole. Stunning.

Fairway or Foul

The second round was like a sort of Danger Zone. The proper player hit the ball to the player who then tried to putt the ball. However, if the ball went in a bunker or down a rabbit hole then they had to answer a question correct to get it out. When the player tried to putt the ball they had to wait until the light was on otherwise it was chucked out again. The team that did it the slowest were out but went through to Celebrity Consolidation. Where the losing celebrity attempted to putt a ball from so many feet away and the closer they got the more they won.

Putt Putt

The finalists then played for a cash prize and what did they have to do? 'You've got to putt as many balls as you can.' Sorry. The player was asked some questions, the more they got right, the more time their pro got to putt. What's more, they got to pick a Bonus Ball, a load of balls were in a pot and they chose one. They had bonus seconds ranging from 10 to 60 and it was added to the total limit.

The golfer then putted, using as many strokes as needed as many balls as he can. They started off quite short but got longer as the money went up. They had to be potted in order and if the Golden £1000 ball was putted, the celebrity won £1000 for their charity however the contestant won a luxury holiday instead.

Overall, it weren't too bad, although the set didn't do the show many favours. One series was about right.

Key moments

Outtake: Tarby says "Will you please welcome... Ray Clemence!" [long wait] "And that's his act. He's only been on a minute and he's ****ed off!"

Feedback

@@ Line 45: / Line 45: @@
 [[Category:Sport]]
+<!-- PUTTING HERE FOR FUTURE REF
+THE CONCEPT: Somewhat surprisingly, given it was bloody awful, Big Break had proven to be quite the hit for the Beeb in the early nineties, regularly pulling in millions of viewers and providing
+BBC1 with a reliable filler for any slot in the schedule going spare. Indeed they sometimes ended up showing two or three episodes a week, so decided to commission Big Break producer John Burrowes to come up with another quiz that could run forever and give Jim Davidson a break from filming ten million episodes a year. So Burrowes took another sport, specifically golf, turned it into a quiz and got another veteran comedian in Jimmy Tarbuck to host.
+THE HYPE: Well, the Beeb knew they weren't creating the next Generation Game or anything, but were hopeful enough that this series would pull in a decent sized audience for its low cost. Tarby had been on telly for thirty years and had vast experience in game shows, most notably his marathon stint on Winner Takes All, and was a huge golf fan so it was hoped he'd bring a bit of credibility to proceedings. When it began in May 1996 it was scheduled it the exact same slot as Big Break, Saturdays at six, in the hope the same audience would tune in.
+THE FIRST SHOW: One problem with applying the Big Break formula to golf was that 95% of snooker players lived in the UK and made a modest enough living to be willing to go onto a teatime quiz show, whereas the top golfers all lived abroad and were loaded. Hence the contestants on Full Swing were paired with celebrities who liked golf, who in the first show were Tarby's mate Ian St John, Tim Brooke Taylor who'd done a video of golfing cock-ups and, natch, Ronnie Corbett, while later in the run the likes of Trevor Brooking and, er, Floella Benjamin showed up. As with Big Break, it had a cheerfully awful stompalong theme tune – this time with added whistling – while the set came complete with water hazards and Tarby entered on a buggy.
+THE FIRST CRACKS: Well, clearly the Beeb had wanted something along the same lines as Big Break, but we're not sure even they expected the format to be so blatant a rip-off with "snooker" scribbled out and "golf" scribbled in. The first round involved the contestants answering questions to win shots for their celeb partner on a computer golf game, which never really worked. The loser went to play the appallingly named Crazy Consolation where they messed about on a crazy golf thing, before the other two went on to play on the astroturfed set, answering questions to get them out of bunkers and stuff. The loser there went onto Celebrity Consolation where their partner tried to get a ball in a hole. Finally the winner would answer questions and try and help their celebrity partner reach the eighteenth hole. Exactly like Big Break, then, but that was rubbish to start with and this was even worse for being so woefully derivative.
+THE RESCHEDULING: The ratings weren't desperately bad for Full Swing, it was just a resolutely uninspiring and boring affair that was just there to fill a hole. However Euro 96 took place around the same time so the Beeb were able to drop it for weeks on end and only fling it on when desperately needed.
+THE END: Each episode of Full Swing bravely ended with a request for contestants to take part in future episodes, but we hope they didn't spend too much money on sending out application forms as when the first eight-part series came to an end in July 1996, the Beeb decided not to bother recommissioning it, clearly deciding one lowbrow sports-based quiz was enough in their schedules.
+THE POST-MORTEM: Of course Big Break was another spin on Bullseye in the first place, but at least they was some sort of point to it, with snooker being a game that could easily be replicated in the studio and John Virgo's presence giving them the credibility to attract big names. Full Swing, however, was just a waste of time, as it was completely impossible to bring all the fun of golf to a Shepherd's Bush studio, while the celebrities all made it look rather low-rent. Yet it's the shameless recycling of a format that really killed this one, right down to the Virgo's Trick Shot- inspired consolation rounds – why would anyone want to watch something like Big Break but even worse when they could just watch Big Break? Or better yet, watch something else entirely.
+THE AFTERMATH: Tarby didn't seem that bothered about the failure of the show, and he was happy to have more time to spend on the actual golf course. For the Beeb, they just commissioned some more episodes of Big Break instead, although having recorded about a hundred in 1997, they didn't seem that bothered about screening them and eked them out over a three year period so they were still being flung out, now full of out-of-date questions, in 2000.  Chris Evans failed to take note from the failure of golf as light entertainment, though, and two years later presented Tee Time on Channel Four, a series where he visited golf courses around the world, which was a huge flop.
+THE VERDICT: OK, we were trying to avoid saying it, but it's pretty obvious – golf is boring. Hence, a quiz show based around the sport was always going to be fighting a losing battle, especially as Full Swing failed to include any of the bits of golf that are actually fun – the open air, the scenery, the banter – and instead produced something less entertaining that a pitch'n'putt on a seaside prom.
+-->