Weaver's Week 2024-06-23

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All summer, we're answering the question, "Which game shows have had the most episodes broadcast?" Last time, we looked at shows beginning with numbers and the letter "A".

This time, it's B. So, what B will have more episodes than any other? And can it dethrone overall leader Fifteen-to-One or primetime leader The Apprentice? Read on!

Contents 1 The game shows with the most episodes (part 2 of quite a few) 1.1 Bamboozle! 1.2 Bargain Hunt 1.3 BBC New Comedy Award 1.4 Big Break 1.5 Big Brother 1.6 The Big Quiz (1) 1.7 Blankety Blank 1.8 Blind Date 1.9 Blockbusters 1.10 Bob's Full House 2 Top show tables 2.1 All shows 2.2 Primetime 3 In other news

The game shows with the most episodes (part 2 of quite a few)

Bamboozle!

Fifteen questions, four possible answers, and a potential top prize of... nothing.

Bamboozle! was literally the most fun we could have on a Teletext page. Simple to play – just press the coloured button for the right answer. If you're wrong, host Bamber Boozle will tell you, give you a joke or a shout-out, and you'll fall back to the last safe level. Kept a lot of people slightly amused for ten minutes every day, which is more than most telly shows manage.

Ran from 1993 until Teletext gave up at the end of 2009. We reckon there were about 5900 editions.

Bamzooki launched the career of Jake Humphrey (of Whisper TV and the High Performance podcast) and Gemma Hunt (of Swashbuckle), and gave Barney Harwood something to do between Basil Brush and Blue Peter. But only 40 episodes, could have sworn there were a lot more.

Bargain Hunt

Two teams of two are given £200 to spend at an antiques fair to buy several items which they would later sell. An expert is assigned to each team to help them decide what to buy. The teams each have one hour to buy whatever they want with the money.

One week later the items purchased are sold in a real auction. The items are auctioned and the team which makes the most profit (or, more likely, the least loss) is the winner. If the team actually makes a profit then they get to keep whatever profit they made.

Rinse and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat ad infinitum.

Made a star out of David Dickinson, before he defected to ITV. Made a star out of Tim Wonnacott, who left under a bit of a cloud. Resident experts have also presented the show for the past decade, and many regular viewers love to see some presenters but not others. For quite some years now, they've made two new episodes each week, and three weekday repeats, and all sorts of filler spots at the weekends.

An exact episode count is difficult: the Radio Times didn't properly distinguish repeats from new episodes after 2002, and there are a few inconsistencies in the BBC's programme pages around 2009. Our best estimate is that, up to the end of 2023, Bargain Hunt had at least 2063 daytime episodes – the true figure could be up to 40 more.

The show also made a brief incursion into primetime, 22 episodes from 2002-04.

That's a grand total of 2085 episodes.

Fellow daytime show The Bidding Room amassed 110 episodes to the end of 2023. It'll be a fair few years before it joins this list.

BBC New Comedy Award

An attempt to find new comedy talent. Decently successful attempt, too: previous winners have included Alan Carr, Josie Long, Tom Allen, Angela Barnes, and Heidi Regan. (Hmmm. Interesting to see which comedians have been allowed to host shows.)

The contest has flitted about from network to network, going out on BBC1, BBC Choice, Radio 7, Radio 2, Radio 4, and its current resting place on BBC3.

We'll be slightly generous and deem everything eligible for primetime – purists may quibble about whether 10pm on digital spin-off stations is exactly "primetime".

149 primetime episodes.

No show called Beat the ____ qualifies for our list. We'll note Beat the Record, which notched up 425 episodes in an off-peak slot on Radio 2 across twenty years; and children's show Beat the Teacher, calls of "middle middle two" across 164 episodes in the mid-80s.

Big Break

Jim Davidson larks about and does silly voices, and there's also a combination snooker-quiz happening. Played mostly for entertainment, we watch for the fun and good time, though with the chance to win a decent prize at the end of the show.

A very 1990s show, it came to an end in 2002 after Jim Davidson was quite clearly not flavour of the month. The format remains strong, and with snooker becoming more popular in the last few years, we wonder if some bright commissioner might revive it.

We reckon there were about 217 primetime episodes, plus 17 specials, and 18 "Stars of the Future" episodes.

Total of 252 primetime episodes.

A couple of magazine shows pop up under "B". The Big Breakfast had various phone-in contests ranging from the great to the banal – but did anyone watch The Big Breakfast just for its competitions? 2487 episodes.

Blue Peter also gets a write-up in our A-Z, for eight episodes in the autumn of 2002. Now, we could sit down and watch the series from the start and pick out all of the game elements. It would take a bit of time, seeing as how there have been well over 5000 eps. Again, we don't think that people watch Blue Peter just for the competitions, so Abby and Joel and Shini (and Henry!) will have to find alternative routes into our list.

Big Brother

People are filmed in a house. They choose each other to leave, and the viewers determine who goes. Celebrity series gave airtime for famous people who wanted to revive their career, or become more famous, or were owed something by the broadcasters. Look, it's Big Brother, you either know how this show works or you've never seen it and there's a lot to teach you.

Ran on Channel 4 from 2000, occupied a massive amount of screen time, brought in a lot of revenue, and eventually became something of an albatross around the channel's neck. Moved to Channel 5 in 2011, where it occupied a lot of screen time, brought in a decent wad, and eventually became something of albatross around the channel's neck until they ended it in 2018. Came back to ITV2 last year, where it filled a gap in early autumn.

During the Channel 4 series, most eviction shows were a split episode – we'd hear the result about 8.30, and see the person leave the house about 10pm. We're going to count those as one episode, as there was a clear link between the transmissions.

Big Brother pioneered the spin-off shows. Big Brother's Little Brother ran from May 2001 to September 2010, joined by the E4um (later Big Brother's Big Mouth) from 2004. Bit on the Side ran through the Channel 5 tenure, from 2011 to 2018. ITV2 also has its own spin-off show, Big Brother Layton Live.

Sunday editions of Big Brother's Little Brother were made on Channel 4 at lunchtime, rather than E4 in the early evening. Because the Sunday editions were made to the same style and production standard as the weekday editions, we're going to count them in the primetime class. Similarly, BBLB during Celebrity Hijack was a breakfast show, indistinguishable from the primetime version. Remove 158 primetime episodes if you vehemently disagree.

If we've got our numbers correct, and we've not missed any cancelled editions, the episode count is like this:

Civilian series
Main shows – 1962
Little Brother – 695
E4um – 472
Bit on the Side – 438
Layton Live – 36

Celebrity series (and not including the 2024 series, which comes after our cutoff at the end of 2023)
Main shows – 535
Little Brother – 109
E4um – 99
Bit on the Side – 343

Others
Hijack – 26 main shows plus 23 BBLB
Teen – 5 shows on E4 plus 10 in daytime schools' programmes
Other sundry spin-offs – 56 (which doesn't include the 8 Out of 10 Cats specials)

That gives 4173 primetime episodes, and 4183 total episodes.

And then we come to the various "Live from the House" feeds, which we're not going to attempt to count because a) they required little additional effort from the production team, and b) this section is already long enough and we would like to get this project finished before the heat death of the universe.

The Big Fat Quiz of the Year marks its twentieth anniversary this year. But because it's an occasional treat, only 37 episodes have been made. Similarly, The Big Quiz (2) with Stephen Mulhern is an annual treat for fans of Coronation Street and/or Emmerdale Farm; just 11 episodes so far.

The Big Quiz (1)

A gentle general knowledge quiz within Steve Wright In The Afternoon's afternoon show, Steve Wright in the Afternoon. Fun and entertaining joshing for five minutes of your afternoon; not something you'd go out of your way to hear, but you never regretted listening to it. Bit like Steve Wright In The Afternoon's whole show.

Ran for a snidge over eight years, got taken off as part of a BBC-wide ban on phone-in quizzes, and the afternoon show evolved away from it.

About 2000 editions.

Blankety Blank

Another very gentle quiz. The excuse is to fill the blank in a witty and amusing manner, and one that will be matched by lots of people on the panel.

For instance, "My wife spent the whole morning with a huge smile on her face. She'd had one of my thoroughly satisfying sausage [BLANKS]."

Apparently, some of the questions are easier than others. And apparently, some of them might be a bit smutty if you look at them a bit strangely. This never causes hilarity in classes where they use Blankety Blank to help teach English as a second language.

Originally an American format, it came to us via Australia, and Terry Wogan got the host's gig – never missed an opportunity to say how cheap and tawdry it was. Les Dawson took over when Wogan moved on to his chat show, and Lily Savage (a character played by Paul O'Grady) had a revival around the turn of the century. Bradley Walsh has hosted a revival, which we count up to Christmas Day 2023.

Wogan and Dawson – 209 episodes + 10 specials
Savage – 25+2 on the BBC, 32 on ITV, 8 on Challenge
One-offs – 3
Walsh – 1 pilot + 30 episodes

320 primetime episodes.

Blind Date

Cilla Blank... sorry, Cilla *Black* tries to help single people find love. To do this, she'll get three possible dates behind a partition, and get the single person to ask banal questions. Many of the answers might be a bit smutty if you look at them a bit.

Originally an American format, where it's been on and off since the 1960s and is currently running with Michael Bolton as producer and co-host alongside Zooey Deschanel.

Not quite as much star power over here, where Cilla Black hosted for almost twenty years, and a pleasant if insubstantial revival with Paul O'Grady on Channel 5 in the 2010s.

We also count the spin-off series Blind Date Kiss and Tell, which ran on ITV2 alongside the final series in 2002-3.

ITV – 356 (plus 27 Kiss and Tell)
C5 – 32+1 special

416 primetime episodes

A similar show was made in Welsh – Bacha Hi O'Ma ran for six series from 1991 to 1997. We don't think it reached our mark of 100 primetime episodes, but it might have done.

Blockbusters

What "B" is a quiz show they could revive tomorrow? Blockbusters, a Goodson-Todman idea, is all about filling up hexagons on a board to make the connection from one side to the other. Very cleverly, all the contestants were sixth-form students – young people aged 16-18 – and it was quite rare for young folk to be shown in such a positive light. The other genius move was to pit pairs of contestants against a solo player: are two heads better than one?

The prizes were great – trips to somewhere exotic, top winners in the early series might go to Singapore, or to New York on the QE2 cruise liner. The characters were excellent, over three or four shows we'd know Daniel who knew everything, or Peter whose hands got very sweaty, or livewire Sarah who lit up the studio and it came across on screen. And, keeping a gentle hand on the tiller, host Bob Holness became a cultural touchstone.

Blockbusters ran on ITV for ten years, in roughly the slot now occupied by The Chase. SKY had two series with Bob Holness and Liza Tarbuck, around a BBC version with Michael Aspel. Further series on Challenge and Comedy Central were hosted by Simon Mayo and Dara Ó Briain.

As best we can work it out, the scores are:
Daytime – 1160 on ITV, 60 on BBC2.
Primetime – 24 Champion Blockbusters on ITV, series of 180 and 100 on SKY, a Gameshow Marathon revival, 41 on Challenge, and 20 on Comedy Central.

That all adds up to 1586 episodes, of which 366 primetime.

Bob's Full House

Bingo on your television, made more fun by Bob Monkhouse. And sound effects that went whizz and pow and peeyong. And witty questions from Ian Messiter's pen. And the Monkhouse Master Card, a simple LCD display that was almost the star attraction.

Bob's Full House ran from 1984 to 1990, 117 primetime episodes.

You can't keep a good format down, and suspiciously similar ideas came back as One to Win (BBC1 with Andrew O'Connor, 17 primetime episodes), Shane Ritchie's Lucky Numbers (ITV, 50 primetime episodes), and The Biggest Game in Town (ITV with Steve le Fevre, 90 daytime episodes). All of them were basically the same game as Bob's Full House, but had slightly lesser comedians as host.

The game, as a whole, has had 184 primetime episodes. And surely – surely! – ITV have been pitched Stephen Mulhern's Quizzy Bingo before now.

(looks at what's coming up next.) Brain of Britain, which has a particularly convoluted history. And The Brains Trust, which is even harder to follow. And both raise a question: what counts as primetime on radio? We'll stop here, and come back to those next week.

Top show tables

Shows beginning with numbers, A, or BAA-BOB

All shows

Show	Episodes
Bamboozle	5900
Big Brother	4183
Fifteen-to-One	2683
Bargain Hunt	2085
The Big Quiz (1)	2000
Blockbusters	1586
100%	1546
Antiques Road Trip	905

An unexpected appearance at number one for the Boozler family.

Primetime

Show	Episodes
Big Brother	4173
The Apprentice	468
Blind Date	416
Blockbusters	366
Blankety Blank	320
Big Break	252
8 Out of 10 Cats	232
Ask the Family	221
Artist of the Year	175
8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown	157
3-2-1	154
BBC New Comedy Award	149
Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway	141
The $64,000 Question	137
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral	131
Bob's Full House	117
Ask Me Another	109

Who would have thought that Blockbusters has accumulated more primetime episodes than Blankety Blank?

In other news

Observant readers may have noticed there's an election on. Very few people will determine their vote based on the media policies of the leading parties, but in case the information helps someone to make a decision...

Labour will "work constructively with the BBC and other Public Service Broadcasters [like ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5] so they continue to inform, educate, and entertain". Nice nod to Rethian values. They'll also encourage broadcasters to "commission distinctively British content", which is bad news for that Jeopardy! revival. More generally, the party pledges to accelerate growth in film, music, gaming, and other creative sectors.

Liberal Democrats want to protect the BBC, Channel 4, Welsh-language channel S4C, and Gaelic broadcaster BBC Alba as independent, publicly owned, public service broadcasters. They'll also strengthen the devolution of powers over broadcasting in Wales; in this column's view, ITV treats their Welsh franchise as an extension of the England service. They'll seek to re-open Europe, where opportunities have been blocked because of bad decisions by the previous administration.

Green Party (in England and Wales) say that no individual or company should own more than 20% of a media market; does that mean forced divestiture for the sclerotic commercial radio market? They'll also publish a "digital bill of rights" for social media, though detail is sorely lacking. Visa-free access to Europe is an aspiration, and there will be more local government spending on arts.

Conservative Party want to establish a new complaints procedure for the BBC, replacing the current process imposed by the Conservative Party. After cutting its funding by 30%, the party says it supports the BBC World Service and wants to expand its English-language transmissions worldwide.

Reform Ltd want to scrap the television license fee. And you can insert your own joke punchline here.

Plaid Cymru expect sports events important to Wales to remain on free-to-air television – the Six Nations rugby is particularly mentioned. They also want to devolve broadcasting to Wales, and set up an Independent Broadcasting Authority for Wales, to regulate S4C and radio.

Scottish National Party also want devolution of broadcasting powers, so decisions about Scottish telly and radio are made in Scotland. Increased investment in Scottish broadcasting, and Scottish national team matches to be included on the free-to-air lists. The SNP also call for Gaelic broadcasting to be put on a par with Welsh-language broadcasting, fixing a disproportionality introduced recently.

One might reasonably note that the Welsh and Scottish nationalist parties are happy to advocate for specific channels promoting their culture; we don't see any party calling for channels advocating the unique culture of Yorkshire or Kent. Maybe that was tried in the recent "local tv" fiasco; maybe it's no longer *broad*casting in that sense.

Right, that's enough politics for the rest of the year.

In other news, ITV has commissioned a second series of Jeopardy! with Stephen Fry. The show, made by Whisper North and Sony, ran in January to moderate ratings. We still wonder if ITV have to buy Jep in a job lot with Wheel of Fortune.

Finals week for Countdown (C4, ends Fri). Bake Off The Professionals (C4, Mon-Tue) and Popmaster TV (More4, Mon-Tue) continue. Topical fun in Breaking the News (R Scot, Fri) and The News Quiz (R4, Fri). Amongst imports, The Traitors NBC concludes (BBC3, Mon-Thu), The Masked Singer Us continues (ITV2, weeknights), and Love Island drones on (VM2 and ITV2, all week).

And with loads of sport, and next weekend given over to the Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts, that's literally all the new game shows we have for you this week.

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