You Bet!

Synopsis

Well made and sometimes stunning stunt show.

Members of the public bet they can do a particularly whacky, impressive or just plain dangerous feat. 100 members of the audience bet on whether they think they can do it, as do a panel of celebrities. The celebs try to guess the correct outcome, thus earning points, which are later turned into pounds for charity, mate.

The challenges on the show can be categorized into stunts (doing a wheelie in a truck for 1 mile), memory tests (identifying a Madonna song from 5 seconds of the backing track), and skill games (scoring 50 basketball hoops while riding on a motorcycle). The reward for a successful challenge was awarded a trophy (called the "Betsy" in early series). The outside challenges were filmed during the summer months and slotted in, everyone involved in the filming having sworn on their grandmother's grave that they wouldn't say the result.

Bruce's Big Bet

So, where do we start? From the beginning of course. The original German version began in 1981 where it was a variety show that featured a mix of chat, music, comedy, performances and of course games. The show ran for approximately 3 hours, when LWT made their own version in 1988, they had to condense it to an hour by just focusing on the game part of the show.

Unlike the original German version, which was a series of one-off specials, the UK version was given a six week pilot run during the winter months on Saturday nights.

The game format of the show is quite similar to the original German version but there were a panel of three celebrity guests and four challenges in each show. On each challenge, the celebrity would back the challenger(s) they were sponsoring and if they failed their challenge, the celebrity would have to do a forfeit that they have chosen themselves before the start of the show, which is either recorded on location to be shown on the next show or right here, right now in the studio.

So, you're probably thinking right now "Four challenges? But there are three celebrity guests backing three challenges." A-ha! This is where we bring out the host of the show Bruce Forsyth plucked straight out of his comfort zone from Play Your Cards Right. Now remember when we said that the celebrity guests had to do a forfeit if the challenger(s) failed? Well, it's a little different with Bruce because the audience have the power to decide his fate and the one with the highest percentage, Bruce will always go with the higher percentage of the audience vote. If the one with the highest audience percentage gets it wrong (and yes, even if the challenger(s) succeeded), Bruce would have to do a forfeit. However, unlike the three celebrity guests who pick their forfeits before the show, Bruce pulls out three envelopes and then picks out a member of the audience to pick one, Bruce doesn't know what the forfeit is going to be in the envelope until he opens it up and reads it out loud.

The first series was received so well with audiences, it was given an extended run of ten episodes the following year as audiences were blown away by the variety of challenges that ordinary members of the public were challenging themselves to do, but elderly viewers just watched it because of Brucie being the Bruciest he's ever Bruce'd the Bruce.

As always with Bruce at the helm, he had to have a female co-host with him and her name is Ellis Ward. Ellis was hired to host the pre-recorded outdoor challenges on location whenever a challenge was too big to perform in the studio and she did a really fine job doing it.

When the year 1990 came, Bruce was called by the BBC to host the revival of The Generation Game, which was filmed around the same time as You Bet! meaning he would no longer host the show.

Kelly on the Telly

Perhaps the host many viewers associate with the show is Mr. Game for a Laugh himself Matthew Kelly.

The show went through a number of changes when Matthew took over hosting:

• For any challenger(s) that failed their challenge would now get a scroll for taking part in the show, which is a positive step up from when Bruce hosted it because they weren't awarded anything at all if they failed their challenge.
• The celebrity guest that failed to back their challenge they were sponsoring would now have to choose a forfeit from a list of six very cryptic clues written on the screen and Matthew would then reveal what the forfeit is.
• Matthew's fate for when he is backing a challenge he was sponsoring got the same treatment as the celebrity guests as in he would do a forfeit if the challenge he was backing failed.
• The challenges were increased from four to five, which meant that Ellis Ward also got in the act of doing a forfeit if a challenge she backs fails.
• Matthew also got involved with filming outdoor challenges as well as Ellis, but Ellis only got to film some outdoor challenges if she was backing a challenge.

The format tweaks and Matthew's own fresh unique style of hosting have certainly helped make the show must watch television. The show was given an Autumn series six months later, but this time in a new time slot of Friday nights at 8pm.

Sadly, the Autumn 1991 series would be the last series we see Ellis Ward co-hosting as the following series in 1992, Matthew would be filming all of the outdoor challenges, the celebrity guest panel was increased from three to four and the forfeits were now held by six chosen members of the studio audience and they would have to read out what the celebrity guest or Matthew would have to do for their forfeit. Also, every challenger from now on got a medal no matter what outcome of the challenge was.

The 1993 series was given a bumper commission of sixteen episodes due to how popular the show was becoming and the amount of challengers wanting to show off their unique skills and talents. The forfeits were now concealed inside six envelopes guarded by Matthew himself and they all have the letters Y-O-U-B-E-T printed on them. The 1993 series was originally supposed to have a continuous run from September up until Christmas Eve where the Celebrity Special would be shown, but the BBC decided to unleash their evil masterplan by moving their freshly poached series of Bruce Forsyth's Generation Game in the same timeslot as You Bet! and ultimately dominated in the ratings. ITV didn't want to take the risk of having the current series run to the end of the year against the BBC's golden goose and decided to take it off the schedules after the seventh episode to replace it with a new series of Beadle's About. During that time, Matthew was hosting another ITV show, this time from Granada called Stars in Their Eyes. He was initially hired as a caretaker for Leslie Crowther who had a car accident the year before, we'll get back to that later. The remaining episodes of the 1993 series were shown during the spring of 1994 back on Saturday nights and for some reason were sponsored by the Daily Mirror, but they quickly dropped after the remaining episodes of the seventh series aired.

The 1994 series was filmed during the Autumn and shown during Spring 1995. This series had a couple of massive changes to the format, the first big change was that the celebrity guests and Matthew would no longer be backing challenges they were sponsoring, which meant that there are "no more forfeits", instead the celebrity guest that scored the lowest on the panel would have to do a challenge themselves and the outcome would be shown the following week, the second big change is that during the celebrity challenge, there would be a phone-in vote for viewers at home to predict whether the celebrity would succeed or fail their challenge and one lucky winner picked at random would be donating £1,000, by the production team, for the charity of their choice. And for this series only, the challenger(s) that succeeded were given a special trophy called "The Kelly", which is a silver model of Matthew Kelly on a black podium with the You Bet! logo below it.

But sadly after the completion of filming for series 8, Leslie Crowther announced that he would be retiring from showbusiness and Matthew was made a full-time host of Stars in Their Eyes, meaning that the eighth series of You Bet! would be his last, which is quite sad because Matthew was really dedicated to hosting the show both in the studio and on location, he was very entertaining to watch as host and he was always fascinated about the challengers backstories on their skills and talents, especially with challengers who were children because he asked them questions the same way as he did with the adults.

"What do you mean?" you ask? We'll explain. Let's have a look at how Bruce chatted to the kids, he would always ask them questions where they would always give them a one word answer (which is "Yes" or "No"), which is quite off-putting because we know that there are some children out there who are smart and are on the same level as adults, which is where Matthew did a better job in chatting to the kids than Bruce did where he would ask them questions where they would have to answer in a sentence because Matthew's very open-minded and interested in what the kids were saying as well as adults.

Viewers would often call the Kelly years the defining era for the show and we agree on that, which is more than we can say for his successor the next year.

Darren's Bad Day

After Matthew left for full-time duties on Stars in Their Eyes, West End actor and singer Darren Day filled in his shoes, and to follow on from Matthew...they were pretty big to fill.

The ninth series was pretty much back to where we started when Bruce hosted it. In other words, we've come full circle.

The celebrity guest panel was decreased from four to three, the forfeits returned but this time they were chosen by the production team for the lowest scoring celebrity guest to perform at the end of the show, and the addition of a co-host was reinstated to film the outdoor challenges, which were this time carried out by former Gladiators star Diane Youdale (a.k.a. - Jet). Oh, and the scroll was discontinued from this series onwards for any failed challenger(s), which meant that they would get just a medal.

Nothing much to say about this series, it's pretty much the same show as usual but with different host...actually, that's the main problem with this series, the host himself. Darren, apart from a dodgy 90s haircut, wasn't really the right choice to host an extravaganza of a show like this. Darren did take an interest in the challengers backstories, but he quite frequently was very deadpan about it and just sounded like he was memorizing a script to get a quick pay check, which did put a massive dent in the ratings. Oh, and the annoying overuse of canned encouragement from a taped audience during the outdoor challenges, which is something that was never done during Bruce and Matthew's tenures.

But unfortunately, Darren was called back to host another series, which would evidently be the show's last. To use whatever steam the show had left, a new co-host was introduced for the final series, who was Sarah Matravers. Viewers will recognise Sarah as one of Des O'Connor's gong girls from Take Your Pick and yes, she did the majority of the location work for this series. The celebrity challenge also returned from the eighth series, but this time, the audience had to choose from two cryptic clues on the screen chosen by the production team and the one with the highest percentage would be the challenge the celebrity with the losing score would have to perform at the end of the show. And the last addition to this series was for the celebrity guests and it was called the "Bonus Card", which means if the celebrity correctly guessed the outcome of the challenge, the corresponding audience percentage they score will be doubled, however, they can only play it once.

And that appears to be it for the show as a whole because the following year, it was replaced by a new show called Don't Try This at Home!, which was more extreme than You Bet! and went on for a few series. Darren Day was transferred to host the show alongside Davina McCall, but he only lasted one series.

You Bet! I'll be Back in Action

In August 2024, ITV unexpectedly announced that the show would be returning for a short, two episode run in December. The revival has an unusual runtime of 75 minutes and there are a number of reasons why it just does not work.

Number one: right away, the cold opening spoils the outcome of some of the challenges, which takes away the fun for us viewers of predicting if the challenge is going to succeed or not. First bad move there.

Then the challenges are ruined by Britain's Got Talent-style fast editing and suspenseful music. WHY? The original series didn't need this - it just ruins the excitement and makes it all feel really fake. The VT package of contestants intros in particular is just cringe inducing. Oh, and they don't even interview the opponents, which is a shame because we want to know about their opponents as well. Second bad move there.

Before we get to the third and biggest problem of the revival, let's look at couple of things in the revival that are good: the theme tune (while not as memorable as Jonathan Sorrell's tune) is actually decent because it sounds very much like Kill Bill, and the celebrity panel is back up to four (but they don't sponsor the challenger(s). Shame!) where the top scorer wins £10,000 for the charity of their choice, which is a nice positive change to adding up all the points and then doubling/tripling/quadrupling them into cash. The bottom scorer faces the forfeit finale, which we're glad they didn't change even though they should've kept it a surprise rather than just outright telling us what it is at the start of the show. We also liked the new feature "Quick Bets" where the audience and the celebrities get to bet on first impressions and not a full on in-depth look in, quite a nice addition.

OK, let's get this over with, our biggest issue with the revival. Remember when we said that the top scoring celebrity wins £10,000 for the charity of their choice is a positive change? Well, there is a negative part to that as well. After all the challenges (excluding the "Quick Bets" challenges), the studio audience votes for the challenger who they think is the most deserving of winning £10,000. WHAT?! No, no, no, no, no. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Talk about missing the point: You Bet! is NOT a popularity contest filled with sob stories, it's supposed to be "You won? Here's a trophy. You lost? Here's a scroll." and everyone lives happily ever after with a medal for taking part.

You know what? We've been talking so much about the new format that we forgot to talk about the new hosts. Straight from Dancing on Ice, we have a double header who are Stephen Mulhern and Holly Willoughby. Were they the only presenters that ITV had? Couldn't they have just asked Jason Manford who two years ago said he would love to host it? Anyway, Stephen and Holly were... just there. Nothing really memorable about them hosting it stands out, they were just a pair of safe hands (each) and if ITV wants an extended run of this revival, it'll need to do better than merely "safe" and also ditch a lot of stuff that we do NOT want back, but especially the studio audience voting which challenger gets £10,000, that should be removed immediately.

Key moments

The two types of fanfare for the end of the challenge: the "happy happy" one and the "oh dear, it's all gone pear-shaped" one.

In an outtake eventually shown on Alright on the Night's Cockup Trip, while Matthew Kelly was filming a trailer explaining the rules for the Celebrity Challenge phone-in competition, he got tongue tied on some of the words and accidentally blurted out an expletive - to his own visible shock.

A fan of The Bill claims she can identify twenty-five characters from the show by just seeing a small area of their face in two and a half minutes, but only got three right and passed on one in twenty-one seconds.

The Red Devils were memorable challengers on the show, mainly because they failed three challenges in a row. They did however finally complete their fourth challenge.

Two memorable forfeits from Matthew Kelly when he had to do one that involved sumo wrestling and one that involved a tight rope walk.

Catchphrases

Brucie got the show off to a strong start, despite the decidedly un-streetwise "You Bet Rap", dropped after series 3 but recorded here for posterity:

Bruce: You wanna bet on it?
Audience: You Bet!
Bruce: When you better get on it?
Audience: You Bet!
Bruce: So don't fret, get set, are you ready?
Audience: You Bet!

Another Brucie quote went: "You're now betting for the fate of Forsyth in the form of a forfeit. If you're right - I'm alright, but if you're wrong - I'm right in it!"

Before the ad break, Brucie used to say "We'll be back in a bit, you can bet on it!". Matthew Kelly changed this to "See you in a bit. Ta-ra!". Which isn't as good, but he did redeem himself by improving on the next one...

"Make your bet!", which was changed to "Place your bets now!" when Matthew Kelly took over.

Inventor

Based on an idea by Frank Elstner. it was originally a German show called Wetten dass...? See the ZDF web site for more information.

Theme music

1988: Alan Lisk

1989-96: Jonathan Sorrell

1997: Simon Webb

Trivia

11 years after its UK swansong, Ant & Dec took the format to the States with their presenting debut, Wanna Bet?.

Before they were famous, Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller took part in a challenge during the Matthew Kelly years, where the two of them alongside My Parents Are Aliens star Tony Gardner each took several roles in the same play, and had to speed dress whilst off stage so that they could come back as the relevant character without missing a beat. They succeeded!

Malandra Burrows was the show's highest celebrity guest scorer. She appeared during the final series and scored 401.

Annabel Giles was the most frequent celebrity guest, appearing five times.

Although most series were filmed at Shepperton Studios, the second series was filmed at Limehouse Studios in Wembley Park (now called Fountain Studios) while the ninth series was filmed at Pinewood Studios and the tenth series was filmed in the London Arena. The 2024 revival is filmed at the newly built Shinfield Studios in Reading.

Web links

Wikipedia entry

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