Match Game

Alan Carr's Picture Slam

2023

Do you know your Victoria Beckham from your Victoria Sponge? Alan Carr's stupendous shout-along quiz, where a picture's worth a thousand words – and thousands of pounds.

Perfect Match

Perfect Match is a game show that aired on Channel 4 from 2002

Jeopardy!

1984

America's favorite quiz show where contestants are presented with general knowledge clues in the form of answers, and must phrase their responses in question form.

The Generation Game

1971

The Generation Game was a British game show produced by the BBC in which four teams of two competed to win prizes. The programme was first broadcast in 1971 under the title Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game and ran until 1982, and again from 1990 until 2002. The show was based on the Dutch TV show Een van de acht, "One of the Eight", the format devised in 1969 by Theo Uittenbogaard for VARA Television. Mrs. Mies Bouwman - a popular Dutch talk show host and presenter of the show - came up with the idea of the conveyor belt. She had seen it on a German programme and wanted to incorporate it into the show. Another antecedent for the gameshow was 'Sunday Night at the London Palladium' on ATV, which had a game called Beat the Clock, taken from an American gameshow. It featured married couples playing silly games within a certain time to win prize money. This was hosted by Bruce Forsyth from 1958, and he took the idea with him when he went over to the BBC. During the 1970s, gameshows became more popular and started to replace expensive variety shows. Creating new studio shows was cheaper than hiring a theatre and paying for long rehearsals and a large orchestra, and could secure a similar number of viewers. With less money for their own productions, a gameshow seemed the obvious idea for ITV. As a result many variety performers were recruited for gameshows. The BBC, suffering poor ratings, decided to make its own gameshow. Bill Cotton, the BBC's Head of Light Entertainment, believed that Bruce Forsyth was best for the job. For years, The Generation Game was one of the strong shows in the BBC's Saturday night line-up, and became the number one gameshow on British television during the 1970s, regularly gaining over 21 million viewers. However, things were about to change. LWT, desperate to end the BBC's long-running ratings success on a Saturday night, offered Forsyth a chance to change channel to host The Big Night.

MXC

2003

Footage from the popular game show, Takeshi's Castle has been re-edited, re-written and re-voiced into a hilarious, intentionally over-produced, modern "action/X-treme" sports show.

Food Fighters

2014

The table is set for the ultimate culinary clash in this one part cooking competition, one part game show. Host Adam Richman ("Man v. Food") will give homegrown amateur cooks the chance to test their skills against professional chefs. Every down-home cook has that one signature dish or secret family recipe that always gains favor with friends and family. Now, imagine going head-to-head in the kitchen against five professional chefs, who try to cook your specialty dish even better than you in the hopes of winning over a dinner party made up of the American public. With each savored victory, the cash prize gets bigger and bigger as the home cooks rise to every challenge and outcook the professional chefs. Think you've got what it takes to serve up the competition?

Wheel of Fortune

1983

This game show sees contestants solve word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes determined by spinning a giant carnival wheel.

The Crystal Maze

1990

The Crystal Maze was a British game show, produced by Chatsworth Television and shown on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom between 15 February 1990 and 10 August 1995. The series is set in "The Crystal Maze", which features four different "zones" set in various periods of time and space. A team of six contestants take part in a series of challenges in order to win "time crystals". Each crystal gives the team five seconds of time inside "The Crystal Dome", the centrepiece of the maze where the contestants take part in their final challenge.