Game Show Memories – Game Show Stars Part 3.

This is someone whose long TV hosting career has included plenty of game shows. Phillip Schofield began his TV hosting career in the early-80s in New Zealand, but he came back to England just in time to get the job as the host of CBBC’s newly-launched Broom Cupboard, when they were at the point of considering various cast members of Grange Hill as hosts.

After a couple of years, he went on to host various other CBBC shows, including Going Live! and The Movie Game. By the time he left in the early-90s, he had proven himself to be an adept host of live TV, managing to deal with anything that came his way. He then made an attempt to break into primetime TV shows aimed at older viewers, and he succeeded where others didn’t.

He then joined ITV, where he has hosted several shows, most of the early ones weren’t too memorable really, including Schofield’s TV Gold (looking back at very old clips, and interviewing a few people in them, which was almost a continuation of the similar TV’s Greatest Hits that he hosted on BBC1), and Schofield’s Quest, where he tried to help people track down various things.

As for game shows, in the mid-90s he hosted Talking Telephone Numbers (originally alongside Emma Forbes, who he worked with on Going Live!), and this was one of the first British game shows where the star prize was a five-figure sum, not that many people gambled for it. And there was also Tenball, which was a fast-paced variation on snooker, but as this wasn’t shown at all in some ITV regions, and the final was shown on LWT at 5:30, this actually wasn’t going to be the future at all.

He did briefly return to the BBC to host more game shows, including Winning Lines (a format that he was comfortable with as this was almost identical to Talking Telephone Numbers), and Test The Nation, another live show where he always cheerily moved things along, and proved that he could even tolerate working alongside Anne Robinson.

In more recent years, his ITV game show work has included Five Gold Rings (and doing adverts flogging gin on the sly), but the most popular show must be The Cube, where if people can complete the challenges, they can win really big money, and many feel that this one has succeeded as there is lots of genuine tension. Let’s hope that he will be on TV for years to come yet.

CBBC Memories – The Movie Game.

The Movie Game (CBBC, 1988-1995)

I must admit that I don’t really have a huge interest in the world of film, but I do remember watching this CBBC game show. The Movie Game was hosted for the first three series by Phillip Schofield, and then Jonathon Morris hosted the next three series, followed by John Barrowman who hosted the final two series. The basic idea of the game was the same throughout the entire run, and it was played in two parts. 

Three teams of two take part and in the first part of the game there are various rounds about films, such as having to answer observation questions. There was also a round where they would be given a prop and a sound effect and had to perform with it, and the studio audience would rate how well they did. There would also be a quickfire round with questions on the buzzer, and the lowest-scoring team at this point of the game would be eliminated, although they did take away some consolation prizes. I have also noticed that this is a show where the teams had a lot of mascots with them. 

The two remaining teams went into the second stage of the game which was the part that I always found the most interesting. The teams would now stand on a board which had about 16 squares on it, and they could play to answer questions worth two, three or four moves. However, they could only play for a four-move question once which was known as a “fast forward”. 

If they landed on one of three highlighted squares they could play a bonus game. This would usually be something like having to complete a challenge against the clock, or having to act out a scene in a various film genre, so this part would usually come across as a cross between Double Dare and The Generation Game, and various points would be awarded on how well they did. A celebrity guest would usually take part in one of the games too. The team that reaches the end of the board first is declared the winner, regardless of if they actually scored more points or not than the other team. 

The highest-scoring teams then returned for the grand final at the end of the series, which Phillip always saw as a good opportunity to put his best bow-tie on. The overall series winners would usually win a big star prize, such as the chance to visit a film studio in Hollywood and meet various famous actors and directors, and I’m sure they all enjoyed the experience. 

The Movie Game was something of a success for CBBC and eventually it ran for eight series.