Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

From a group of ten contestants, the quickest to answer a simple question is selected to come to the middle of the studio and play for a million pounds. Starting off with a question worth £100 the money doubles (more or less) with each question – but they also get progressively harder and harder. If the contestant gets a question wrong he drops back down to either £1000 or £32000, depending on which he has passed, however to help him he can select 50/50 (two of the four answers disappear), ask the audience (the audience chose the answer for him in percentage terms) or phone a friend (the contestant can ring someone to ask him the question). As if that wasn't tense enough, Chris Tarrant never lets it lie for a second.

I'm not a big fan of this show because, like many viewers I just saw it too many times. However, at its peak it was the show everyone wanted to be on and was the one everyone watched. The questions start with the obvious and build to the increasingly more difficult and the TV audience generally start out going 'well durr' before then entering the stage where they shout the right answer at the telly and then eventually taking guesses and muttering 'don't risk it, don't risk it' like some sort of mantra under their breath. It makes for riveting viewing even if the first 4 or 5 questions are always pretty dull. The formula is simple but the UK presenter Chris Tarrant is responsible for making it as successful as it was.

Tarrant may be a little smug for my personal tastes but here he found a vehicle that he could use his smarmy character to good effect. 'Are you sure' he repeatedly asks with a rather self-satisfied smirk on his face while the contestants suddenly suffer a crises of confidence and the audience holds its breath. Combined with the atmospheric music, low lighting and the constant heartbeat effect it made it an enjoyably tense quiz show even if it was hardly anything like Mastermind in terms of intellect. However, when ITV found they had a hit on their hands they made the decision to ride it as hard as they possibly could and in fairness I suppose that this was the best decision in the short term. It would be off for a few months while people rang in and sponsors jockeyed for position and then it would be everywhere for a few months – on almost every night of the week, on several times a day at Christmas time etc and this continued for quite a while. But then viewers started to get too used to the formula and turned off. ITV countered with the twists of couples taking part, celebrities, father/son etc but eventually they dropped it down into a teatime slot and now it appears to occasionally turn up on a Saturday afternoon (but I think it is all repeats). I can understand why ITV did this – it gave them a sudden massive boost in the ratings, they were selling advertising space for as high a price as they could and it looked like it would never end – and then it did.

Overall this is not a great quiz show. The questions are not so hard that most people with a good general knowledge couldn't get to £32k without too much stress and really it is only the atmosphere created by the music, lighting and the host that really made this as successful as it was. It was easy to veg in front of this show and think 'I could do that' and also enjoy seeing people get stressed and a) risk it all and win, b) risk it all and lose, c) just take the money or d) cheat and get taken to court! Fun but basically killed off by ITV chasing as much cash as it could get as quickly as possible.

I watched this show from about it's third episode and from then on I've been transfixed. Of course now its gone on to America where it will probably become most famous but it started right here in the UK where its still the best, in the US the questions are far too easy. The worlds greatest game show ever !

This was a good show. It started off and for like the next 6 months it ROCKED! But, unfortunately ITV obviously milked this show too much by putting it on too often! The show became very monotonus and predictable (stand up Chris Tarrant! lol) My theory is that ITV should have sheduled this show at like once a week (maybe on a Saturday!) then people like me wouldn't have got so bored with it so easily. Shame. 8/10

Without doubt one of the greatest quiz shows of all time unfortunately ultimately spoilt by a combination of over-exposure, ITV's obsession with celebrity versions of every game show they have, and constant fiddling with the format in the final years. First reducing the number of questions from 15 to 12 smacked of dumbing down. Changing the amounts to win made some of the steps drastically uneven. Dumping the Fastest Finger Round in favour of off-screen auditions because it was thought older people were at a disadvantage robbed the show of the chance selection of contestant. Then finally, and in total contradiction to the earlier change, the introduction of time limits in the very next series which, more than any Fastest Finger, penalised the older contestants. In the end, it was these "improvements" and Chris Tarrant's increasingly irritating habits - the sharp intake of breath seemingly after every sentence, the repetitive "jokes" about people looking "frightened to death" - which killed the show off. That, and the suspicion that some contestants may not have been selected entirely at random as claimed. With the benefit of re-runs on "Challenge", it's surprising how many "randomly selected" contestants were veterans of other quiz shows. If you're not convinced, ask yourself how it was Charles Ingram followed not only his wife and brother-in-law into the hot seat but how he and his wife had featured in a married couples' special some months earlier. Maybe a change of host and a return to the old format would have been advisable. Who knows? Can I 'phone a friend?

When WWTBAM was first broadcast in Britian it was the main talking point in the country . What a brilliant but simple idea for a TV quiz , answer 15 consecutive multiple choice questions with the difficulty in questions going up alongside the money . The nation started copying Chris Tarrant`s catchphrases: " Phone a friend , 50-50 " etc and what a quiz master Tarrant was as he continually put the contestants off :

Nervous contestant : I think it`s B Chris . I`ll play . B

Tarrant : You sure ? You`ll lose 15, 000 pound if you`re wrong . You`ve still got two lifelines left . 15,000 pound . You`ll loose that . Two lifelines you can use them if you want

Then the nervous contestant would waste his last two life lines

Tarrant : Final answer ? The correct answer is B . So you were right all along

Cut to nervous contestant who`s just realised Tarrant has cost him his last two lifelines .

Yeah this was a great show as was its format of being on 8 consecutive nights then off air for about 6 weeks then on for another 8 consecutive nights but then ITV decided to put on 3 times a week from late Summer to late Spring WWTBAM never seemed to off the screens which meant a lot of people including myself became very fed up with it . The producers vainly tried to spice it up with charity editions and couples editions before switching to showing only one episode a week , but too late they`d milked the idea for what it was worth and that`s what killed the show along with Tarrant spending too much time talking to the contestants and it`s only a matter of time before it`s cancelled for good

R.I.P WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE