Nudie Prod Games

What’s the most entertaining way of starting a post about an old gameshow? How about a piece about how my cat died last month? That’s hilarious, maybe I could follow it up with some talk about my miserable teenage years as an encore.

But much as I could write a long eulogy about my poor Tom – and he was a really good cat – that’s not really what this place is for. Instead, here’s a related question: what TV is best to watch in order to cheer yourself up when things like this happen?

My first answer would be a favourite sitcom, but that doesn’t seem to be quite right. When sitting in mourning for a kitty who’s become part of the family, you don’t really want TV screaming at you to laugh; you’d feel like telling it to sod off. Likewise, another initial idea was Kenny Everett’s Thames shows, but much as I love that man to bits, I suspect a concentrated burst of zaniness isn’t quite what I need right now.

So what is the answer? A drama? No, I can’t deal with anything remotely serious. A vaguely light, comedic film? No, I can’t sit still and concentrate for that long. A cookery show? No, I still want to remain awake.¹

In the end, the solution was already sitting on my shelf, awaiting exactly the right moment: Network DVD’s boxset of the first few years of Give Us a Clue. A show seemingly designed to cheer you up, without haranguing you. And with a parade of pleasant faces on offer, it’s a little like a continuous group of friends popping round to raise your spirits.

This is my first time watching any of the Aspel-era episodes of Give Us a Clue, and it really is great fun. For a start, I never really grew up watching Michael Aspel outside This Is Your Life, which I found mainly dull as a kid, so there’s a real “Oh, that’s why he was famous, he’s really bloody good” realisation with him. Even if he does screw up the score seemingly every single episode.

But as ever, there’s a real joy in seeing a “standard” television show from 1979, rather than shows which are very good, but feel a little “best foot forward”. And if you’re of a mind, early Give Us a Clue is full of little production foibles which make the generous ones among us grin with affection, and the less generous ones sneer. A shaky wide shot over the end credits, causing me to remark that a zoom out was “clearly too difficult for Thames”. A set that even by the standards of the time, is more beige than anybody really requires. Or the fact that the on-screen clock doesn’t start properly on one of the rounds in the very first episode transmitted.

In fact, my favourite example of this kind of nonsense is also to do with the clock: for the Christmas 1979 episode, the rounds are shrunk from two minutes to one-and-a-half minutes… but the clock software clearly can’t start at 1:30. So it just starts at 2:00 like normal, and the bell goes when there are 30 seconds left on the clock. Amazing.

Yet there’s a reason why I look askance at people who make fun of this kind of thing a little too much. Because where it matters, Give Us a Clue gets things right. The rapport between the guests, captains and host feels natural and pleasant in a way that is as good as television gets. Moreover, they generally take the game exactly as seriously as it deserves. Too little, and you’d wonder why you’re bothering to watch; too much, and you’d lose all the fun. Time after time, virtually every contestant gets this right.

But most of all, if we’re going to pick at various technical aspects of the show, let’s point to one thing that it gets better than almost anything made now: the sound of the studio audience. So many shows these days seem to struggle a little with this. House of Games, the clear modern successor to Give Us a Clue, is an excellent programme. But the very thin, perfunctory audience reaction – presumably just from the crew? – feels less like Kenny Everett “we’re all having fun making this show” nonsense, and more just like… a very thin, perfunctory audience reaction.

Meanwhile, I don’t know what the hell they’re doing with Blankety Blank these days, but even the post-COVID episodes feel like the studio audience is a hundred miles away. I can’t even begin to explain that one, but it sure doesn’t sound right to me.

This is what bugs me about people poking at old television. Because so often, once you look past the beige walls, you often see productions doing the important things better than so many shows manage now. And sure, a lot of the reasons are infrastructure and money. Teddington Studios, where Give Us a Clue was recorded, were clearly a particularly great place to record audience shows. And House of Games surely saves a fair amount of money not having an audience, and money is one thing this kind of TV doesn’t have a lot of these days. Nobody woke up one day and decided just not to bother getting things right.

But good intentions and reasonable explanations only get you so far. Ultimately, a routine TV show from 1979 still sounds better than a lot of shows do now, and you have to think something, somewhere has gone wrong. Television often struggles to sound warm these days, and I think that’s a real problem.

After all, it’s partly that warmth that I’ve found so comforting over the past month. The sound of people filling my living room… to make up for an absence I’m trying desperately not to think about.

It really helps, y’know?

A version of this post was first published in the May issue of my monthly newsletter.

1. You may think I’m being unfair on cookery shows here. They do, of course, have a perfect right to exist. I might even watch and enjoy them occasionally. I just think 53 hours of MasterChef in various forms across the BBC in 2022 is a bit much, when Ofcom claims they only did 108 hours of scripted comedy in the same year. And that doesn’t include MasterChef Australia, or any signed broadcasts. ↩

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