I really enjoyed it, though anything which goes in-depth into the commissioning process will probably sway it for me!
If you’ve watched the Fight for Saturday Night documentary on BBC Four you’ll have heard the story about how it was pitched and using the ITV staff to do phone a friend, so it was nice to see that dramatised.
It was a little amusing how dedicated the ‘syndicate’ was in getting on the show, all the ‘have you come alone’ and the secret offices and such
Well that's annoying, there's me boggling a few pages back at the same-night repeat, only for me to completely forget it was on and be needing the repeat.
:-(
A former member
Is the syndicate stuff true?
Also - and I feel like I’ve mentioned this before - I am adamant that I read before the show began that it was originally going to be presented by Geri Halliwell. I can’t find any evidence of this though. Random I know but I’ve got it from somewhere.
Well that's annoying, there's me boggling a few pages back at the same-night repeat, only for me to completely forget it was on and be needing the repeat.
The show's record audience of 19.21 million was on 7th March 1999, which wasn't a big episode at all but happened the same night as a massive hour long episode of Coronation Street which got almost 20 million - Sharon and Ian's wedding. Everyone tuning in for that simply stuck around afterwards for Millionaire, and both episodes were the top 1 and 2 of both programmes in 1999.
Series 2 and 3 (January & March 1999) were genuinely huge though, reaching up to 17-18 million with ease. Surprisingly the highest rated episode of 2000 wasn't Judith Keppel, but the night after Peter Lee became the first £500,000 winner in the January - 15.88 million, highest rated non-soap of the year. Keppel got 14.87 million in November, just beating One Foot In The Grave's 12.84 million which it was very infamously scheduled against.
Ratings slowly fell over the 2000s along with most other programmes, but the Ingram special of Tonight got a massive 16.10 million in April 2003 - 1 million more than Martin Bashir's documentary on Michael Jackson two months earlier! Probably the last time the show was genuinely newsworthy, although there was some hype in early 2006 when on a celebrity special the million pound question was lost, only to be redone as the question was seen as unfair.
Quick question, was The Million Pound Drop, Channel 4’s version of WWTBAM?
Not really. C4 did give away a £1m jackpot before ITV did though, and also had The E-Millionaire Show which was more like Dragons Den/The Apprentice with a £1m prize for the winner - or two winners as it turned out.
The show's record audience of 19.21 million was on 7th March 1999, which wasn't a big episode at all but happened the same night as a massive hour long episode of Coronation Street which got almost 20 million - Sharon and Ian's wedding. Everyone tuning in for that simply stuck around afterwards for Millionaire, and both episodes were the top 1 and 2 of both programmes in 1999.
Hard to remember that only 5 years before millionare premiered the old IBA/ITC limits on gameshow prizes were still in effect. I think it was around £6000 at the time they were scrapped? Certainly the 1989 series of Wheel of Fortune makes a thing about their £4000 jackpot being the biggest on British TV at the time, less than a decade before Millionaire.