The Big Quiz (2)

Contents

Host

Stephen Mulhern

Broadcast

ITV Studios for ITV1, 16 December 2011 to present

Synopsis

The loss of the British Comedy Awards to Channel 4 left a small hole in ITV's schedule. To fill it in 2011, Britain's Former Favourite Button aired a special entertainment about the ITV shows that people do watch, in a 9pm Friday slot that no-one watches. Except your intrepid UKGS researcher.

The concept is simple: get in some cast members from the exceedingly popular Coronation Street continuing drama, get in some cast members from the almost-as-popular Emmerdale series, and ask questions about the shows they work on. It's more than slightly derivative, it's ITV cross-promotion at its most utterly shameless, and we're admiring their chutzpah.

Not content with pilfering the name from a long-running radio feature, most of the rounds were familiar from other, more popular, programmes. The Picture Board and What Happened Next had nipped over from A Question of Sport. Naming your co-star from touch alone, that was on They Think it's All Over. Putting things in order from earliest to latest, we saw that on Accumulate!, and the host delivering a snarky monologue after each question was swiped from Have I Got News for You.

As we know from TV Burp, the most entertaining moments came when The Big Quiz started laughing at its shows, rather than with them. We were tickled by a montage of all the explosions seen on air since the beginning of the year. It turns out to be a rare week when Emmerdale doesn't have at least one thing going kaboom. Another round asked cast members to remember their lines from when they first appeared, with the inevitable cringeworthy results.

The Big Quiz was lightweight and undemanding fluff, and repeated almost endlessly (well, three times on ITV2) over the Christmas season. Such was its nature that a further episode was commissioned for April 2012, pitching the cast of The Only Way is Essex against the stars of Benidorm.

Episode list

16 December 2011 Coronation Street v Emmerdale
15 April 2012 The Only Way Is Essex v Benidorm

Champions

2011 Coronation Street
2012 TBA

Participants

2011

  • TBA (Coronation Street)
  • TBA (Emmerdale)

2012

  • TBA (The Only Way is Essex)
  • TBA (Benidorm)

Inventor

No inventor was credited on this show.

Theme music

Library music was used throughout.

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