Thursday
night sees the last episode in the first ever series of Bullseye
which has been shown by Challenge TV over the past couple of weeks,
but the game show which was there at the end is a world away from the
first episode of the first series. In and around studios of
television companies of the late 70's, game shows were in production
or going into production at that time the BBC had The Generation Game
and the new to air Blankety Blank to name two. Throughout ITV of all
the franchises, they each had a show in production from the major
contributors such as ATV and Thames, the likes of Celebrity Squares
and Give Us A Clue were astride the schedules. The more minor
companies like Anglia would have one or even two shows offering big
prizes, on the one hand Sale of the Century with Nicholas Parsons and
the other Gambit with Fred Dinenage.
With
these shows flying about set Andrew Wood thinking about what was the
perfect game show, taking time to look at their nuances. The appeal
of the shows were something in themselves, regularly they were
topping the television ratings. But what was making people write in
to take part on a regular basis, was it the taking part? The
competition or just winning the prizes? It was clear that the format
itself was important, the more clearer the better for the viewer to
follow at home but also for the host to understand the rules as the
programme went along. The problem with so many going into production
was that ideas were being used up ten to the dozen, whether imported
from American formats or thought up to make original ideas, premises
of shows were the same but tweaked to suits their own style and
rules. Wood's idea was to come up with something that had never been
seen before in any game show before, to feel familiar but be new
enough to surprise people.
What
was come up with was a format which was not seen before, the 1970's
had seen darts become a major television sport in its own right and
because of this more and more people were playing in pubs and social
clubs throughout the country. Overtime Wood developed this idea into
a format, however with great competition from other formats being
invented and also imported, it was really hard to get an idea seen to
a head of light entertainment at any channel or company at that time.
So Wood decided to go a name who had been a presenter of a successful
show which was Norman Vaughan previously host of the Golden Shot,
knowing that Vaughan might have some clout to get the Bullseye idea
seen. As far as a deal went, Wood said if Vaughan could make the new
idea seen by someone and if it goes into production that he could
present it but if you don't get the presenter's job that Vaughan
would be given a cut of all future revenue accruing as being a
co-creator of Bullseye.
Thanks
to Vaughan's links to ATV in Birmingham, the Bullseye idea was seen
by Jon Scoffield, the station head of Light Entertainment at the
time. The brief synopsis on a piece of paper presented to Scoffield
was “A contestant throws a dart at a categorised board and is then
asked a question on whatever he hits.” Scoffield took a look at it,
rather then just baffling the presentation by giving an explanation
by Wood, Scoffield just requested the idea to be seen as it went
along just like it would almost be on the screen. The idea Scoffield
liked, but the kick in the stomach was to come for Vaughan when
Scoffield said he didn't like Vaughan for the presenter's job. Now
having being the co-creator of Bullseye meant that Vaughan would
taking a cut of any earnings from the programme, so the search was on
for first a presenter and secondly a producer plus a director. The
original plan for the presenter was to get Birmingham-based comedian
Dave Ismay to film the pilot in 1980, Ismay had been a warm-up man
for many of the ATV game shows and had made appearances on other
shows such as 3-2-1 and the Golden Shot. Being around these shows
meant Ismay could get a feel for how they worked and see how the
hosts of each of them worked. Such was his closeness to The Golden
Shot, he had seen the master of the game show Bob Monkhouse close at
hand. So he seemed a natural choice to be the host, though a director
was still needed.
Peter
Harris, a well respected director of many types of shows had been
working at ATV since the 1960's. In his time, he had directed
Crossroads, helped launch Tiswas in 1974, at that time of the early
80's, he was most famous for directing the Muppet Show since 1977.
This gave him lots of acclaim and is created on helping Jim Henson's
creations come to the screens for a family audience, but come 1980 he
had moved on to launching another of ATV's new game shows when he was
the first director of Family Fortunes. So having launched that show
and made it a success, Harris was called to Jon Scoffield's office to
choose what he wanted to do next and there he was given three
choices. One was Runaround, newly brought to ATV to possibly relaunch
on Central Television in 1982 where Lewis Rudd, the new head of
children's television had brought it with him from Southern
Television, some unknown format, but possibly Chris Tarrant's O.T.T.
which was in development and also Bullseye. Harris chose Bullseye
because he was brought up in a public house during his formative
years, so thought it was a good choice to take in this case.
The
parts of this jigsaw were coming together, but then something was to
happen which was throw the planning into chaos. With Dave Ismay, the
host of the pilot for Bullseye, Peter Harris had met up with him to
finalise details on when the pilot was to be filmed. But when Harris
stated the dates, Ismay said he could not do them because he was on a
cruise line entertaining the passengers. With the dates stuck and the
studio time booked, there was no real way they could cancel the
dates. So they offered it to Jim Bowen, famous at that time for his
appearances on The Comedians and also as the comic foil for Pauline
Quirke and Linda Robson on Thames Television's children's programme
You Must be Joking. Bowen accepted the position as host, so it was on
to development of the format. Though when finally Bowen met Harris,
it was a great relationship as presenter and director, but on the
first sighting of each other, Bowen was impressed by Harris who was
immaculately dressed himself at the Grovenor Hotel in Birmingham. It
was only after a while when Bowen had cottoned on about arriving at a
coloured pink hotel building and seemingly flamboyant character, that
they were going to hone the format to Bullseye in a Gay Club. But
this broke the ice between them both and they got the format ready
for the pilot to be filmed.
The
series itself went to air on Monday the 21st of September
1981, but these were not the first two episodes to be filmed which
were shown first, actually it was the third ever episode filmed. By
their both their own admissions that the first two were awful with
Bowen being too nervously, fluffing the rules of the game and the
nadir of when talking to a couple during the contestant's
introduction when told that a person had been unemployed for two
years, naturally Bowen had replied “Smashing...” without out no
malice with the contest themselves looking daggers at Bowen for doing
so. With that the decision to boost Bowen's confidence that the
episodes would be scrapped and wiped, thus getting the production
crew on his side. With the episodes having been filmed, they had to
give the contestants who had won the prizes on both of them to them.
One of which they won a caravan on, so they had to give it to the
contestants. Compared to the cost of doing this, the value of junking
the first two episodes filmed was far greater.
Looking
back at the first series of 1981, using the original titles of Bully
coming down from his pub sign to play darts, though the titles are
different in one significant feature. During the titles there are
lots of women with nipples prevalent, whether this was a nod to the
cheeky pub nature of the game or an in-joke by graphic designer Chris
Wroe, by the third series these images have been edited out where cue
to pressure from high up the command chain or just a change attitude
at when the programme was being broadcast on a Sunday afternoon in
difference to a Monday evening slot. Though the basics of the game
are there, the rules themselves seem over complicated. In the
category board, the partner of the dart player has to pick the value
of the question they want their dart playing partner to hit, ranging
from ten, twenty, thirty or fifty for the bull itself rather just a
category and the value of the question being for instance twenty
pounds plus the bonus amount as well.
But
well even before for the game has started, a nearest to the bull
board is used to determine the order of play, the board consisting of
concentric sections is also called upon if there is a tie, making
sometimes the gameplay in these early editions hard to keep up with.
Though the pound for pounds second round is a strange affair as the
darts players through for the highest scores, rather then being on a
pounds for points basis like in later series, the dart players
partners can choose question to the value of twenty pounds, fifty or
one hundred and one pounds. Whether this was a nod to the start darts
scores of 301 or 501 for instance, is not quite revealed during the
game play. But it is possible for a couple to have only won maybe
only thirty pounds when they get to the prize board, meaning that
couples will want to always gamble for the star prize every time with
it being a brand new car, caravan or even a speedboat compared to
winning the ubiquitous prize of a clock for every room in your house.
The first series was seemingly to encourage the players to go for the
star prize every time with every little jeopardy of an big amount of
money accrued or prizes won at all.
During
this series Jim Bowen is charged with doing everything as in asking
the questions and taking care of the scoring as well, but sometimes
with so much to do he has to rely on other off camera to help him
with this, plus also inadvertently putting off players by making
jokes of them and when they are throwing, though this seems like
putting them at ease, most times it has the opposite effect. Bowen in
this first series, does seem jittery about what he is meant to be
doing at times, not quite knowing what's coming next. One significant
event was to happen during the first series, which was to shape the
whole programme from then on. During the series, the voice-over had
been ATV Today's Nick Owen out of vision introducing the contestants
and also with Bowen doing the scoring, it seemed that the show need
some help from someone in the darting know. On the thirteenth edition
came Tony Green, then a professional darts player but also as a darts
referee as well.
It
was this meeting with Harris and Green's own personality which lead
to him joining the programme not only for his distinctive voice but
also his darts refereeing as well. Out of vision for the first couple
of years, Green's role grew bigger and bigger eventually becoming a
foil for Bowen's jokes. But by doing this, it showed that the
programme was more professional and also had respect for the darts
players themselves. The charity throw which Green had been a part of
was slowly changed away from just professional darts players in
series three, with also celebrities who played darts coming into the
mix as well, with them getting a sixty point head start to help boost
up the funds if they were to score a relatively small amount of
points to be coverted into pounds for charity.
The
celebrities who came on were an eclectic mixture from George Best and
Jimmy Greaves from the world of Football, 'Mighty' Mo Morland from
the Roly Polys, Kenny Lynch and Jimmy Cricket plus from Bullseye own
world co-creator Norman Vaughan and also former voice-over artist for
the programme Nick Owen, who by 1983 had joined TV-AM. This type of
thing combined with best darts players of the day, who by now were
household names made Bullseye a hit with viewers. But this was not
always so, in 1981 when the programme was placed on Monday evenings
after Crossroads, they inherited an audience of thirteen million
viewers, but slowly the viewers started to ebb away and by show six,
the viewership was down to just over six million viewers but
something remarkable happened from show eight as the viewers
returned, if it was through sheer curiosity to see how bad this game
show was or at that time Terry Wogan would say about it on his Radio
Two show, thus people being curious would switch on it see what Terry
was going on about and somehow they stuck the show.
Bullseye
in itself had been become a 'cult' game show before people had even
thought of the term, such like The Golden Shot had been moved from
Saturday nights to a Sunday afternoon slot. Bullseye benefited from
the same thing happening to it, it its own world even strange things
couple happen oblivious to the host even. In the episode where George
Best throws for charity, after the programme come back from the
advertisement break, in the audience are a group of pensioners
passing around a tupperware tube of sandwiches to feed themselves
between them. Surreal this may seem, but these things endeared the
programme to its viewership, by embracing a warts and all approach to
being a game show.
This
itself was almost being an anti-game show, wanting to more rougher
them some of the more expensive productions going into studios such
as LWT's Play Your Cards Right or Punchlines, more homely then
Yorkshire's 3-2-1. In earlier series, the losing contestants would
get a brass dart shaped chalk holder and also a set of darts plus
whatever money they had won, later getting a keyring as well. But
like with Yorkshire's 3-2-1, the programme wanted something unique to
give away as a constellation prize, the Kirkstall Lane based
production gave away a ceramic Dusty Bin to contestants, so it was
decided that Bullseye should go down the same route and Peter Harris
decided the programme should give away to contestants a 'Bendy
Bully', though at first Jim Bowen thought this was not a good idea as
it seemed that it would be rubbing salt into the wounds of losing
contestants, by giving them something which appeared to be a bit of
tat. But Harris decided that it was a good idea to do this and after
having graphic designer Chris Wroe make up one as a trial model, he
gave the go ahead to mass produce the item to give them away to every
contestant who played the game. This in itself became another cult
item, for the programme to build its reputation on.
"101 with six darts, three for you and three for you..."
With
success comes decline, by the mid 1990's the show was starting to
look somewhat dated against newer shows, even with more of a risked
gamble introduced to the end game of just winning 'Bus Fare Home',
the viewers had been drifting away from the programme and a move to
Saturday teatimes did not help the production at all, with the
programme beaten by twenty year-old repeats of Dad's Army and what
ever else the BBC had to offer and they had to offer a new type of
game show which had never been done before one based on a burgeoning
sport, that was Big Break. All the traits were there in that show for
the BBC which Bullseye had been doing ten years earlier. Even Carlton
developed Tenball, a derivative of snooker and pool to replace
Bullseye, in a move which had seen ITV going from stone age to space
age in just two weeks. By now the schedules were dominated with
brash, flash shows done on bigger budgets or Gladiators being only
one example. Seemingly Bullseye was old hat, but until when ITV
revived it for one week to take in the Gameshow Marathon season in
2005 to celebrate some of ITV's best ever game shows hosted by Ant
and Dec, so popular was the edition of Bullseye it came back for the
next series of the Gameshow Marathon presented by Vernon Kay.
With
the rise of Challenge TV on cable and satellite television at that
time, this lead to two new series of the programme presented by
former contestant of the show Dave Spikey, who by now had become a
successful comedian, regaining a cult audience once again the
Bullseye story had gone quiet until Challenge TV had moved onto the
Freeview platform in 2011, with them showing old editions of the
programme from the early 1990's and the audience who remember the
show came back to it once again prompting the purchase of the third,
fourth and fifth series of the programme from 1983, 1984 and 1985
respectively. Eventually in 2013, they started to showed the first
two series of the programme and as I write this, they are coming to
end of series one.
But
one thing can be certain, for all of its years its been a 'Super,
Smashing, Great' ride to get where the programme is today and with
talk of the original format being tweaked again, it may not have been
the last we've seen of Bully yet...
