Two Game Shows (Seventies TV Season)

The introduction to this series of posts about 1970s TV can be found here:

Today two shows which sort of go together because they are game shows in my mind, although very different. I'm going to have to do a general post about them both because I don't think an individual episode of either will make a blog post.

First we have The Indoor League (1973 to 1977) which I knew had to appear here if only so that I can talk about Fred Trueman of blessed memory introducing it by saying 'The cream of the nation's taprooms...'. It has the very simple premise of playing pub games competitively in the Irish Centre in Leeds and broadcasting it. I think I can truthfully say you won't see shove halfpenny broadcast anywhere else in the world.

Initially competitors were limited to residents of the Yorkshire Television region, but after the first series international competitors were accepted. Interestingly initially the darts games were played on a northern doubles darts board that doesn't have a triple score part, but the more familiar one was adopted as the show went on.

Even though it was obviously very popular at the time (and since - there are tables of the winners on the internet) - one of the fascinating things about it now is again how much of the time it was. Host Fred Trueman smoked a pipe and had a pint in his hand throughout the show. Also the set was about as 1970s as you could get as, of course were the contestants' clothes. Also you will see from the screencaps that it isn't gammon TV at all and does feature Black people.

The whole series was released on DVD by Network although there are some episodes loose online. My only sorrow is that our national game Mornington Crescent only started being broadcast later in the seventies so doesn't feature.

Jokers Wild (1969 to 1974) had another simple premise, that two teams of famous comedians would competitively tell jokes on a subject chosen at random. While one comedian was telling his joke a member of the other team could interrupt and score by ending the joke. But then the original comedian would have to tell his ending. There was also a part where one of them would do a stand up session. Apparently it was based on two US game shows that of course I've never heard of: Stop Me If You've Heard This One and Can You Top This. Interestingly this is how I've found out that there was also a US TV show called The Joker's Wild which seems to have quite a different format.

What I like best about it is that the scoring (by host Barry Cryer) was almost completely arbitrary and largely based on the audience's response. The other thing I like about it is is that there are absolutely no duds. If Indoor League had the cream of the nation's tap rooms this one had the cream of the nation's comedians. The regular team captains and guest comedians sound like a real roll call of quality: Ted Ray, Arthur Askey, Ray Martine, Les Dawson, Jon Pertwee, Jon Cleese, I suppose we should mention Rolf Harris to show that he infested everything, Norman Collier, Charlie Chester, Tim Brooke-Taylor.

In the manner of the time Barry Bryer had one or maore scantily dressed glamorous assistants in the first series. Diplomatically Wikipedia says they didn't have a function so were quickly dropped. Bab, we all know what their function was.

The first two series were released on DVD by Network, and there are some episodes loose on the internet. Good luck on wading through the episodes of *The* Joker's Wild to find them.

I don't really have a criticism of this show except that it was very much of its time. It's difficult to give a flavour of it so instead you get Les Dawson telling a Mother in Law story. You don't get this sort of thing on sensible TV blogs.

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