The People Versus

Fresh from their success with WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE ITV hyped up their new quiz show in August 2000 which helped make it the third most watched programme of the week on its debut broadcast . Unfortunately due to its format it quickly slipped out of the top ten most watched programmes the following week and by the third edition it wasn't even making the top twenty . If I remember correctly it flopped so badly that ITV cut its run prematurely , changed the presenter from Kirsty Young to Kaye Adams and scheduled the show from peak time viewing to the tea time slot . The fact that I am the first person to comment on the show several years after it was first broadcast shows you how fondly remembered it is .

The problem with the show is that it revolved around specialist knowledge which probably alienated the TV audience , not so with WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE where we get smug satisfaction in seeing a contestant sweat to a question we know . It's the opposite in this case and I clearly remember the first edition revolving around a contestant answering questions on technology . Now I have trouble switching on a computer so there's little in the way of me shouting out the answers . Do you know you invented the world wide web ? Neither do I . There's also another problem and that's the amount of money on offer . In WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE a contestant can win one million quid by answering 15 questions . If I remember rightly it would take 200 correct answers for someone on this show to win £1,000,000

Can not wholly agree with your comments. The show was a bit more difficult in the fact that although the contestants choose their own subjects it did leave them open to 50 million potential question masters - not a feature of Millionaire. It did in fact give the opportunity to learn about things you did not know about as well.

One interesting point to mention is that on Millionaire you have the choice of taking the money after seeing if you can answer the question or not. On The People Versus you had to answer until you got a question wrong.

As a contestant on the first series it was good to me so i am not knocking it.