Mr & Mrs returns to TV

I'd love to see updated formats such as....

Jeopardy
My Kind Of Music
Catchphrase
The Pyramid Game
Winner Takes All
Wheel of Fortune
Sale of the Century (I saw an updated version called Temptation in Australia, last year, and it was damn good)
The 64,000 Question
The Krypton Factor
Play Your Cards Right

I've not included Family Fortunes as I will reserve judgement on that until I have seen the new series with Vernon Kay as its presenter from the Autumn.

The Price Is Right needs a complete overhaul as its present incarnation is absoultely rubbish, or is it all down to Joe Pasquale as its host.

Mr and Mrs wouldn't be on my list it was a gameshow pastiche of the 70's and 80's era and there is not enough in the format to bring it into the 21st Century and feel that it should stay in the past and celebrate it with repeats. Look what happened when Ant and Dec revived The Golden Shot for an episode of the Gameshow Marathon - it bombed.

What was the name of the Central gameshow with Bradley Walsh as its host - a cross between a normal gameshow and It's A Knockout - it was on for 30 minutes. I always thought it reminded me of Cheggars Plays Pop but without the pop group of the week!!!

It would be great to see Eliminator back but we're probably not likely to.
Fun House and Knightmare would be a bit too complicated.

At least they had an already-available bin in which to put it....

There was an interview with Derek in this weekend's Sunday Post. He revealed that the Border studio was that low-tech, the scores were changed manually by a man who nipped on (out of shot) when the camera panned to Derek; the studio was that small that they could only fit in an audience of 50; and at times Derek was only 18 inches from the front row of the audience! (No wonder LWT's series "End of Part One" sent it up.)

Fact: The voiceover for Mr & Mrs was done by the late Pat Doody, who was an announcer at Border.

Does anyone else think that the opening bars to the show's theme tune resembles the jingles played by Mr Whippy ice-cream vans?

They did do "Simply the Best" though do you remember that? That was an "It's a Knockout" ripoff if ever i saw one. It bombed because they put it on for a stupid amount of time, like 1 and a half hours, i can't remember how long it was, but it was LONG.

What was the story with the Tyne Tees involvement? I have read on a number of sources that TTTV produced some of the early series from Newcastle because Border lacked colour equipment, TT themselves included the programme in their ITV50 programme, and I know Lyn Spencer was in it for a while, but I'm too young to remember anything about it. Surely Border didn't lack colour technology as late as 1975 (which is the year Lyn joined TT)?

And how come DB owns the rights to the programme, when it was a Canadian import, HTV produced it as well, and DB was an employee of Border TV (so you'd think Border would retain the rights)? Very unusual.

This is the following I would like to see back on TV:
Catchphrase
The Krypton Factor
The Crystal Maze
Wheel of Fortune
It's a Knockout
15 to 1
Blockbusters.

I don't like the current version of The Price is Right because it's been over modernised and I dislike the new host and his scary humor. The new Bullseye show has to be one of the best comebacks because it's virtually unchanged and everythings the same apart from Dave Spikey, the freshly updated set and Granada producing it instead of Central .

The problem with the Crystal Maze is that it can drain so much electricity in one show and the host of 15 to 1 is now retired. And another thing would be that Central made the best gameshows and now it's been killed by you know who.

From TV Ark, a couple of Mr & Mrs intros from the Border era, with Pat Doody as the voice-over:

http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/gameshows/gameshows/progs/mrandmrs1986.rm
(with the classic "Mr Whippy" opening to the sig tune!)

http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/gameshows/gameshows/progs/mrandmrs1984.rm
(a later version which suddenly becomes all jazzy - note how small the studio is)


and the End of Part One mickey-take (Boredom Television caption and "Mr & Mr & Mrs" titles):
http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/itvlondon/lwt/progs/endofpartone1980-mrandmrs.rm

Enjoy!

Border's studios weren't equipped with colour cameras until mid to late 1973. Prior to that studio programmes like Lookaround, as well as local quizzes, documentaries etc were originated in black and white. They were able to screen adverts, films and filmed series like "Marcus Welby MD" in colour. The network "Mr and Mrs" (presented by Derek Batey) alternated with the same show from HTV, presented by Alan Taylor. And one series was recorded at Tyne Tees in Newcastle. The endcap declared it was a "Border Tyne Tees colour co-production".

I had a hell of time trying to work out the correct Mr & Mrs story for my website.

After some research I came up with this....

Mr & Mrs History

You make reference to Mr Batey being in talks with ITV. As far as I had understood, Celador had acquired the international rights and were in discussions with 'a number of television companies'. For all we know it could end up on Sky One.

That was written about six months ago, there was a piece about it on his own website.