Countdown is based on the French game show Des chiffres et des lettres (Numbers and Letters), created by Armand Jammot. The format was brought to Britain by Marcel Stellman, a Belgian record executive, who had watched the French show and believed it could be popular overseas. Yorkshire Television purchased the format and commissioned a series of eight shows under the title Calendar Countdown, which were to be part of their regional news programme Calendar.
If you have Sky or Virgin they often show it on TV5 Monde at 12.30pm a couple of days a week. I don't understand French at all but from what I've seen the programme looks rather dull in comparison to it's UK counterpart. But saying that the French version is a little more up to date.
