Play Your Cards Right
| Play Your Cards Right | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Genre | Game show |
| Created by | Chester Feldman |
| Presented by | Bruce Forsyth |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 16 |
| No. of episodes | 248 (inc. 6 specials & 4 unaired) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes (inc. adverts) |
| Production company(s) |
LWT in association with Talbot Television and Goodson-Todman Productions (1980–7) LWT and Talbot Television (1994–5) LWT and Fremantle (UK) Productions (Grundy) (1996–9) Thames (2002–3) |
| Distributor |
ITV Studios FremantleMedia |
| Release | |
| Original network | ITV |
| Picture format |
4:3 (1980–7, 1994–9) 16:9 (2002–3) |
| Original release | 1 February 1980 – 20 June 2003 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Card Sharks |
Play Your Cards Right (or Bruce Forsyth's Play Your Cards Right) is a British television game show based on, and played similarly to, the American show known as Card Sharks.
Play Your Cards Right broadcast on ITV from 1980 to 1987, produced by LWT. The host was Bruce Forsyth. LWT produced a more modern version from 1994 to 1999, initially expected to be presented by Brian Conley, who filmed a pilot show before Forsyth was lured back. In 2002, Bruce hosted another revival, with slightly modified rules. This version was produced by Thames Television. On 15 October 2005, it made a one-off return as part of Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon, celebrating 50 years of ITV. It made another one-off return in 2007 again part of Gameshow Marathon. Forsyth also presented a parody of the format, Play Your Iraqi Cards Right (originally titled Play Your Kurds Right), when he was guest host on the satirical BBC TV series Have I Got News for You. Play Your Cards Right has also been turned into a successful Interactive DVD which was released in 2007, with an updated sequel released in 2008, both produced by DVDPro.
Two couples (two single players during the first series) alternated who went first on each question. The questions were based on surveys of 100 people. The first couple would guess how many of the 100 gave a certain answer to the question, and the second would guess whether the actual number was higher or lower than the other couple's guess. (If the first couple guessed exactly the number of people, they would win a case of champagne, as opposed to $500 on the US versions.) If the second couple was correct then they gained control of the cards, otherwise the first team played.
Unlike the US version, the questions usually had some comedy value (for example: The question would be, "We asked 100 tattoo-artists - if somebody came in asking for a tattoo of Bruce Forsyth, would you try to talk them out of it?"). The first couple would joke around with Bruce, and then decide on a sum of, say, 64. The second couple would say "higher" (and Bruce would pretend to be offended). If the answer was, say, 26, the second couple were wrong in guessing "higher", so the first couple started with the cards.
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Wikipedia