Is Mastermind Unfair?

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1:25Hello and welcome to another edition of the Rest is Entertainment Questions Edition. With me, Marina Hyde. I'm too select. This is AI. Sorry, just redo me. I liked it. And I'm Richard Osman. Welcome to the question and answers edition of The Rest is Entertainment. Shall we get straight on? Please do. Dive in. Here's a question from Stephen Jagard and a topical one. ITV boss Kevin Ligo, friend of the pod, said that despite its viewing figures, Mr Bates versus the post office would lose about£1 million due to its lack of overseas sales. This leads me to wonder which UK TV programmes have been the most profitable.

2:02Two questions and one there, because the Mr Bates thing is interesting in and of itself. First of all, as discussed previously, this drama is extraordinary. It's by far the most watched drama in the UK this year, by far the most. But in terms of the cost of these things, an hour on ITV of a drama costs about£2.5 million, although I've previously talked to people who have got a big star in their thing, and maybe it will go up to£3 million. But that's about it. Talent costs add a lot on top. Yeah, we could add a lot. But the post office was£2.5 million, pounds an hour and there are four hours or ITV hours.

2:36Now the broadcaster pays a million of that, 2.5 million. Then you've got tax credits of 400 ,000 and then maybe overseas sales of, I don't know, 700 ,000. But so the overall loss across that is 1 million. But I think actually what Kevin Ligo did in that instance didn't count. And to some degree, it's quite hard to measure, is the ad revenues in there because they're quite hard to isolate with the way particularly that show might have been watched. But it would be fair to say, actually, that overall on Mr. Bates, ITV broke even. But in terms of what the most popular shows are, you know that Mr.

3:11McCorver quote from David Copperfield? You know, annual income,£20, annual expenditure,£19.96. Result, happiness. Annual income,£20, annual expenditure,£20. Norton Six, result, misery. So actually, you need the show, despite people thinking, oh, it's Blue Planet, it's Doctor Who, whatever. you need the cost of the show to be quite low so that in sales it becomes profitable more quickly. So there are big expensive shows like Doctor Who but it's now sort of co-production with Disney. With Disney and it's going to be very interesting going forward that I suspect we haven't heard the last of that story.

3:43We haven't heard the last of that. We'll definitely be talking about that a lot but it needs Disney as a partner just to raise the budget. But once you've got Disney as a partner you then can't obviously sell it to the US, to streamers, to whatever. So in a weird way, big expensive things like Attenborough shows and what have you are in some ways harder to make money from. Long running is probably best. Things like, weirdly, Midsummer Murders, Call the Midwife, Vera. These are real bankers. Yeah, there's two types of profitable shows, really. There's the Finnish programme sales, which is what you're talking about there.

4:16So the Atomber stuff, the Planet Earth, which can play in 200 countries around the world. Downton would be another example of that, a show that just plays in every territory imaginable. And that's a very profitable world. you've made the programme already, then sort of it's all cream off the top. So the interesting thing about Mr Bates versus the post office is you're not selling that abroad because it's not of interest. It's a sort of niche story in a way. Exactly. All those stories of British inaptitude and misfortune are popular around the world for a number of reasons. Listen, they would love it everywhere around the world, but it's not an immediate...

4:50If you're in the marketplace... They enjoyed Brexit hugely. Yes, they loved it. People laughed about it around the whole world. Yeah, they do. Every book event I ever do around the world, they always ask about Brexit. It's always the first thing. You're like, oh, come on, guys. I'm on holiday. We British Empire ourselves. Well done, guys. But yeah, so it's harder if you're at Cannes selling a show to sell a show about the British post office. It's easier to sell a show about the British class system to sell Downton. So there's loads of shows that, you know, Top Gear that play everywhere in the world.

5:14And if you've already made your money back, that's all gravy. But they're expensive. They are expensive. But, you know, if you've already covered those costs and older shows, you know, Downton was probably fully funded at the time. These days, it wouldn't be. but probably the most profitable shows are formats you're not selling the finished program although you can what you're actually selling is a format for other people to make and you're raking in a licensing fee every single time you do that and to go to Mr. McCorber's quote about things, you know about your spending is the key thing something like Come Dine With Me which is a very, very, very cheap show to make but I think there's been 50 different versions of it around the world I think they sell the finished programs of that as well Come Dine With Me, which was originally made by Granada, I would say it's one of the most profitable shows in history, in UK history.

6:02End of Mold, Deal or No Deal, used to make us an absolute fortune because every territory made their own version of it. And also in territories where there were sort of lax gambling laws, it got turned into gambling games and all sorts of things. A show like Million Pound Drop, again, we made all around the world. It wasn't insanely expensive to make. The sort of real granddaddies of those would be Weakest Link, which is sold to every territory. Millionaire, obviously. And Millionaire would probably make more money, I think, than Weakest Link. And again, it's still on in various territories. So if you own the IP, which we've talked about before, intellectual property of those shows, people keep having to pay you a fee for that show to be a hit in their territory.

6:44I think the most profitable British show in history would probably be a show, wasn't it over there, would probably be Survivor, only because it was so enormous in America. and so the money... It's still going. They're on whatever series of it. It's unbelievable how deeply they're... It's still going. Scores of series. Exactly. And just to give a really basic idea, I did a show on British TV in the 90s called If I Ruled the World with Clive Anderson. Didn't particularly trouble the scorers. But the Swedes do a version of that. They still do it now. So they're still making very, very good money for hat tricks.

7:15So those shows where you've got the IP, you made it many, many years ago, but all around the world, they're still making their own versions of it. And so you're still making the money from that, not having to do anything. that's where an awful lot of the profit comes. But I would think pound for pound in terms of how cheap a show is to make and how popular it is around the world and how many different versions there have been I would think it's very, very hard to beat Come Dime With Me. Here's one for you, Richard. Chris Smith says, following on from your discussion about celebrity spin-offs of TV shows has anyone ever appeared on the normal version of a TV show but then become famous enough to appear on the celebrity version at a later date?

7:50The opposite trajectory doesn't even bear thinking about. I think it does, but yes. In that discussion, by the way, I talked about Family Fortunes only being a celeb now and actually it's one of the few shows that's gone back to being a normal punter show. That out of the way. I can think of two examples, one of which was on Pointless, funnily enough. There is a wonderful crime writer called Steve Kavanagh who writes really sort of like a John Grisham, but for the UK. It's like The Thirteen, The Accomplice, loads of great books. always comes up with an amazing sort of MacGuffin in the middle of a story and goes on from there.

8:25Now, Steve was on, I think, the very, very first series of Pointless many, many years ago with his wife, Tracy. And they were on, and having met him subsequently at various book events, and his book's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. He's a big star now in the crime world. About two seasons ago, I said, Steve, he's just come on the Celebrity Pointless, which he did. So who's the first person ever to do the double on that? Very good. The most famous one, I think, would probably be a very early series of Deal or No Deal, when Olly Murs, an unknown Olly Murs, was a regular punter, a contestant on that, and went away with a very small amount of money, and then came back and did a celebrity one many years later, and also went away with a very small amount of money.

9:09But Naughty Boy, the same. So Naughty Boy went on Deal or No Deal, won quite a lot of money, spent it on a studio, and then became one of the world's biggest producers. Jade Goody is an example of it because she appeared on the Civilian Brick Brother and then ended up on the Celebrity Brick Brother. But yeah, it does happen. And funnily enough, a wonderful comic called Leo Reich, who was on Pointless many, many years ago and now is a big comedian, was recently on House of Games. So yeah, there's a history of people going from non-celebrity to celebrity shows. Marina, a question from Lawrence Peeney.

9:44He says, a friend of mine once spent a month on location in a minor role in a movie only to discover that he didn't make the final edit and has never lived it down. Do you have any good cutting room floor stories to make him feel a bit better? To make him feel better, this happens to people all the time and it's even happened to big stars. There was an interesting legal case recently. Do you remember, what's her name? Anna de Armas. She was in the trailer for Yesterday, the Richard Curtis movie starring Himesh Patel, who about everyone in the world forgets the Beatles. She was in the trailer for that and then she was cut out of the final version and two fans of hers sued for saying, you've misrepresented the trailer, she's in the trailer and then she's not in the film.

10:24And it got quite far this case, but I think it was sort of thrown out at the final hurdle in America, of course, where you can go, well done, the lawyers again. But please don't let your friend feel bad because this happens to people all the time. I'll give you one very good example. Terrence Malick, who is a fantastic director who directed Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven, Tree of Life. He's an amazing director. He is one of those people who people, and maybe he says it about himself, you know, I find the film in the edit. Now, that is a ding dong, the warning bell. And they're very dialogue heavy and he films a huge amount of footage and then, you know, he's coming down to a sort of normal film length.

11:00Now, when he came back to do The Thin Red Line, he hadn't directed anything for ages and he got like an unbelievable sort of roster of big Hollywood talent. It's a World War II, if you haven't seen it, it's a World War II movie set in the Pacific Theatre about one sort of battalion in one battle. Anyway, now, Adrian Brody, I think, thought he was the lead. And this is before The Piano, and he thought it was going to be his big breakthrough role. And he went to the premiere and discovered he wasn't fully on the cutting room floor, but there was a snippet of him left. He is not in any way the lead of this movie.

11:34And I think what happened is that in the edit, Terrence Malick just found his eye constantly drawn to Jim Caviezel. And in the end, he ends up being sort of effectively the lead. Mickey Rourke, I think, was completely cut out of it or maybe appears in sort of one scene. Oh, my God, there's so many. Lucas Haas, Bill Pullman are completely cut out of the movie. I mean, everyone has been cut out of the thin red line. Billy Bob Thornton did a voiceover. Bye-bye voiceover. Some people never even got on the plane. Gary Oldman was going to be in it. Viggo Mortensen, they never even got on the plane. Martin Sheen was going to be in it.

12:05He was obviously in Badlands for Terrence Malick before. God, I mean, Christopher Plummer in a different movie called In the New World said there was nothing of me left in that movie. Terence Mallet was obsessed with birds and he kept just cutting to birds. He'd say, oh, look, there's an osprey over there. And then he would, and there was Christopher Plum said that a lot of people were quite, but some people just took it philosophically and some people were very, very bitter. But yeah, some really big names have ended up on the cutting room floor. And I just used the thin red line as an example because so many did.

12:32And also finding out the premiere is pretty good. Because there's, you know, there's always that thing, isn't there? Especially if you've got a small part in something that you, you know, invite the family around and all the neighbours. if you're cut out. But also, because sometimes in a smaller role, they won't tell you that you've been cut out. Yeah, I mean, he didn't really mention to Adrian Brody he was no longer the Lee. You would hope that they would have told him, but that's, yeah, it happens all the time. Just the clenched draw in the darkness of the cinema as you're watching it in your black tie.

12:59No, not a great feeling. So please reassure your friend that this happens all the time. And I hope you had a great time on the month and location. Unless Lawrence Peeney's friend is Adrian Brody. Yeah. In which case, this is just... In which case. Oh my God. I'm telling you nothing you don't know. I'll tell you who had it worst. Adrian Brody. It's like, but I am Adrian Brody. Now, should we go to a break? Let's do that. The new Popeyes and Hot Ones menu is the definition of fire flavor. We've got the sizzling sriracha dippers. 10 out of 10. Time to take it up a notch with the smoking rojo chicken sandwich.

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14:52Okay, welcome back, everybody. Richard, I have a question for you about Mastermind from Harriet Ingalls. It's clear that the contestants are discouraged from interrupting Clive Murray when he's asking the questions, even though it is sometimes clear they know the answer before he has finished asking. how can they ensure that each contestant has an equal amount of questions some of the questions are fairly lengthy it feels unfair as it eats into their time to get as many correct answers as possible well funnily enough the second part of that question answers the first part they're not discouraged from answering they're not allowed to you have to wait to the end of every single question on mastermind before you have to give your answer so that's the absolute rule you can't in the middle because by and large halfway through the question any question you know it or you don't know yeah so you have to wait to the end of the question on mastermind and that allows the producers to know exactly how long your questions are so to ensure that everyone has the same amount of questions because the questions are all written down you'll just read them out very easily in a rehearsal where the clive wouldn't be anywhere near so you know that each of them has 11 questions say and that is absolutely why you're not allowed to interrupt if you're allowed to interrupt you could be coming in on word three of certain questions yeah and so the fact that you're not allowed to interrupt means that it is fair and means everyone's got the same amount of questions it's scary for clive doing anything where there's a time limit you know you can't really mess up god i'd be abysmal out of it but at least on that you can you know you can stop and start that's uh distracting for the contestant but yeah on that show absolutely you are not allowed to ask until the end and that is because you have to ensure it's fair to everyone and in their time that they get the same amount of questions on something like house of games for example people buzzing after like one second and obviously in the edit we show the full question so people can play along at home but if you allow people to buzz in or answer early people will literally like you'll be three words in you say which city and people say jakarta yeah oh yeah it was jakarta um so yeah on on that one you are not allowed to um interrupt and the reason you're not allowed to interrupt is to make it fair richard have they ever asked you to be on the celebrity version of mastermind they do there's nothing to be gained from me either i do well in which case people go he's a smart arse or I do badly in which case they go I thought he was supposed to be a smart arse so yeah I couldn't I couldn't in all conscious go on though I love Clyde Myrie Oh he's terrific Ryan E at Ryan E has commented on our YouTube he says I've heard the biggest part of being an actor is sitting around waiting is that true?

17:19I don't know if it's the biggest part I think there's so many big parts of being an actor being able to deal with the rejection I think is incredibly difficult. I mean, the main thing is being able to turn it on for the camera. So I'm going to give an example like this last week on night shoots for the show I'm working on. And you'll get there at six and maybe you'll finish at 3.34. So you get there six in the evening. Yeah, six in the evening. So say that's 10 hours or maybe nine and a half with no sort of lunch, which by the way happens at one in the morning or something. Oh, that's fun. Yeah.

17:51And for that, roughly speaking, we might get three minutes of the show. It's a half hour. We might get three minutes of the show out of those 10 hours. We could literally get five episodes of House of Games done in that time. You could get quite a lot done. And maybe not sometime. On some days, if it's a bit technically complicated, for other reasons, it might be less. And on some days, maybe you'll get four minutes or whatever, because all those different setups take time. So there are so many different camera setups for each individual scene. and you're seeing, I think the biggest thing when I'm watching something like that is just how amazing they are.

18:21You know, it's the middle of the night and they're just able to turn it on and re-find it for the camera in between takes and then, you know, have their downtime and then come back out and do it between the rehearsals. And then suddenly you get it on the last one. I think that's really amazing. That's a big part of being an actor. But one of the things I think about a lot these days, particularly with men, and you look at obviously the dominant kind of cultural product of our era in lots of ways has been those Marvel movies. and the sheer amount of time you have to spend in the gym to have those types of physiques, it's insane.

18:52Like you can't do anything else. That thing about which we've talked about before, Mark Wahlberg's day when he has sort of four or five workouts during the days up at 2.30 in the morning. It's so mad when you think back to someone like Humphrey Bogart, you know, being an actor was kind of like having a load of fun going out to the coconut grave and getting drunk with all your friends and then turning up and being in Casablanca. And then you've got Mark Wahlberg where it is all like working out and praying and, you know, scheduling two minutes of family time. And for what? To be in sort of some not very good movie.

19:20A huge amount of time for a lot of these, obviously women have, we know women's body issues and how difficult it's been for them to be in films. But for these enormous, really bulked up physiques, a huge amount of being an actor in those films is honestly so many hours a day being in the gym. Since we're on YouTube, I have to spend six hours in the gym every day. It's punishing you. It's punishing taking everything away from you. My favourite machine is the one with the Trixes in. But the waiting around thing is absolutely definitely right. It's boredom, boredom, boredom, then bang on. And being amazing.

19:52Exactly what you're saying. Whenever Ingrid's off filming, you know, you'll be getting messages for like two hours because she's literally sitting in a Winnebago waiting to go on. Because, by the way, and it's not because something's badly run, it's just there's a lot of moving parts on a film set. You know, the setting up of the different shot, even on the same scene, takes a while. And it can take an hour longer than you think. It can take half an hour less than you think. you know there can be a problem with noise which puts you back another two hours and so you're sitting there sitting there sitting there for something that you know what it is that you're going to do and you know you've got to get an emotional place for but you don't know if you're doing that at 1 p.m or 6 p.m and you don't know if the light is going to be fading or not fading I would say a lot of it is sitting around all the actors sitting around with each other and and if you've got to cry on order and have a tear just start to fall down because it's the moment where you're starting crying it's that emotional moment in the story and you've got to do that you know 20 times and it's three in the morning it's really hard it's technically extraordinary and you have so much respect for uh the actors and i tell you another really interesting thing i've discovered is that you talk to the actors whenever things i've written you talk to the actors and you think gosh i wrote this um whatever it may be on different shows and you think you know already so much more about this character than i did and they already understand i've talked to so many directors about this thing it's incredible you talk to the actors and you think gosh you already instinctively understand this so much better than I do and I'm sometimes the writer and director and I've spoken to directors about this sort of thing and it's sort of amazing that they are so instinctive and so sort of and being emotionally open in that way that somehow you become it really quickly I think it's it's amazing and people laugh at actors and people they give them a bad rap for all sorts of different things but it is when you're watching up close and they're brilliant and they're at the top of the game you think god this is this is the hardest thing but it's true I was funny for watching Ripley which I'm really really enjoying on Netflix absolutely love it and it's so beautifully shot and Andrew Scott is in almost every scene of that but it's so beautifully shot you know the one thing when you know actors that you know he is having to hit very very exact marks all the time on that show because every frame is absolutely beautiful and lots of directors you can be a little bit looser with where you are and where you're standing.

22:02And, you know, just so long as you're vaguely near any sort of, you know, source of light, it's okay. But in that, he has got to be exactly where he is. He's got to deliver this incredible performance as well. And you do think, man, that must have been hard to film. Even this week, you know, being out in the dark and you're having to hit your mark, which is actually a thing, a genuine little sort of T-shaped thing that's thrown down on the floor that you do in rehearsals. When you've done the rehearsal and the actor's got into the right place and you think everyone agrees and everyone thinks it's right, then they'll throw down the marks and then they have to do that in the dark, in the scene.

22:34Obviously there's lighting but these are just tiny little technical things and there's about 20 of those happening at any given moment. So yes, and then just to make it look effortless. You have to do the same thing four times. You have to do it in a wide shot, in a mid shot, in a close shot. Then you've got to do it in a reverse. Yeah, you've got to do it probably 15, 20 times and you've got to make it look completely effortless and it was the first time. Again, it's such a tiny bit of minutiae but entertainment is exactly the same. Hitting your marks which is a common expression but they genuinely are marks and the mark is always identical which is always a bit of coloured gaffer tape with a long bit here and then a little T here and you essentially stand on that.

23:12If you're a quiz show contestant if you're a quiz show host if you're an actor if you're a presidential candidate being filmed you always have to hit your mark and that mark is always always a tiny bit of gaffer tape. In your own colour. In your own colour. Everybody's got their own colour. Here is a question from Sue Street. Sue Street is where all the lawyers offices are. Yeah. I'm thinking about shows where there is a time element. Bake Off, Pottery Throwdown, Sort Your Life Out, etc, etc. They always say one minute left. Is this real time or fixed in the edit? It's sort of a movable feast, I would say.

23:46They are, as you say, all of these shows where you've only got one minute left, you've only got 30 seconds left. And by and large, there's usually someone who's really up against it. So, you know, you've got some genuine real time footage of someone just sort of finishing. But most of the time, you are sort of, you're not lying, but by and large, someone finished three minutes ago and someone else finished five minutes ago and someone else finished with like 45 seconds to go. But, you know, if, again, if the emotional truth is that they finish really close to the wire, then they'll make it look like they finished one second.

24:16Which they always do, because these shows, those time slots that you get, even if it's something like it's quite long, like something on Netflix, like one of those, Is It Kate, which I sort of have a grip by, But it's carefully calibrated. They will be under pressure. I always think it must be really hard to have to go and talk to the host when they come and stand by you. Like, can you shut up? I'm trying to make an incredibly complicated dinosaur cake. Yeah, like absolutely not. So I think they work out which contestant. Noel Fielding is always very good at that, just sort of sidling up to someone who doesn't want to be talking to them and just sort of just, you know, getting a little smile out of them.

24:47Yeah, those things are stressful and you do finish quite close to the wire. There are some times where you're literally finishing that second. but most of the time you are hinting at quite how stressful it is. You're showing everybody's finish. Yes, exactly. It's a bit like a lot of sports where you actually can't tell how well someone's doing unless you see the clock. So there are quite a lot of sports like that which are not my favourite ones necessarily. And shows like Race at Race around the world where you know that they're sort of turning up an hour or two hours differently to each other.