Quiz (ITV) - Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

[SweetPerdita]

They didn't, in real life they never had a dog. It did say at the start of each episode that it wasn't completely factually accurate. Apparently they had a cat, not sure if anything happened to that or not, but they never had a dog.

The mini series was based on a West End play of the same name, which is where the weird Tarrant to camera bit on the end originates from - the audience in the theatre were asked to vote at the end on whether they thought the Ingrams were guilty or not. Im not sure if the shot dog was invented for the play and so kept in for the TV version, or was only invented for this TV version. But either way ITV should be ashamed, for showing something so emotive, but which never happened at all.

Do you have a source for that? The Ingram family have been talking about the attacks on their pets for nearly 15 years, and have been consistent in stating that both their cat and their dog were attacked. The cat was shot but survived. The dog was kicked and had stones thrown at it, and later died of injuries. The TV series just slightly conflated both attacks into one. The Ingrams are clearly dodgy but I really can't believe they'd force their young children to lie and pretend to be sad about a non-existent dead dog, and surely the vet named in the articles or other locals would have outed them if they'd made up the dog attack? SOURCE

“Quiz” was very sympathetic towards the Ingrams - I wasn't at all surprised to find out that they actually met with the producers while it was being filmed!! So it sounds to me like they had some sort of influence with the way it was made, ending in the question of whether they were guilty or not.

The Ingrams visited the set once long after the scripts had been completed, because the writer has a policy that whenever he writes about real people, everyone he writes about is invited to meet him and visit the set. Every single person portrayed in it was invited. A person who was heavily involved and who actually did influence the scripts was Paul Smith, the CEO of Celador and original producer of WWTBAM, and the man most convinced of the Ingrams' guilt. The writer worked with Smith to develop Quiz and he was able to suggest additions and changes to the script. For example the scene where Paul Smith meets the head of the Syndicate (in real life named the Consortium) in a pub happened in real life and it's actually something that happened as a result of the TV show being made. The programme makers researched the Consortium which sparked Paul Smith's interest in them, and he asked the Quiz production team to put him in contact with Paddy Spooner, had the pub meeting shown in episode 3, then went back and told the writer all about it so he turned it into a scene!


The intention of the original stage play was to have two acts showing both events twice, the first act portrayed events from the POV of them being guilty and showed all the evidence for the prosecution, and the second half portrayed the same events from the POV of them being innocent and showed the evidence for the defence. The stage play was designed to question concepts of bias and objective reality and black and white thinking, and the Ingram case was just a convenient tool to use as a medium for those issues. The writer said he chose the Ingram case because it was a relatively lightweight (meaning no one got hurt) case that polarised the nation. And the writer also said even today he's not sure whether they're definitely guilty or not.

Personally I don't think adapting the play for TV worked all that well, because theatre can do metaphorical high-brow stuff where ostensibly it's about a man on a game show but really it's a philosophical debate about neuroscience and truth and la-da-la, and theatre audiences can more readily accept that they're watching the same events from two different perspectives. TV is more naturalistic by design and people expect a TV show about real life events to be a straight forward docu-drama, which this was never supposed to be. They tried to impose the "two halves" format, where the second episode was supposed to be the 'guilty' episode and the third the 'innocent' episode but it just confused viewers who didn't realise it was intentional and couldn't figure out why the third episode was defending them after the second had so clearly shown them as guilty.

 

[Seaghweld]

Loved this series and intrigued by the case. I guess if you stand back and say the TV company is offering a disproportionate amount of money just for answering a 'few' questions - versus *earning* that much dosh it's 'cheating' anyway - so they are practically inviting people to discover creative ways to win it. For that level of reward people really will spend years honing their chances. I was most intrigued by the suggestion at the end that the consortium are responsible for winning X amount of pounds over the years, and remained undetected simply by not going all the way to the million.
Love Michael Sheen's Tarrant - could so easily have been a caricature.

 

[Horatio]

Do you have a source for that? The Ingram family have been talking about the attacks on their pets for nearly 15 years, and have been consistent in stating that both their cat and their dog were attacked. The cat was shot but survived. The dog was kicked and had stones thrown at it, and later died of injuries. The TV series just slightly conflated both attacks into one. The Ingrams are clearly dodgy but I really can't believe they'd force their young children to lie and pretend to be sad about a non-existent dead dog, and surely the vet named in the articles or other locals would have outed them if they'd made up the dog attack? SOURCE




The Ingrams visited the set once long after the scripts had been completed, because the writer has a policy that whenever he writes about real people, everyone he writes about is invited to meet him and visit the set. Every single person portrayed in it was invited. A person who was heavily involved and who actually did influence the scripts was Paul Smith, the CEO of Celador and original producer of WWTBAM, and the man most convinced of the Ingrams' guilt. The writer worked with Smith to develop Quiz and he was able to suggest additions and changes to the script. For example the scene where Paul Smith meets the head of the Syndicate (in real life named the Consortium) in a pub happened in real life and it's actually something that happened as a result of the TV show being made. The programme makers researched the Consortium which sparked Paul Smith's interest in them, and he asked the Quiz production team to put him in contact with Paddy Spooner, had the pub meeting shown in episode 3, then went back and told the writer all about it so he turned it into a scene!


The intention of the original stage play was to have two acts showing both events twice, the first act portrayed events from the POV of them being guilty and showed all the evidence for the prosecution, and the second half portrayed the same events from the POV of them being innocent and showed the evidence for the defence. The stage play was designed to question concepts of bias and objective reality and black and white thinking, and the Ingram case was just a convenient tool to use as a medium for those issues. The writer said he chose the Ingram case because it was a relatively lightweight (meaning no one got hurt) case that polarised the nation. And the writer also said even today he's not sure whether they're definitely guilty or not.

Personally I don't think adapting the play for TV worked all that well, because theatre can do metaphorical high-brow stuff where ostensibly it's about a man on a game show but really it's a philosophical debate about neuroscience and truth and la-da-la, and theatre audiences can more readily accept that they're watching the same events from two different perspectives. TV is more naturalistic by design and people expect a TV show about real life events to be a straight forward docu-drama, which this was never supposed to be. They tried to impose the "two halves" format, where the second episode was supposed to be the 'guilty' episode and the third the 'innocent' episode but it just confused viewers who didn't realise it was intentional and couldn't figure out why the third episode was defending them after the second had so clearly shown them as guilty.

Wow, this was a great post, really interesting stuff I knew nothing about, thanks ! I definitely didn’t pick up on those ideas at all. Which is a shame because it’s really interesting and i don’t think it would be too hard to do well on tv - it just needed more emphasis that that was happening. Like there could have been a slate saying ‘guilty’ and ‘not guilty’ before respective episodes and as the same thing played out you would realise. I don’t think that style is alien to tv at all - ever since sliding doors the parallel universe concept has been done to death . This isn’t far off that.

Actually in general I felt what most let the show down was how uneven the tone was. It would feel like a straightforward drama for a long time then some absurd comedic moment would throw you completely and feel really out of place. The paddy spooner stuff is interesting but the way it was portrayed and the actor was just ODD. Felt like it was from a different show. So it’s not surprising to me the themes didn’t work either. They were too subtle and there was no narrative direction.
I still thought it was really good and I enjoyed it a lot, but it had the potential to be truly thought provoking I now realise from your post and it’s a shame it couldn’t achieve that.

Side note - the ITV office scenes were filmed at my work place ,ITN -where ITV news is made,. So it is relatively tho not particularly necessarily accurate. But I don’t known if the people involved in that show were based there, ITV have a few sites...
However my building is actually the first shot of the entire show. That was a surprise. I had no idea. I don’t work for ITV, ITN sounds similar but it’s a different company all together so it didn’t even occur to me before watching. I guess they shot those bits at the weekend.

 

[LoisLane]

Do you have a source for that? The Ingram family have been talking about the attacks on their pets for nearly 15 years, and have been consistent in stating that both their cat and their dog were attacked. The cat was shot but survived. The dog was kicked and had stones thrown at it, and later died of injuries. The TV series just slightly conflated both attacks into one. The Ingrams are clearly dodgy but I really can't believe they'd force their young children to lie and pretend to be sad about a non-existent dead dog, and surely the vet named in the articles or other locals would have outed them if they'd made up the dog attack? SOURCE




The Ingrams visited the set once long after the scripts had been completed, because the writer has a policy that whenever he writes about real people, everyone he writes about is invited to meet him and visit the set. Every single person portrayed in it was invited. A person who was heavily involved and who actually did influence the scripts was Paul Smith, the CEO of Celador and original producer of WWTBAM, and the man most convinced of the Ingrams' guilt. The writer worked with Smith to develop Quiz and he was able to suggest additions and changes to the script. For example the scene where Paul Smith meets the head of the Syndicate (in real life named the Consortium) in a pub happened in real life and it's actually something that happened as a result of the TV show being made. The programme makers researched the Consortium which sparked Paul Smith's interest in them, and he asked the Quiz production team to put him in contact with Paddy Spooner, had the pub meeting shown in episode 3, then went back and told the writer all about it so he turned it into a scene!


The intention of the original stage play was to have two acts showing both events twice, the first act portrayed events from the POV of them being guilty and showed all the evidence for the prosecution, and the second half portrayed the same events from the POV of them being innocent and showed the evidence for the defence. The stage play was designed to question concepts of bias and objective reality and black and white thinking, and the Ingram case was just a convenient tool to use as a medium for those issues. The writer said he chose the Ingram case because it was a relatively lightweight (meaning no one got hurt) case that polarised the nation. And the writer also said even today he's not sure whether they're definitely guilty or not.

Personally I don't think adapting the play for TV worked all that well, because theatre can do metaphorical high-brow stuff where ostensibly it's about a man on a game show but really it's a philosophical debate about neuroscience and truth and la-da-la, and theatre audiences can more readily accept that they're watching the same events from two different perspectives. TV is more naturalistic by design and people expect a TV show about real life events to be a straight forward docu-drama, which this was never supposed to be. They tried to impose the "two halves" format, where the second episode was supposed to be the 'guilty' episode and the third the 'innocent' episode but it just confused viewers who didn't realise it was intentional and couldn't figure out why the third episode was defending them after the second had so clearly shown them as guilty.

That is interesting, I hadn’t realised that was the intention at all. It didn’t translate across to the TV format very well.