The Long Run

The show did not end in a single moment. Britain stopped taking part in 1982, other countries carried on through the 1990s, and several attempts have since been made to bring it back. This chapter follows that long tail, looks at the reasons usually given for the decline, and asks why a format that worked so well for so long became hard to sustain. The broad outline is widely reported, but the dates, countries and details of the revivals vary between sources, so the chapter states the pattern and not a full timeline.

The Original Run

The international contest began in 1965 (Chapter 3) and ran, with a changing list of countries, into the 1990s. The best-known period for most viewers is the 1970s and early 1980s, when the programme was at the height of its popularity and the British version was a fixture of the BBC schedule (Chapter 7). By the early 1980s the pattern was changing.

Britain's Exit and Wales

As Chapter 7 noted, 1982 is usually given as the last year of official British participation, and the BBC did not return to the competition afterwards. From 1991 to 1994, Wales is reported to have taken part through S4C, which stepped in when the BBC was not interested. These details come from a general web search and should be confirmed in a broadcaster source. Other countries continued to take part during the 1980s and 1990s, and the contest is generally reported to have run in its original international form until near the end of the 1990s.

Why Did It Decline?

Several explanations are usually given, and none is complete.

• Cost. Staging games with large sets, water and crowds in different countries was expensive, and the money had to be found by each broadcaster.
• Changing taste. Television audiences grew used to different kinds of entertainment, including more polished game shows and reality programmes, and the amateur, slapstick feel began to look old-fashioned.
• More channels and competition. In many countries the number of channels grew, and public-service broadcasters had less need to run a large cooperative show.
• Shifts in the idea of Europe. The postwar reconciliation theme of the 1960s mattered less to later audiences, and national stereotypes were becoming harder to joke about (Chapter 8).
• Organisation. A show that needed many broadcasters to agree on rules, dates and costs is hard to keep running when any of them loses interest.

Revival Attempts

Since the end of the original run there have been several attempts to bring the show back, in different countries and in different forms. They have usually had a shorter life than the original. The French ancestor, Intervilles, has also returned to French television at various points. The specific revivals, their dates and the countries that took part differ in different sources, so this chapter does not list them. A reader who wants the detail should look at a broadcaster's history or an EBU source.

Why It Is Hard to Revive

Descendants and Echoes

The format's ideas live on in other programmes: physical challenge shows, obstacle-course entertainment and the broader tradition of local competition on television. Viewers who remember the original often mention the later shows as similar in spirit but not in feel. That comparison is a matter of opinion and memory, and the next chapter looks at what the original still means.

Exercises

Next chapter: Capstone: Why It Still Matters, which draws the course together.