Games - Going for Gold

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	Games - Going for Gold

Going for Gold was a BBC quiz show that aired from 1987 to 1996. Shown on BBC 1 in the UK and on Super Channel (later NBC Super Channel) in contenental Europe. It was presented by Henry Kelly and included participants from across Europe who wanted to win the prize. The first round was a general knowledge question round to nine contestants, from these nine four went through to the next round where they would play a second general knowledge round with questions on the buzzer, these were worth 1, 2 or 3 points based on their difficulty. A contestant who gave a correct answer would be told the subject of the next question, and got to choose the value of that question. If nobody answered a question correctly, a general question worth 1 point was used to restart the game.

The first three players to reach six points went on to play 'Four in a Row', where each of the contestants, in the order they progressed from the previous round, would pick one of four categories to answer questions on for 40 seconds. Players scored based on the number of consecutive questions they got right - if an incorrect answer was given, their score returned to zero, the score taken from this round was the highest point reached over 40 seconds. After this round the two highest scoring players (a first to two general knowledge shoot-out was held if there were any ties) went through to answer questions and to determine who would go through to the final, where questions were worth between 4 and 1 points depending on how quickly they were answered - however, only one player at a time was allowed to buzz in, as indicated by a timer graphic running down the centre of the screen. if a player gave an incorrect answer, their section of the time was passed over to their opponent and the time (and question) continued.

The first player to reach 9 points won the daily game, and went through to the end of week final, from where the winner progressed to the later stages of the series. The losing players all came back the next day, starting with the same pool of players each weekday, minus the winner of the week's earlier shows.

The programme was based on the French Questions pour un Champion, which still airs today.

The theme was composed by a young and pre-Hollywood Hans Zimmer.

The winners of the series inluded:

1987-88 - Daphne Fowler
(England)
1988-89 - Erik Matteson (Norway)
1989-90 - Howard Atkinson (England)
1990-91 - Luc Sucholtz (Belgium)
1991-92 - Soren Bergman (Norway)
1992-93 - ?
1993-94 - ?
1994-95 - Mieke Poelman (The Netherlands)
1995-96 - ?

The prize in the first season were tickets for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. After that, prizes were related in some way to gold, such as a gold-mining trip to Australia.

The show inspired a number of parodies, notably one in A Bit of Fry and Laurie which speculated on how British contestants would manage if forced to answer questions in a language other than their first language, something which the mainland European contestants could easily manage.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Going for Gold ]

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