The Rest Is Entertainment - Is Mastermind Unfair?

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

How do you make sure each contestant is treated equally on Mastermind? Marina and Richard take us through the boredom and realities of being on a film set, and what examples if any, are there of people appearing on shows before gaining fame and then being on the celebrity version? Another peak behind the showbiz curtain on The Rest Is Entertainment with Richard Osman and Marina Hyde. Twitter: @restisents Instagram: @restisentertainment YouTube: @therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Rest Is Entertainment Questions Edition with me Maruna Hyde. To select this is AI. Sorry, just redo me. I liked it. And I am 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 Steven Jagard and a topical one. ITV boss Kevin Ligo, friend of the pod, said that despite his viewing figures Mr Bates versus the post office would lose about one million pounds due to its lack of overseas sales. This leads me to wonder which UK TV programs have been the most profitable. Two questions in one next, though 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 and nothing and maybe it will go up to £3 million. Yes. But that's about it. It could add a lot. Yeah, it could add a lot. But so that could go up. But the post office was 2.5 million pounds an hour and there are four hours or ITV hours.

Now 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 one million. But I think actually what Kevin and I go 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. McCorver quote from David Copperfield, you know, annual income, 20 pounds, annual expenditure, 19 pounds, 19.6, result, happiness. Annual income, 20 pounds, annual expenditure, 20 pounds, naught and 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 show 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. And it's going to be very interesting going forward that I suspect we haven't heard the last of that story. We 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 expense of 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, Midsomer Murders, Call the Midwife, Vera, these are real bankers. Yeah, there's two types of profitable shows really. There's the Finnish program sales, which is what you're talking about there. So the Atombra 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 program 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 to it's a sort of niche story in a way and exactly all those stories of British ineptitude 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 if you're in you know the market place. They enjoyed Brexit hugely. I mean people loved 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. Come on guys. We British empowered 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 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.

And 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, but you're actually selling as 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, 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 is one of the most profitable shows in history, in UK history. End 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 was 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 be probably would make more money, I think, than weakest link. And again, it's still is still on in various territories. So if you own the IP, which we 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. I think the most profitable British show in history would probably be a show,

wasn't it, over there, it 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....the 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. It 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 Trick. So 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 Dine 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. The opposite trajectory doesn't even bear thinking about. I think it does, but yes. Okay, Chris.

In that discussion, by the way, Mea Culpa, I talked about Family Fortunes only being a celeb now and actually is 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. But it's like the 13, 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. Now 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. 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 and then came back and did a celebrity one many years later and also went away with a very small amount of money but 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,

I've 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 Christian from Lawrence Peany, he 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 a funny, 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, 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, she's in the trailer and then she's not in the film.

And 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, you'll get your cup, he's coming down to a sort of normal film length. Now 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 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 in the film. He is not in any way the

lead of this movie. And I think what happened is that in the edit Terrence Malick gets, 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. Virgo Mortenson, they never even got on the plane. Martin Sheen was going to be in it. He was obviously in Badlands for Terrence Malick before. God,

I mean, Christopher Plummer in a different movie in the New World said, there was nothing to be left in that movie. Terrence 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 Plummer said that like a lot of people were quite bitter. 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 just used the thin red line as an example because so many did and also finding out the premiere is pretty... Because there's you know there's always that thing isn't there if you've

especially if you've got a small part in something that you you know invite the family around and all the neighbors and if you're cut out but also because sometimes in the 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 jaw in the darkness of the cinema as you're watching it in your black tie. No, 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 Peany's friend is Adrian Brody, in which case this is my god. I'm telling you nothing. You don't know. I tell you had it worst. Adrian Brody It's like but I am Adrian Brody Now shall we go to a break let's do that I'm Anthony Scaramucci former White House director of communications and Wall Street financier, and I'm Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Director of Communications and Wall Street financier. And I'm Katie Kay, U.S. special correspondent for BBC Studios. I've been covering American politics for almost three decades. Welcome to the Rest is Politics U.S., brought to you by Goalhanger.

In this pivotal year for the United States, democracy and world affairs, Britain's biggest podcast, The Rest is Politics, is launching stateside. Uncovering secrets from inside the Biden and Trump inner circles and how they shape the world's most important economy but also the global economy too. New episodes are released every Friday morning. Just search The Rest Is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts.

OK. 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 this the second part of that some question answers the first part They're not discouraged from answering

They're allowed to leave 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 book because by and large halfway through the question Any question you know it or you don't know yeah So you have to wait till 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 were all written down You 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. And so the fact that you're not allowed to interrupt means that it is fair and it 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 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, they get the same amount of questions. On something like House of Games, for example, people buzz in after like one second, and obviously in the edit 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'll say, which city? And people will say, Jakarta. Oh, yeah, it was Jakarta. So yeah, on that one, you are not allowed to 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-ass, or I do badly, in which case they go, I thought he was supposed to be a smart-ass.

So yeah, I couldn't in all conscience go on. Though I love Clyde Myrie. Oh, he's terrific. Yeah. Ryan E, at Ryan E 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? Oh, I don't know if it's the biggest part.

I think 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 6 and maybe you'll finish at 3.34 so you get there 6 in the evening. Yeah 6 in the evening So that's say that's 10 hours or maybe nine and a half with no Sort of lunch which by the way happens at like one in the morning or something. Oh, that's fun

Yeah, and for that roughly, 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. Okay, well 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. It's the middle of the night, and they're just able to turn it on and refine it for the camera in between takes, and then 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, but 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 is insane. Like 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 family time and for what? To be in sort of some not very good movie. A 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 taking everything away from you. My favorite machine is the one with the Trixies in, but the waiting around thing is absolutely definitely right. It's boredom boredom boredom then bang on. And being amazing. Exactly what you're saying. Whenever Ingrid's off filming, 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. Oh no, it's so amazing. The setting up of the different shots, 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 in 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 either the light is gonna be fading or not fading. I would say a lot of it is sitting around, all the actors sitting around with each other. And if you've got a 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 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 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 it 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 that you 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, 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, and you know, just as long as you're vaguely near any sort of, you know, source of light, it's okay. But in that, he's 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, 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 actors 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, obviously 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 you know, entertainment is exactly the same. Hit me 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. If you're a quiz show contestant, if you're a quiz show host, if you're an actor, whoever you are, 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, that's where all the lawyers offices are. question from Sue Street. Sue Street, that's 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. They are, as you say, all of these shows where you've only got one minute left, you've only got 30 seconds left and buying light is 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.

Which 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 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're like, can you shut up? I'm trying 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 you know so I think they work out which contestant is the best. Noel Fielding is always very good at that. Just sort of sidling up to somebody who doesn't want to be talking to them and just sort of just you know getting a little smile out of them. Yeah 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. But shows like Race Around the World where you know that they're sort of turning up an hour or two hours differently to each other. They never pretend that the two people are racing, but they edit it quite nicely. So you're thinking, oh, which of them is actually an hour ahead? You can't work it out. Top Gear always used to have, you know, they were like racing a bicycle versus a motorboat

versus a car. And it'd always be like, there's only two seconds in it and there would be like four hours in it. So people are trying not to lie for sure yeah but they're trying to show the truth of what's happening which is a time limit and it is very very stressful but sometimes yeah you're really up against it or you don't finish. Well with that we've only got 30 seconds left to go so we better cram it all in Richard. I haven't finished my meringue. Please keep emailing us these fantastic questions to therestisentertainment at gmail.com Oh man the raspberries have fallen on the floor. That's the last thing I needed.

Your pipe works useless. My pipe works. Listen, but I'm seeing a specialist so. Thank you that was lots of fun as always. It's so much fun. There's debate about whether we should still say see you next Tuesday. Well, that's not in my case. I have no debate. Because in the old days that it could be seen as rude, but I think we should stick with it. We are dealing with show business here and I think it is quite often relevant.

Yeah, and we do see people next Tuesday. Yeah, that's when our main edition comes out. So see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday everyone.