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Alan Carr’s revamping of Bruce Forsyth classic Play Your Cards Right deals a hand for ‘more enlightened times’

Billy Weir

Alan Carr’s Epic Gameshow with his Play Your Cards Right contestants

ITV

Alan Carr’s Epic Gameshow with his Play Your Cards Right contestants

June 24 2022 09:10 AM

When you ram the word ‘epic’ into anything, then you need to know you’re on pretty solid foundations.

In movie terms, you’re looking at the likes of Ben Hur or The Shawshank Redemption, in music Bohemian Rhapsody or my personal favourite, Epic by Faith No More, a number 25 hit in 1990. Not so epic.

In telly terms, though, it does seem a bit grandiose and misplaced, especially when the surrounding words are Alan, Carr and game show.

Nothing against Mr Carr, a very funny man indeed, but the third series of his revamping of ‘epic’ game shows returned with Play Your Cards Right, a format that Charlton Heston or Morgan Freeman would struggle to give gravitas.

Other classics of the past to come include Bullseye, Take Your Pick, Strike It Lucky and new this time around, Child’s Play.

I am particularly looking forward to the latter as it will be a chance for my friend (we shall call him Alexander to save his embarrassment) who failed the audition on the original show when he blabbed out ‘Margaret Thatcher’ when asked to describe the prime minister. Still got a sweatshirt. And it still fits him.

I digress.

Arguably, Play Your Cards Right was bigger than Maggie in its heyday. It started in 1980 and ran for seven years in the hands of Bruce Forsyth.

But Carr’s reboot isn’t the first. Brucie returned for another five-year run in 1994 and for another, less successful bash, in 2002.

Carr’s differs in that it features celebrity couples, with Sir Mo and Lady Tania Farah up against comedian Russell Kane and his wife Lindsey.

We also had actor Jimi Mistry with his other half, former Strictly Come Dancing pro Flavia Cacace, and Clare Balding and her broadcasting missus Alice Arnold, all playing for charity.

That’s nice and worthy, but it doesn’t have the same impact or romance as Gary and Tracy from Grimsby hoping to win a few quid to pebbledash their caravan.

Some things remain the same. In homage to Brucie, Carr’s opening monologue is toe-curlingly awful and the staged banter is enough to send even the jolliest of jacks into despair. We also have ‘nothing for a pair — not in this game’ when two cards of the same value are revealed, sending the audience into apoplexy.

What we don’t have are the ‘dolly dealers’. For the uninitiated, these were two ladies, usually blonde and lovely, whose arduous task it was to take part in banter with Brucie and put the cards up on a shelf.

We have moved on. There is now a dealer, dressed for a new generation, but we weren’t even shown her face, let alone told her name, until well into the show.

We did get to learn things about the celebs, though. Lady Farah revealed that Mo was very messy, especially when he left chocolate bar wrappers at his backside. Bet it was a Marathon…

Flavia and Jimi own 12 sheep, dolly dealers by the sound of them, and they gambolled or gambled into the final to play Mo and Tania.

“We’ve raided the archive from the original series of Play Your Cards Right, so it’s time to travel back to 1997,” Carr told us.

This made me nervous. Some of the questions in the older versions were, shall we say, not suitable for these more enlightened times.

“We asked 100 married women in their 20s, could you recognise your husband if he was wearing nothing but a paper bag on his head?” he said.

This could have been much worse. Don’t believe me? Well, the 2002 reboot is shown at the moment on Challenge where the dollies are alive and well and political correctness was in its infancy.

For example, Brucie’s opening monologue.

“And as Prince Phillip said to Pavarotti — ‘hello fatty’,” he said to nervous laughter before rescuing things with a quick ‘nice to see, to see you nice’.

There’s also the greeting to the female staff members, with ‘here’s a pair worth revealing, okay dollies, do your dealing’ and those cases are now probably still being worked on by lawyers.

Not as much though as this classic question of its time — and this was in 2002 by the way.

“We asked 100 male models, if a female casting director pinched your bottom would you report her for sexual harassment?” asked Brucie, before a bit of banter with the dolly dealers pinching suggestively in the corner of the studio.

A female contestant replied that ‘it goes with the job, doesn’t it?’ Her hubby said, ‘I wouldn’t complain’ and you can only imagine that trawl through the archives for a question today was thorough.

As for Sir Mo and Lady Tania, they won lots of cash for charity, probably helping traumatised dealers and male models get a fresh start in life.

Alan Carr’s revamping of Bruce Forsyth classic Play Your Cards Right deals a hand for ‘more enlightened times’

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