Shafted

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Shafted was a British quiz show on ITV1, presented by Robert Kilroy-Silk. It was a quiz show that had a slight resemblance to The Weakest Link, as it was based on answering questions and eliminating fellow contestants.

The quiz begins with six players. In the first round, they each must declare how much money (up to £25,000) they would like. This is important as you need a large amount of money to bet on the questions during the show. The person who asked for the biggest amount of money is removed from the show before they answer a single question.

Then, the remaining five contestants answer incomplete questions that they must bet on. After all players have placed their bets, the question is completed and whoever staked the most money can answer it. If their answer is correct, then they get the money they bet added onto their score and if they answer incorrectly, then the money is taken away. After a certain number of questions, the person with the most money decides who they want to remove from the game. Then after the contestant is voted out, all the contestants are given the same amount of money as the leader and the process continues until there are two contestants left.

The final round takes the form of a type of Prisoner's Dilemma. The two remaining players stand opposite each other behind podia. They are playing for the amount of money the leading player ended the main game with. Then each of the players is asked if they wish to "share" or to "shaft". This is how it works: Suppose they were playing for £150,000. If both players decided to shaft, then both players will walk away empty-handed. If one decided to share and the other decided to shaft, then the person who shafted wins all the money, while if they both decided to share, they split the money and would each get £75,000 in this case.

Kilroy-Silk's actions on the show were frequently mocked on Have I Got News for You in late 2004, particularly his delivery of the show's tag-line, "Their fate will be in each other's hands as they decide whether to share or to shaft", and the associated hand actions. During several episodes, a clip of this was inserted into the show at some point.

The show was dropped soon after it started in 2001, after only four episodes, and was listed as the worst British television show of the 2000s in the Penguin TV Companion (2006).^[1]

An Australian version of the show hosted by Red Symons ran from February to April 2002. If, in the final round of this version, one contestant decided to shaft while the other contestant decided to share, the person who shafted would not only win all of the cash, but would get to play in the next game with the title of "Master Shafter". When the series started, the other contestants knew who the master shafter was, and were always shafting him or her first for being seen as a greedy, deceptive person. In an attempt to make the game more exciting, and to give the master shafter a reasonable chance to win more than once, this was later changed so that the master shafter was not revealed to the other contestants until the very end of the show.