The People Versus

The People Versus
Created by David Briggs
Steven Knight
Mike Whitehill
Presented by Kirsty Young (2000)
Kaye Adams (2001-2)
Composer(s) Keith Strachan
Country of origin United Kingdom
Original language(s) English
No. of series 2
No. of episodes 120
Production
Running time 30 minutes (inc. adverts)
Production company(s) Celador
Broadcast
Original channel ITV
Picture format 16:9
Original run 15 August 2000 – 21 December 2001

The People Versus is a television game show which aired on ITV from 2000 to 2002 in the United Kingdom. Kirsty Young hosted the program for the primetime series and Kaye Adams hosted the program for the daytime series. The show was radical in terms of the two changes of versions. The first series was criticised as being slow. The second series was a lot quicker. The People Versus was made by Celador, the same makers as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. While the two series had very different formulas, the central format was that the questions were sent in by the viewers.

Formats

Kirsty Young version

For every question, the contestants got correct they won £5,000. The rules were: In each round the players were shown five questions from one of their specialist subjects. In Round One, each contestant had to attempt and answer correctly one of those five questions - "one of five to stay alive". In Round Two, on a different subject they had to answer two correctly to stay in, Round Three, three, Round Four, four and finally in Round Five, they had to answer all five. In each round, the player could, if they wanted, earn more cash by answering more questions than the quota required, again for £5,000 a piece. To help, each player was shown all five questions at the start. Each player was also given three 'flips'. If a player wanted to use a flip, they could substitute any of the five given questions for another one. Also, if they had the cash, they could elect to 'buy' answers to questions at £10,000 a time.

Finishing Round 5 meant the contestant would begin again at Round 1. There was no limit on the amount of money someone could win which theoretically meant someone could win more than a million pounds, the top prize of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, although no contestant ever won anywhere near this amount of money.

If a person got their question wrong, they lost all money in that round and their seat in the game went to the person who set the question.

Kaye Adams version

Studio contestants were asked general knowledge questions set by the public. The rounds were as follows:

The contestant had a four minute time limit to finish the rounds. Running out of time meant they lost.

If the contestant was stuck on a question, he or she could pass, but if they cannot pass any more, they must use a 'Flip'. A contestant had three flips at their disposal. These substituted the question for an alternative one on their specialist subject.

Finishing Round 5 meant that the contestant would bank the £3,000 and have the chance to restart from Round 1 again with their Flips restored. As in the first series there is an unlimited amount of money to be won. The highest sum of money won on the daytime version was £13,000 by Indrani Hettiaratchi.

If a contestant answered a question incorrectly, then they were knocked out of the game. The person who set the question won £100. (Later in the series this changed to £50 for a Round 1 knockout, with no money being awarded for an elimination in a later round.) The Bong Game was then played.

The studio contestant had the choice of 3 Bong games. One of these three games didn't have a bong in it all and went all the way to the money he had in play. A robotic voice read out increasing amounts of money. The aim was to stop the voice before the bong sounded. The contestant had to press a button to stop the voice and win whatever was shown on the screen. If the contestant managed beat the bong, the rest of the money in play went to the person who caught the studio contestant out. If the studio player failed to beat the bong, then they would win nothing and the member of the public won all of the money in play. The contestant then found out where the bong would have come in.

Transmissions

Series Start date End date Episodes
1
15 August 2000
4 September 2000
10
2
25 June 2001
21 December 2001
110*

Series 1 was broadcast each weekday around 20.30. From Series 2 the series was moved to early evening broadcasting each weekday around 17.00 until 2 November. From 5 November 2001 the series was broadcast on a Monday and Friday with episodes of Night and Day being shown on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Series 2 was not fully broadcast and up to 5 episodes were never broadcast.

The full series was repeated on Challenge TV.

Other international versions

Hong Kong

Broadcast on ATV, called 各出其謀 (lit. everyone gives his strategies) and hosted by Meg Lam (林建明).

On 31 December 2001, on the last episode of the first series of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the last contestant(Paul Yip) was invited to play the game, but he failed to finish Round 5 and he lost the Bong Game.

The first regular episode was aired on 1 January 2002 and the last was on 8 March 2002.

The values of each round were HK$5,000, HK$10,000, HK$20,000, HK$40,000 and HK$100,000 (about £6,451) respectively.

Russia

Called Народ против (Narod Protiv, lit. people against). The show was originally aired on Channel One, then a new series aired on REN TV.

The values of each round were 1,000 rubles, 2,500 rubles, 5,000 rubles, 15,000 rubles and 50,000 rubles (about £1,029) respectively.

Serbia

In Serbia The people Versus aired on RTS 1 (between 2002 and 2005) as Сам против свих (Sam protiv svih, lit. Alone vs. all) .

In 2009, B92 and Advantige bought rights and will air it as Narod protiv / Народ против (lit. people against). The new season began airing on 19 February 2009.

Spain

In Spain, it was aired on Telemadrid as Madrid Reta in 2003, hosted by Javier Capitan.

External links