With 'three funny titans of Saturday evening TV'

Michael McIntyre and Romesh Ranganathan will continue to be mainstays on BBC One’s Saturday night programming, after the broadcaster recommissioned their game shows  The Wheel and The Weakest Link.

Bradley Walsh-fronted Blankety Blank will also be returning for a new run, the Corporation announced today.

The BBC’s head of entertainment, Kalpna Patel-Knight, said: ‘In Michael, Bradley and Romesh we have three funny titans of Saturday evening TV back on our screens.’

A fourth series of ten hour-long episodes of The Wheel have been commissioned, following McIntyre’s success in selling the format to America, where it ran for ten nights in the run-up to Christmas, with the comic hosting. It returns to BBC One tomorrow for the second half of its third series.

Ten 35-minute episodes of Blankety Blank have also been ordered, the third full series since Walsh revived the format in 2020.

And Ranganathan will oversee 12 new celebrity editions of The Weakest Link, with star attempting to win up to £50,000 for charity,

Broadcast details of the new series have not yet been confirmed. 

Meanwhile, Stephen Fry is being tipped as a possible host for a UK version of long-running American quiz show Jeopardy.

ITV piloted the format last year with Richard Madeley, but The Sun later reported the show ‘didn’t work’ with the Good Morning Britain presenter asking the questions.

Now TVZone reports that the broadcaster is still keep to commission the show, probably for a daytime slot, possibly fronted by Fry.

Channel 4 previously attempted its own version of Jeopardy in 1983; then by ITV in 1990 with host Chris Donat and later Steven Jones; then in 1995 by Sky with Paul Ross – but none of the versions lasted long.

The US show, created by talk show host Merv Griffin, has run since 1964.  Alex Trebek  hosted the daily version for 36 years, from 1984 until his death in late 2020.

Published: 24 Feb 2023