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David Tennant’s new game show Genius Game is pulled from usual slot
Game shows are the stalwarts of teatime telly – regularly pulling in millions of viewers.
For many, the early evenings would not pass in quite the same way without older favourites like Pointless or The Chase – or newer shows such as The 1% Club.
As some of the stars of the small screen schedule, they are all homegrown – Hertfordshire and Greater Manchester are among the not so far-flung climes where these big hitter quizzes are filmed.
No such luck for our stateside counterparts – American game show hosts like Oscar winner
Jamie Foxx
and Brat Pack’s
Rob Lowe
have a little further to go. Around 5,000 miles, to put a finer point on it.
That is because many top US quiz shows are not filmed in Tinseltown but in Ireland – and it has much bigger consequences for Hollywood than just travel time.
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The charming coastal town of Bray, around 12 miles south of Dublin, has much to recommend it, with a beautiful beach, great transport links and scenic hillwalking routes.
But Rob, the host of The Floor – which sees contestants duel to win squares on a chessboard-style floor grid in pursuit of cash – has a more cynical, less tourism office-sounding take on the filming location of his show.
Quite simply, he said, on a recent episode of his podcast Literally!, it is cheaper: ‘There are no tax credits.’
It is, of course, not the only place in Ireland to host the great and the good of Beverley Hills in recent years – bringing international attention and scrutiny with them.
In 2020, Matt Damon came to the south Dublin coastal village of Dalkey to film Ridley Scott’s 2021 historical drama The Last Duel.
With filming suspended as the pandemic raged, Matt, his wife and three children temporarily made the country their home.
In what proved to be one of the country’s feel-good lockdown moments, the Hollywood actor, 54, was even pictured with a bag from Irish supermarket chain SuperValu – carrying around swimming costumes and towels for a family beach trip.
Game Of Thrones, meanwhile, was famously filmed across Northern Ireland, with entire tour companies developing to show keen visitors its shoot locations.
And series two of Tim Burton’s Addams Family spin-off Wednesday, starring Jenna Ortega, saw big celebs like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Steve Buscemi and even Lady Gaga descend on Co Wicklow for filming.
Irish talent has also made a major splash in international TV and film in recent years.
Most notably,
Cillian Murphy won the Oscar for Best Actor for Oppenheimer
– while the world fawns over Irish exports Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan, who account for half of Sam Mendes’ upcoming four Beatles biopics.
But where the influence of the Emerald Isle has gone unnoticed is in the somewhat more niche realm of American game shows – only briefly mentioned in the credits of stateside favourites like Don’t Forget The Lyrics, Name That Tune and Beat Shazam.
Its attractions are manifold, with big tax breaks and talented production teams – and it was only in 2021 that Uncle Sam began to capitalise on them.
When making The Big Deal – a talent show with cash prize peril – network Fox realised it would be cheaper to pilot the format abroad.
With a single pilot episode shot in America costing more than six whole episodes filmed in Ireland, it was a no-brainer.
Admittedly, a major aspect of this, Irish producer Shane Byrne told
The Telegraph
, is British and Irish crews are not as unionised as their Hollywood counterparts – slashing staffing costs.
Presenter Vogue Williams and judges including Boy George and JLS’s Aston Merrygold were flown in to join Irish panellists including X Factor Dubliners Jedward for filming at Dublin’s 3Arena.
And lo and behold, the pilot aired in Ireland got execs what they wanted – they used it to pitch the American version Fame Or Fortune in 2022,
Deadline Hollywood
reported.
The success opened a can of worms for American broadcaster Fox, who soon moved filming of other big titles to Ireland – namely Don’t Forget The Lyrics, Name That Tune and Gordon Ramsay’s Next Level Chef.
But while the books balance that little bit more across the pond, relocation means greater attention has to be paid to giving Irish-filmed shows that distinctive all-American look, Shane explained.
The producer, who boasts a portfolio including Big Brother, The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and Strictly Come Dancing, said this involves ensuring a glossy, high-budget feel – and a distinctively American tone – is reproduced.
And the intake for the audience is, in some senses, a far less broad church than in the UK, where game shows often offer tickets out to members of the public.
For American shows, by contrast, which have a penchant for an audience close-up, spectators on Irish sound stages are chosen via casting call and paid like film extras – with a diverse demographic assortment of people carefully curated.
No negative Nancies allowed either, Shane said – when it comes to American studio audiences, they all have to really look like they are enjoying themselves.
He also explained while some of the big American hosting talents find themselves ‘perplexed’ to end up in Ireland for filming, they understand the economics of it keeps them in a job.
The model is so sound, in fact, that Shane is now going it alone, leaving BiggerStage – the Dublin-based production company that often works with Fox – to co-found his own business offering US networks the same collaborative model.
He said: ‘There are lots of other networks interested… They’re all paying attention to what Fox has been doing and curious about what they’re doing in Ireland.’
But of course, the whole endeavour is at the heart of
a broader tug of tariff war between President Donald Trump and the rest of the world over film and TV production.
Early last month, the American premier claimed Hollywood was dying a ‘very fast death’ with other nations offering ‘all kinds of incentives to draw our filmmakers away’ – mostly cost-cutting ones.
He soon threatened a 100 per cent tariff on movies made abroad
, adding in a post to his social media platform Truth Social: ‘WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!’
Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick responded on X: ‘We’re on it.’
Trump’s online riff on MAGA (WWMMIAA?) saw an improvement to an existing Irish government initiative to encourage native filmmaking quickly momentarily shelved.
It is understood that as it would have made Ireland even more attractive as a filming destination, flying in the face of Trump, the timing was seen to be all wrong, sending the wrong message to the US administration.
The announcement was instead delayed to the end of last month, offering an eight per cent increase in the so-called Section 481 tax incentive, for feature films of a certain budget using Irish talent.
So, it seems both putting your money where your movie is – and also, simply
where
your movie is – remains an active issue, with the US determined to tug on the threads and pull them all back to the mothership.
While back in Blighty, The Chase charges on, the fate of its American quiz show counterparts – along with their hundreds of staff – seems more to hang in the balance.
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