Supermarket Sweep is back: five more 90s gameshows in need of a reboot
Daytime TV staple joins resurrected classics Blind Date and The Crystal Maze - but what other shows should make a return?
Supermarket Sweep is set to return to screens, after production company FreemantleMedia announced it had bought the rights to the gameshow.
Fronted by Dale Winton, Supermarket Sweep was a daytime TV staple from 1992 to 2001, with a brief return to screens in 2007.
The news that we may soon see jumper-clad contestants racing round the aisles and filling their trolleys with “pick ‘n’ mix”, “manager’s specials” and inflatable bananas caused quite the stir on Twitter.
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Supermarket Sweep’s slated revival comes on the heels of revamps of other 1990s cult classics Robot Wars and The Crystal Maze, as well as one-time primetime heavyweights like Gladiators and Blind Date.
Here are five other 1990s gameshows ripe for a reboot:
Moment of Truth: Possibly the cruellest game show of all time, Moment of Truth offered to award a lucky family their dream prizes - but only if one member could perform a borderline-impossible challenge. This format led to spectacles such as watching a little boy’s face as he realises his dad’s failure to memorise the entire London Underground has cost him a PlayStation, all under the warm (but inflexible) gaze of host Cilla Black.
50/50: Pitting schoolchildren against one another for a series of physical and intellectual challenges - what’s not to love?
Noel’s House Party: The longevity of Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway has proven that audiences are still suckers for old fashioned gameshow-cum-variety show school of light entertainment.
Admittedly, Noel Edmonds himself may be less of a hot property than he was when Noel’s House Party went off the air in 1999. Mary Berry’s House Party, anyone?
Bullseye: Glacially paced and bizarrely compensated (cutlery sets and tea-makers were regular features on the prize board), darts/quiz hybrid Bullseye seemed unthinkably old-fashioned when it went off the air in 1995.
However, given the millennial love for anything “unhip” from decades past, we can just see a beardy hipster ironically sipping a pint of bitter before stepping up to the oche and attempting to “stay out of the black and in the red”.
The Generation Game: The fact that it is still impossible for a British person over the age of 25 to see a conveyor belt without remarking “Ooh, it’s like the Generation Game!” proves this light entertainment classic still has a place in the nation’s heart.
Luckily, a revival is reportedly in the works, with comedians Mel and Sue to host a four-part run on the BBC.
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