Whittle (1997) User Reviews

Cheap but cheerful

[Madstunts · 9/10 · 22 February 2007]

This quiz show may have been produced on a very very low budget, but the makers seemed to gleefully embrace the "cheap and cheerful" quality. Getting Tim Vine to host it was a masterstroke. His stand-up routine consists almost entirely of "groaner" gags - dreadful puns and visual jokes, which he somehow elevates from naff to genius. This trick worked for Whittle as well - somehow he managed to make something which by all accounts should have been dreadful, into something which was ironically brilliant. The nature of the show meant that if too many of the audience got "whittled away" by an early question, Tim would have to stall for time to make the rest of the show fit the time slot - asking the finalist desperately uninteresting personal questions, and cracking hilariously rubbish gags.

He didn't seem to care that the total prize money was a pitiful £500 (Just one year later "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" would offer £1,000,000), and neither did we.

I was really sad to see it go.

Car crash television.

[nickomcminn · 6/10 · 7 July 2006]

Tim Vine has the dubious honour of being the first man ever seen on Channel 5 here in the U.K. and this was the vehicle that was developed to suit his talents.

The premise of the programme is that the 100 audience members are asked questions until they are whittled down to 1. This lucky competitor takes home the money.

The show suffers from the same problem that afflicts so many Channel 5 shows, namely a desperate lack of money. Each edition is shot as live, so when Tim fluffs one of his jokes or starts talking to the wrong audience member it is still broadcast. Many of the audience members cannot actually speak English and the handsets are also faulty which adds to the bizarre nature of the show.

Whittle can be described as entertaining but it also feels massively outdated. The fact that it survived for 2 series is something of a miracle.