Cluedo (Australian game show)

Predecessors In 1991, Australian media company Crawford Productions partnered with British quiz-and-gameshow production company Action Time in conjunction with Channel Nine to produce an Australian televisualisation of the Cluedo franchise. Cluedo was "loosely based" There were many predecessors to its creation. The original 1949 board game, invented by Anthony E. Pratt and simultaneously manufactured by Waddington Games (UK) and Parker Brothers (US), saw players control six guests with colour-based names who move through Tudor Close country house, making suggestions to deduce who murdered host Dr. Black or Mr. Boddy respectively, in which room, and with which weapon. By the 1990s, it was described as "ever-popular" and "famous", and The Age noted it was "the world's second most popular board game". Liverpool Echo described it as a "tried-and-tested...brilliant old Christmas stand-by game", while Aberdeen Press and Journal described it as "addictive". The first real-life Cluedo characters were the 1963 Swiss and 1972 US board game editions, which featured actors on the box and cards, replacing earlier editions which had only shown graphic depictions of the suspects. The concept of a whodunnit gameshow was arguably first developed by writer Kit Denton for Australian production company NLT Productions in the late 1960s, In 1972, Jeremy Lloyd and Lance Percival created another program called Whodunnit?, which saw a panel collect clues and guess the identity of culprits after viewing prerecorded footage and interrogating suspects. One of the "earliest post-literary adaptations", according to Thomas Leitch in Post Script journal, the film both "omit[ted] several distinctive features of the game" such as the cards, the interactive pursuit, and questioning, and "specif[ied] many details the game leaves blank" including characterisation and a definitive solution. That year, US manufacturer Parker Brothers brought the characters to life in the interactive movie Clue VCR Mystery Game, played in conjunction with the board game, which sold several hundred thousand copies and was possibly the first VCR game. In 1989, Michael Aspel hosted a five-episode televised interactive murder mystery set at a wedding called Murder Weekend, which invited viewers to solve a whodunnit to win a prize; The Times identified it as a direct ancestor of Cluedo. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a "minor spate" of game shows were created as conversions of popular puzzle and board games, a trend spurred by the success of new works like Trivial Pursuit. Both the Trivial Pursuit and Cluedo television adaptations would be the brainchild of independent production company Action Time's founder and managing director Stephen Leahy. In January 1988, Leahy left to become managing director of Action Time which at the time had just a few commissions and UK game show rights; over the next two years he oversaw a growth period resulting in ownership of rights to 103 games shows worldwide including 27 in the UK, and producing over 20 series for ITV by May 1990. In 1991, Birmingham Mail would describe Action Time as "one of the big export successes in British TV", thanks to Leahy having spotted a gap in the game show market in the 1980s and built an empire. The newspaper believed that Leahy's success since working on The Krypton Factor meant he was "naturally first in the queue on the day Waddingtons released the [television] rights to Cluedo". Additionally, Mrs. Peacock actress Stephanie Beacham would admit to preferring the dramatised version over playing the board game itself, which was "far too complex" due to its many rules. In September 1989, rights to the Cluedo television format were acquired by Granada from board-game creators Waddington for £1 million, with London Weekend Television controller of entertainment John Kaye Cooper producing the resulting British game show adaptation at a cost of £2 million. (Sunday Mirror noted that by series 4 Cluedo would cost £400,000-an-episode). The Cluedo project was initially announced to the public on February 25, 1990, Liddiment anticipated it would be the next big success for Granada, noting, "everybody has played Cluedo at some time in their lives [so] we have this rather daunting and exciting responsibility to bring it to the screen". The show attracted new talent; John O'Regan, who worked on Cluedo in series four, was the youngest person ever appointed director at Granada, while Russell T Davies, later known for his 2005 revival of science fiction show Doctor Who, also wrote an episode that year. Cluedo premiered on British screens on 25 July at 7pm on Wednesday nights in a slot previously occupied by ''Busman's Holiday. Whodunnit?'' featured multiple panelists (Joanna Lumley, Mollie Sugden, Robin Nedwell, June Whitfield) and suspects (Christopher Biggins) who would later appear as main characters in Britain's Cluedo. However, the programme differs from its predecessor by involving the same six suspected murderers in each episode and featuring separate murders each week in the same house. Additionally, Daily Record assessed that the new series came "hot on the heels" of Murder Weekend, noting that Cluedo would feature celebrities and be much snappier and briefer than the "dreadfully-contrived caper [that] dragged on forever". Considering Cluedo an "evolved" form of the whodunnit board game, The Times wondered why no one had previously thought to make a television adaption of the genre's "original classic". Described by The Listener as "mix[ing] acted assassination with studio speculation", the show gave players a chance to "pretend to be Inspector Morse|[Inspector] Morses", according to The Guardian. == Development ==

Conception In the early 1990s, formatting including licensing started to develop and British producers began to set fees for the use of their programme concepts to markets such as Australia. Back in 1989, Oberon Broadcasters, the parent company of Nine Network affiliate WIN Television, had acquired Australian independent studio Crawfords. A "dominant player" in the industry, Crawfords sat on eight acres and encompassed state-of-the-art sound stages with production and post-production facilities. Encyclopedia of Television suggests the show came into development as part of a strategy by Crawfords to diversify into co-productions across multiple genres, triggered by drama The Flying Doctors' (1988) international success. Other projects to come from this campaign include multicultural sitcom Acropolis Now (1989), miniseries The Feds'' (1993), and children's series Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left (1994). After a string of unsuccessful pilots, Nine remained unsatisfied with any of their choices of compere until an employee suggested actor-producer Ian McFadyen as the "right mixture of background". McFadyen's Media Arts had been working on various projects including a pilot for sitcom Newlyweds, due to air on Seven Network. By January 13, Peter Sumner, Joy Westmore and George Mallaby had also been announced while Andrew Daddo was in talks to reprise his role from the pilot. Casting of five of the suspects plus the inspector were officially announced later that month while Mallaby as Colonel Mustard was set to be joining the show, but yet to be confirmed. Mallaby was included in reports by the show's debut on June 10. the Australian actors were consistent over Cluedo's two series. in February 1992 Due to copyright restrictions Channel Nine and Crawfords sought assistance from Action Time, Crawfords' association with Action Time ultimately did not continue past Cluedo. Format According to Albert Moran's ''Moran's guide to Australian TV series (1993), a scholarly guide to Australian TV series, Cluedo was an "interesting" series to come out of Crawfords. Cluedo executive producer and Crawfords CEO Terry Ohlsson viewed it as "a major step into virgin territory" for the production company which had since built a reputation for sitcoms, dramas, feature films, and miniseries. They were particularly well-known for producing Division 4 in the 1960s, The Sullivans in the 1970s, and The Flying Doctors in the 1980s. Moran thought the show was "not all that far removed" from an earlier Crawfords program Consider Your Verdict (1961), though admitted that Cluedo "maximises audience participation" by having the audience question the characters, while the other show "deliberately underplayed audience involvement" and avoided offering prizes for anticipating the jury's verdict. Ohlsson agreed that "Australian audiences are too sophisticated to take the mindless stuff that goes on in the US in daytime". He thought it was fascinating that "murder can become a game", The ability for the studio audience to "sharply" grill the suspects led to Cluedo being more complicated than contemporaries like Wheel of Fortune, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Noting the short attention spans of television viewers who sometimes find a 30-second commercial "long-winded", The Sydney Morning Herald warned the show "will require more mental activity from its audience than most game shows have demanded for decades", wondering how they would "cope with an hour's worth of concentration". == Design ==

Two drafts were written per episode, followed by a release script, and script edited by an additional writer – Vicki Madden in series one and Graeme Farmer in series two. Instead, relationship stresses were designed to give the six suspects reasons to lash out at people outside the "normal group", and according to Rattan character motives were designed not to be too "vicious" or "unpleasant". Leslie Grantham, who played Colonel Mustard in the British version, commented, "it's fascinating to watch these asexual, inanimate characters brought to life". The Age agreed the show "brings to life the board-game characters", In comparison with the "old and ugly" Mrs. Peacock represented in the board game, the creatives decided to make her "very glamorous" in order to compete with Miss Scarlett for romantic affection. Italian newspaper Radiocorriere TV noted that a gender balance is structured into the game, which features a fixed cast of three actors and three actresses as suspects. Regarding the victim, The Newcastle Herald they are generally someone who "has given each character equal reason to do [them] in", Chris Tarrant, series one host of the British version, admitted a "highly absurd" design aspect was that the six suspects and six episodes per series meant the non-guilty party by the end of episode five was sure to be the murderer in the finale; for series one Rattan subverted what the "papers thought would happen and very 'clever clever' T.V. reviewers were saying" by having one culprit commit murder twice and another not at all, TV Heaven thought it amusing that after being asked to remain behind for question, the culprits were "clearly acquitted" as they'd return the following week. The press noted that Cluedo "promise[d] to keep us guessing till the very end". Within the show bible, a key tenet is that "you must play fair with the audience so that when the solution is revealed no one should feel cheated by the absence of the necessary clues to get the answer correct". To Ohlsson, the objective was not to "flummox the audience completely" or put them in the position where nobody could get the answer right, "because there's no fun in that", and felt it was important to give people a reasonable chance of reaching the correct solution. Rattan explained that each show was meticulously planned to prevent guessing, and constructed so that any one of the suspects could have carried it out; there was no concrete evidence to prevent a worst-case scenario where the correct solution was deduced after the first question, effectively spoiling the episode. Mark Wallace of The Canberra Times agreed "there is more guess work than science in finding the killer." Who magazine noted the case to solve the "dastardly deed" is filled with red herrings, and Grantham explained that "everyone has equally good reasons" for murdering the victim. The Age agreed that each week the characters "reappear criminally virginal", and that the show is "based on infinitely renewable innocence". Sanitised, murder-norm world McFadyen felt that the game's mechanic of turning murder into a sanitised game was the evolution of a standardised art form from years of novels and movies, and deemed the show a "wonderful send-up of the old (Agatha Christie-style) drawing-room murder". Farmer described Cluedo as an "amoral universe" where "morality ceases", and small real-world micro-aggressions like a dislike of Mrs. White's cooking can turn into motives for murder. TV Times Magazine explained the show is set in a world where "murder always lingers in the next corridor", Paull explained the show's concept necessitated "crazy" storylines to justify someone dying each week and one of the main characters being implicated in the murder, Sunday Times further described Cluedo's mystery subgenre as Mayhem Parva. Coined by Colin Watson in Snobbery with Violence (1971) this term describes a mystery subgenre characterised by isolated settings in an English country village with a limited cast of characters who generally take a back seat to the puzzle being presented. The Sydney Morning Herald felt it built off the "current public craving" for thrillers and Agatha Christie weekends. The newspaper's James Cockington thought the series would be a "treat" for Christie fans who like to be "in at the kill". Badler felt that solving the murder, not the act of murder, was the show's appeal, noting, "people are always interested in macabre things" like mass murders and serial killers, and that there is a "grotesque...fascination with things that are out of the ordinary". == Plot and gameplay ==

Cluedo is a solve-it-yourself whodunnit gameshow featuring a series of self-contained murder cases. Each episode has 30 minutes of drama and 30 minutes of questions for a total runtime of one hour excluding commercial breaks, as opposed to the British version which had 15 minutes of each save for a one-off 45 minute Christmas special. The Age noted it encompassed an "amalgam of styles", The Newcastle Herald described it as an "innovative combination of...two wildly different concepts" – a television game show and a murder. The show is a "striking instance of television's general tendency to cross genres", according to the book. Nine's publicity blurb wrote the show is "innovative and intriguing, combining the drama and deadly intrigue of a murder mystery with the humour and excitement of a gameshow. The show brought the board game's "familiar' characters to life through a series of live action murder vignettes that the studio audience would watch. the Australian game show introduced structural changes that "abandoned" elements of the original. who is "promptly bumped off" in a "gruesome" manner" The Sydney Morning Herald explained "their role is to behave so abominably that the audience will not shed a tear at their demise" and that they "succeed admirably". After being introduced to the characters and events, throughout the second part of the broadcast players are tasked with picking the culprit and deducing how they committed the crime. Studio audience members ask the actors, on stage in character and colour-coordinated costume for easy identification, questions about their motives and actions through an inquiry. Data from the dials was fed into the studio control room, who is allowed to lie. The computer records who was the first to choose the correct combination. The home viewers could also enter a competition by phone in before the end of the show to win a similar trip by phoning a 0055 number and correctly picking the electronically logged moment in hours, minutes, and seconds when the first audience member solved the mystery. The Age felt the "prize-winning angle of the show is tastefully underplayed". == Filming ==

On-location and studio filming A pilot was produced in 1991, and series production began on Tuesday, 14 January 1992 consisting of 13 episodes including a reshoot of the pilot TV Week suggested that Palms of an Architect, featuring Andrew Daddo's real-life brother Cameron, was the first episode filmed. Brindabella Homestead's stately exteriors were filmed at Billilla Historic Mansion in Brighton, Melbourne while interiors were shot at Crawford Production's Studio 2 in Box Hill, Melbourne. Shows employed a "painstaking piecing together of evidence", and each pre-recorded portion was filmed in sequential order to ensure a consistency of prop placement. was chosen as it had a "near perfect layout of downstairs rooms" that the game of Cluedo requires. Built in 1744, Arley Hall was privately owned and had become a major tourist attraction since it was opened to the public in 1962. In later series the Kitchen was a mock-up created in a spare room, as the real kitchen was in use for visitors to Arley Hall and production decided it "felt...too modern for us". and "placed in the firing line of would-be Miss Marples and Hercule Poirots". After being cross-examined for motives, alibis, and other clues, Badler described one audience as "fiery" and "funny" meaning the cast had to "be on [their] toes". Who magazine described the studio audience as "feverishly busy" The Daily Telegraph/Mirror described how McFadyen circulates in the audience and urges members to quiz suspects as "Donahue-style", This contrasted with the British version in which "it would take forever to film just a few lines because the audience had to be turned over to stop them getting bedsores", according to host Chris Tarrant. McFadyen noted, "once you tell [the audience] they've got a prize they get very excited." The number was not set up by June 6 but was later implemented; TV Week reported that callers would not have to "negotiate a maze" as common in other 0055 promotions, and estimated most Cluedo calls to cost $1 on average. The production team was surprised by the thorough line of questioning from the young studio audience; they had anticipated them to be shy asking "thorny" questions under the "multifarious cameras and a very long sound boom" of the television studio setup. Mallaby felt this element of the show was "confrontational" as "it's them against us", though noted "the trick is to have a sound knowledge of the play and everything that's involved in it". As four episodes were presented to studio audiences over two days, the actors sometimes became confused with which plot they were giving testimony to. == Release ==

Publicity and airing While live tapings were occurring in March, Channel Nine and Crawfords were hopeful of the series' ability to entice viewers, Additionally, Badler appeared on the front cover of The Sunday Telegraph on 7 June, she and McFadyen appeared on the front cover of Sunday Herald-Sun for that day's edition, and Paull graced page one of the latter newspaper on 1 January 1993. The show featured host Elton Welsby from fellow Granada show ''Busman's Holiday as a guest panellist. In 1993, Steam Packethosted a murder mystery dinner complete with clues and characters from the British game show Cluedo'', which featured a detective played by Charles Palmer, the consultant for the TV series. Media representatives were invited to live tapings, for instance Christine Rau of The Age, which she referred to in her article dated 29 March 1992. Sometimes the guest panelists would receive features in the newspaper, for instance private investigator Robert Kettle in Liverpool Echo.; this newspaper also printed Cluedo grids for readers to play along with the show. Cluedo premiered on 10 June on the Nine Network's TCN and GTV television stations, WIN Television network's VTV station, and on NBN station in the Hunter Region The Sydney Morning Herald's Cockington thought the series was the next "big gun" for the network, which had been "slaughtering the opposition in the 1992 ratings". The Sydney Morning Herald thought Cluedo could be a huge ratings winner due to the public's fascination with murder. It was the third of Nine's new prime-time programs. TV Week thought the move "surprising" due to Nine Network not yet knowing the viewers' response to the first series. and had "big hopes" for Cluedo. Specifically, Plapp explained that after viewing some of the programs the network was "sure the series is a goer", and decided it seemed sensible to continue with production "while everyone was 'on the boil'". Ratings Premiering weekly at 7:30pm on Wednesday nights at the conclusion of the 1992 State of Origin series, the show replaced "flop" Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) which was moved to the 11:30pm Thursday timeslot for its sixth season Having waited for the Origin season to end, Nine introduced Cluedo as a Wednesday evening hopeful. Of the 10 June premiere "A Fete Worse Than Death", The Sydney Morning Herald reported the series opened at 21 points (a total of 259,140 Sydney homes), just beating Channel Seven sitcoms Hey Dad..! and Home Improvement'' Cluedo's first episode ultimately reached 26th in the ratings in Sydney The second episode peaked at 23rd. The newspaper reported that demographic data showed the series mostly appealing to the 40-plus age group, in contrast with Seven's sitcoms which were strong with women in the 18-29 age bracket. On 5 July, Sunday Herald-Sun reported "it's good to see Cluedo holding on to those ratings points and no doubt heartening for Crawfords", noting that with The Flying Doctors off the air and Acropolis Now on repeats it otherwise seemed to be a quiet time for the production company, contrasting it with Crawford's earlier history which had competing successful police dramas across channels. The episode on 8 July, "Goodwill to All Men," opened on 17 points, but dropped to 14 and 15. In the Canberra television ratings survey 28 June to 25 July, the series reached 16 points down from 18, the best Wednesday night programme for WIN excluding state-of-origin rugby league matches. After four of the 13 shows had aired, Sunday Times wrote the program was "surprisingly...rapidly gaining an audience" despite the earlier resistance in October the latter newspaper reported the show had "more than lived up to the network's expectations". Still, by July The Sydney Morning Herald noted the show was "declining in popularity" and while not "dangerously low of ratings", it struggled to "fill the extra 17 minutes needed for a commercial hour" and as a result risked boredom. The newspaper recommended the show revert to the British format, shortening it to 30 minutes, then to "scrap the audience, hire hand-picked celebrity sleuths and save on trips to Micronesia". The following year, Moran retrospectively felt the 1992 series had been a "lucky break" for Crawfords, whose major series at the time, The Flying Doctors and Acropolis Now, would both be cancelled by the end of the year. == Cancellation and aftermath ==

Australian cancellation The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal announced in July 1992 that the industry had recorded its worst year in 1990-91. McFadyen became involved in an expensive legal battle which "continue[d] to plague [him]" In an interview, The Sunday Age reported the series "seemed far from his mind" and that the project was "finished as far as his work is concerned", as his attention turned to the second Newlyweds'' pilot for Channel Seven. On 20 September, Crawford Australia announced it had started retrenching staff to survive a possible five-month break until production picked up in 1993, having suffered from the recession, commercial television network difficulties, and the 10BA tax concession scheme drop; at the time Crawfords did not know if Nine would commission another series of Cluedo, with its other shows Acropolis Now, Newlyweds and The Flying Doctors all cancelled or in limbo. However, on 29 November, The Sydney Morning Herald reported the series had been "rescued from the discard basket" alongside The Flying Doctors and Raven, and on December 2, The Age reported it was "set to return" for a third series. Ultimately, the show was cancelled after two series; most of series one had aired in June–August 1992 and series two in 1993, though episodes continued to be broadcast into 1994 and 1995. ''Jocks' Journal assessed the Australian series as "short-lived", and The Sun-Herald'' admitted that it "wasn't exactly a ratings winner" for Channel Nine. While in February 1993 McFadyen followed up Cluedo with his Crawfords-Media Arts coproduction Newlyweds, which was advanced to series, Crawfords' association with Action Time ultimately did not continue past Cluedo. (Other series referred to include Cop Shop (1977), Chances (1991), Secrets (1993), and The Flying Doctors). and in 1996 The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that the public reaction to both Cluedo and Newlyweds was "tepid". Decades later, Junkee deemed it part of Australia's "weird" television landscape from the 90's. In 2014, the Australian version of Cluedo would be listed in a Herald Sun article called 'Classic TV shows we used to love that would never fly today'; the newspaper wrote it was a "bold concept for its time" and more successful in Britain where it originated, but "never struck a chord with enough viewers". British cancellation Upon its announcement, The Financial Times expressed surprise at the concept and questioned whether its participants "had more pride" than to take part, wondering if a televised snakes and ladders would be next. Evening Herald felt it "pales disappointingly in comparison" to the board game, deeming it "trite", "stilted", "obvious", and "crass" for "trying to convince its audience what a good time they're having and how much their brains are being stretched". Aberdeen Evening Express wrote the series "reduced a popular board game to a travesty of amateurish dramatics", criticising the "third-rate reconstructions and awful lineup of has-been personalities [with] careers dead and buried long ago" which "provided even less tension than an average session of the cardboard original" and "deliver[ing some rather ropey, semi-improvised dialogue"; the newspaper further commented "the board game’s strength lies in exercising the mind to imagine the crime, its motives and execution in a limited environment, but any hint of mystery was lost as the TV form flabbily fleshed the whole thing out to no advantage". Having not played Cluedo since a child, watching a few episodes of this series encouraged Daily Mirror to add the old board game to their Christmas shopping list, noting it had been "translated to television wonderfully well" and guessing that "viewers are enjoying it as much as the cast". While initially fearing the idea might become ''Cluedon't when board moved to screen, Daily Mirror'' found the series to be "terrific fun", due to the way Beacham "flounced, quivered and pouted, sending herself up wonderfully", and how Whitfield "frowned, quivered and sulked with her usual comic genius", adding "the rest of the cast weren't rubbish either" and that the "dull bits were the guessings by celebrity 'detectives'". In September, Birmingham Mail positively compared it to the "dismal failure" of Trivial Pursuits, citing Leahy's philosophy of avoiding physical game boards in the TV studio that players sat around, criticising the latter's complex overly-lit board, long rolls of the dice ala Sporting Triangles, and rounds often ending from an invisible clock rather than skill. Upon the series one finale, the newspaper assessed in August assessed that while the "corn[y]...ham acting scenes fail to stir your imagination", the show had "the best opening sequence of any programme on the box at the moment", and concluded that the show had done well enough in the ratings to justify second series. Similarly, Birmingham Weekly Mercury assessed the "fun" show "deserves another series". By April 1991 Evening Herald thought the "awful" spin-off had given the original board game a "very bad name", and surmised that "most of the murdering" during the "laboured" first series was "done by the TV critics". North Wales Weekly News, wrote "What a pity such a talented cast are handed such an inane script to deal with" and added "if the writers could sharpen up this series would have real potential". Meanwhile Liverpool Echo felt the show succeeded due to melding a popular board game with celebrity actors, dramatic costumes, and a "breath-taking" backdrop. In March 1992, Ogilvy and Mather Media research groups saw Cluedo get a "resounding thumbs down". In May, Sunday Times' Sally Pyne thought Cluedo turned the board game into a passive "couch potato operation" with television sleuths doing all the work. The series three premiere had received an official complaint. In April 1993, Bristol Evening Post asserted that the showbusiness chat show ''Bruce's Guest Night would "have to keep the star names coming in" for host Bruce Forsyth to "beat off the ratings challenge from our favourite TV whodunnit game show Cluedo". In May, Daily Mirror described it as a "silly, but highly entertaining" game show. In June, Financial Times'' questioned whether television's "perpetual obsession with the criminal" created a public fear of crime, citing Cluedo aired the same night as other "real crime" shows ''Horizon, It's a Stitch-up, Porridge, Mr Inside/Mr Outside, Hard Shoulder, Cagney & Lacey, and a Panorama episode about Salvatore Riina. Aberdeen Evening Express thought the show "reduced a popular board game to a travesty of amateurish dramatics" and that the "little plastic pieces" of the board game gave more realistic performances than the cast, In July, Sunday Mirror announced that the show had been cancelled by ITV director Marcus Plantin in a company-wide review of gameshows in the aftermath of the success of "wacky" Channel 4 show The Big Breakfast due to him wanting a "whole new look for daytime television", with other casualties including Runway, Lucky Ladders and Pyramid (game show); at the time Cluedo'' was attracting viewership of up to 10 million per episode. In reference to Madeley's hosting of the "superb" daytime quiz show Runway,The Independent noted his "not quite so impeccable (and recently axed)" Cluedo. TV Cream Toys suggested that despite breaking through on ITV primetime and "churn[ing] out" four series, Britain's Cluedo suffered a "ratings haemorrhage". In 2011, Lumley wrote the "small" television series had "disappeared too soon". In 2021, CST Online noted the British version was not nominated for any BAFTAs. British legacy However Rattan suggested the show received strong viewers figures, being watched by up to ten million people. and in 1995 Evening Echo described it as a "top rating programme". One of the Cluedo's best performances was 9.62 million viewers in series three, the 14th most ITV show of the night. The show was deemed Pick of the Day by The Sunday Times in August 1990, and the newspaper pondered how an "old" board game could have "weathered its transformation" into a television series "so successfully". Also ''Evening Echo's Pick of the Day in April 1991, the newspaper described it as a "popular" show based on an "equally-popular" board game; Belfast Telegraph called it an "exciting" whodunnit. According to The Age'', the British programme became hit in the United Kingdom and, to a lesser extent, the United States. The show also had cache; according to her biography Lorraine Kelly "started taking a few steps up the celebrity ladder" by appearing alongside fellow TV personalities. Series four consisted of panellists such as a children's TV presenter, a weather forecaster, and an ex-Leader of the Liberal Party. and a cast interview featured on Good Morning Britain in May 1992. The British Television Location Guide noted that the show's popularity led to a rise in Arley Hall's attendance figures from Cluedo fans. While the Australian production utilised advertising to subsidise its budget, and for the six episodes of British series two, Mrs. Peacock actress Rula Lenska was expected to earn £30,000. However, Stephanie Beacham wore "cheap-and-nasty" jewellery for her role including a bracelet that was kept together by a thin piece of cotton that was hurriedly stitched on. A matching wig for Lumley's outfit was submitted by a Teesdale Mercury reporter after an appeal was printed in the paper. After being displayed in the museum for weeks and generating a lot of interest, they were auctioned off on 26 November, with proceeds going to the Save The Children Fund for its 75th anniversary. International cancellation In January 1992, The Sun-Herald reported that Crawfords had been approached by numerous European countries who wished to produce the Australian version of the game show, adapting their scripts and some of their concepts. None of these shows enjoyed the longevity of the original and similar sentiments were shared on these other versions. Telecapri News agreed that poor ratings led to cancellation. Still, Maurizio Micheli thought Cluedo was "well packaged by prominent writers and actors", Orgoglionerd agreed that in Cluedo, deduction, intelligence and attention-to-detail are key. La Stampa deemed it "an agile and fast program that you can watch without dying of boredom", and "simply a good product with an extra idea, which is now very rare", concluding it was a "refreshing little program, a nice little surprise". Italian newspaper La Repubblica wrote that "the whole program is quite pleasant", Each episode saw a crime committed at the six-room Villa dei Castagni. while Teatro e Musica News wrote Il delitto è servito was a "beautiful program". Orgoglionerd thought it is program where "deduction, intelligence and attention to detail were the masters". Radiocorriere thought the show offered a "very complicated story". Toutelatele.com thought France 3 opted to adapt Cluedo for French television due to the channel "lacking originality and wanting to exploit a trend", likening it to 1988's Trivial Pursuit (predating the UK and US gameshows and adapted from the board game) and 1989's Dessinez, c’est gagné (adapted from US gameshow Win, Lose or Draw which was based on board game Pictionary). and Daniel Hånberg Alonso of Filmkultur recalled Cluedo as "very entertaining". In 2015, TV4 advised they had no intention of re-running the series. Quotenmeter thought the German version was one of the "innovative", "crazy", "kitschy", "tasteless" and "unconventional" shows that producer Stefan Fuchs brought to channel Sat.1 during his tenure, though noted they "often developed into big audience favourites". Alsterfilm Productions hosted the show on its site in 2013, and wrote that despite featuring well-known actors, the format was "not particularly successful". Aftermath Cluedo was featured in Albert Moran's ''Moran's Guide To Australian TV Series (1993), a scholarly guide to Australian TV series, which described Cluedo in the introduction as a "problematic anomal[y]" to the definition of drama, and a recent example of a genre hybrid. In 1994 Action Time completed a U.S. network deal for the Cluedo format and that year a full-motion video spiritual successor of Cluedo'' was released on the CD-i, filmed in the same location as the British game show and featuring a reprise of Joan Sims' Mrs. White. CDi Magazine wrote the experience was "like taking part in your own murder mystery on TV". In 1995, disco and snooker company European Leisure released "amusement with prizes" machines called Maygay Machines, based on TV programmes like Gladiators, EastEnders and Cluedo, earning £402,000 profit within six months. In the lead-up to the 150 millionth sale of Cluedo, in 1996 Waddingtons began a hunt to find out the identity of the elusive creator of the board game; it was eventually revealed Anthony E. Pratt had passed two years earlier of natural causes, and that he did not make a substantial amount of money from the game unlike Monopoly's creator. Over the next few decades the Cluedo franchise would continue to experiment with story-driven brand extensions with a stage musical (1997), computer game (1999), live-action miniseries (2011), stage play (2018), and upcoming film; however many including the stage play have instead drawn inspiration from the 1985 film. Meanwhile, other whodunnit game shows would follow in Cluedo's footsteps including Sleuth 101 (2010) in Australia and Armchair Detectives (2017) in Britain. On 1 May 2005, Crawford Productions donated their main archive including 328 x 1-inch videos of television programs to the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) when the production company closed their Box Hill site. Based in Canberra, the collection houses Cluedo televised episodes and scripts. The remainder of the collection was accepted by the Australian Film Institute (AFI) Research Collection. Established by AFI as a library in 1978, the Collection is still owned by AFI subsidiary Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA), though it is presently on loan to RMIT University in Melbourne. The Cluedo materials within the Crawfords Collection include script drafts, production stills, press kits, magazine and newspaper clippings, logos, and location shots. No DVD or digital release of the Australian game show has been made, and only bootleg copies are known to exist. ==Cast==

Main cast The hour-long show was hosted by Ian McFadyen and featured a regular cast who played the six suspects, plus an additional character Detective-Sergeant Stanley Bogong who solves the crime. Their version attracted household names like Lumley, June Whitfield, Mollie Sugden, Tom Baker, and Pam Ferris as main suspects. According to Aberdeen Evening Express it attracted "deities of the light entertainment world", while TV Times magazine noted the co-stars would be familiar to viewers from "top TV series", Irish Press and Evening Herald noted the show boasted a host of top-name British celebrities. Stephanie Beacham was persuaded to play Mrs. Peacock in order to work alongside a strong cast, particularly June Whitfield whom she admired. The Canberra Times agreed that Cluedo featured a "cast of top-class Australian actors". Paull loved playing Vivien and noted the cast were playing cliches; Who magazine admitted the main cast "ham it up shamelessly". The Guardian noted that on the same day Lumley was nominated for the award, she travelled to Manchester to film an episode of the British version, noting a "curious lack of ambition" and being "somewhat indiscriminate in her choice of roles". British Miss Scarlett Tracy Ward called it a "nice little job to do". Upon seeing the British premiere, The Guardian's Nancy Bank-Smith felt the show's past-prime actors overacted and under rehearsed, particularly criticising the French accent of guest actor Oliver Tobias. Daily Mirror agreed that the character "launched the worst slicked-back hairdo since Curly's in Coronation Street and the worst French accent since the Good Moaning policeman's in '''Allo 'Allo!". though he had initially been hoping for a career opportunity stemming from his sketch show The Comedy Company, which had ended in 1990. The latter show had been originally designed for the male members of Comedy Company, but by this time the others had wandered off to other projects while McFadyen was left with a "pitifully small budget” after the network went into receivership. This fact was frequently referred to in the press, for instance TV Week agreed his criminology degree plus background in comedic television made him "ideal for the situation" At the time, she was best-known to Australian audiences as lizard alien Diana in the science fiction series V (1985) and femme fatale Shannon Reed in a remake of Mission: Impossible'' (1988) which had been filmed in Australia. Directly descended from Polish aristocracy, the actress commented of Arington Grange, "I would love to have lived in a stately home as the lady of the manor...My parents were very high aristocracy in Poland, but all of that was lost and forfeited during the war". Announced to replace Lenska on 22 March 1992, Susan George "relish[ed]" tackling the role as her first major acting role after spending five years producing with her husband Simon MacCorkindale; the "glamorous" actress had previously been known for playing sultry roles in films like Straw Dogs. Four days later the actress broke her foot and sprained her ankle by falling down the stairs while filming at Arley Hall for series three of the British version having tripped over her high heels and long skirt; she returned to set after a week of convalesching. Sunday Mirror reported that in December 1993 Granada TV offered Joanna Lumley £20,000 to play the role and asked about her availability, but by January there were scheduling conflicts due to her show Absolutely Fabulous (co-starring with Jennifer Saunders) commencing filming in March at the same time as Cluedo's fourth series.. Sandwell Evening Mail suggested that one day Joan Collins might play the part. She had acted in numerous other Australian shows including Prisoner, G.P., and Acropolis Now. Mrs. White Mrs. White is the long-time cook and housekeeper of Brindabella and has lived through its long history. After her own daughter died, she took on Miss Scarlet as a surrogate daughter and they became very close, nicknamed "Whitey" by her. After initial reservations, she grew close to the new mistress of Brindabella Mrs. Peacock, who treats her well. Mrs. White lives in a nearby cottage with her sickly husband Arthur, his poor health plays on her mind. She is disappointed that she will not be buried with the family on the property, rather in a small plot at Creswick Falls cemetery. Joy Westmore played Mrs. Blanche White. Her most recent productions before working on the show were Embassy and ''Col'n Carpenter. Westmore expressed hesitation when first approached for the role, wondering how Crawford would successfully adapt the childhood game onto the screen. Westmore also reunited with Prisoner'' actress Lynda Stoner who played a hairdresser, and the magazine noted that in both shows Stoner was responsible for messing with Westmore's characters' hair. Granada TV reported that they approached Julie Walters to play the character in Series 4 for a salary of around £20,000, but her agents never received the contact. Known for playing Mrs Slocombe in Are you Being Served? 20 years earlier, South Wales Echo noted the series was the first time the accomplished actress Mollie Sugden had starred in a murder plot; she enjoyed being able to play a role that wasn't pure comedy. While Sugden was "quite looking forward" to the role, she noted "the only problem is that sometimes when I'm sinister, I'm rather funny without meaning to be". Pam Ferris was announced as the third British Mrs. White on 25 March 1992 in The Sun; the actress was "easily persuaded to take time out" from her ITV The Darling Buds of May role, as her interest was sparked during Cluedo's first series watching her Connie costar Stephanie Beacham and she decided, "I really fancy having a go at that". leading to homesickness. The "heart throb" He had "jumped at the chance" to take part in the show before he had commitments to a second series of Cluedo. A lucrative alternative earner during the times available roles were thin, he successfully maintained the business during Cluedo and moved his clients around to fit in with production of the first batch of episodes. Mallaby "relished" playing the "malevolent" character. Grantham was the second actor from the show to guest star on Cluedo after Nick Berry, who noted the conventional wisdom that "there's no life after Eastenders and [cast members] are never heard from again". Reverend Green The Reverend Clement Ashley (Clem) Green claims to have moved to the local diocese due his fascination of a local rare species of blank-handed potoroos, though it is believed he relocated to the remote place to get away from his dark past. Away from the rigid church hierarchy of the city he is free to run the church in his own unique way. He is financially supported by Mrs. Peacock and a close friend of the family. While having compassion for all living creatures, the Reverend has a short temper. He seeks guidance from his Creator when unsure how to proceed. Peter Sumner played Reverend Green. Sumner related to his character's love of animal causes due to being an animal liberationist and part of the anti duck shooting lobby, commenting "I believe absolutely in what the Rev Green feels about God's creatures...Rev Green is quite vehement in his defence of harmless creatures and I think he's absolutely right". The Sun-Herals described the character as "creepy". Richard Wilson came to the project after having directed An Inspector Calls on stage. Describing Reverend Green as a "super part", the "unsavoury...rakish" character was the third time Wilson had played a vicar after My Good Woman and Room At The Bottom, Nicholas Parsons said the series had “marvellous fun [with] great people to work with” and that “the little scenarios that we act out are beautifully written...it's wonderfully directed [with] an absolute dream cast". The show offered the actor a role at an age when other men would have retired. Detective Sergeant Stanley Bogong In his late forties, Detective Sergeant Stanley Bogong was orphaned as a baby and adopted by a policeman and his wife after becoming a ward-of-the-state. After entering his adoptive father's profession and working in the Homicide Squad for 1500 cases, he requested a transfer to the small village of Creswick Falls for a quiet life handing out speeding tickets, and was not expecting the frequent murders at Brindabella. He is known for his persistent investigation and interrogation methods, which help him solve the crime at hand. The "intrepid" character's role was to try to solve the "grisly...gruesome" murders Miss Scarlet actress Nicki Paull also noted the quality of the guest cast. The Sydney Morning Herald commented on Simon Chilvers adding a "splendid slice of ham" as Harold Phelan. Similar to Badler's experience, O'Brien noted a change from the "buss and professionalism" of the UK acting scene; the role resulted in him being apart from his wife Joanna Riding, noting "we’ve decided to stick by an agreement...we simply have to where the work is". In a "neat bit of casting" according to The Sun-Herald, one of the episodes featured guest star Cameron Daddo as Professor Plum's brother who acted with his real life younger brother and show regular Daddo. He hoped his on-screen chemistry with his brother would interest directors and producers, and reported that as a result of the episode Cluedo director Oscar Whitbread advised he was searching for a sibling role for them. McFadyen also invited his wife, actress Mary-Anne Fahey, to be killed in an episode. ==Episodes==

Series 1 (1992) Series 2 (1993) == Critical reception ==

Prior to its airing on 4 June The Age's John Mangan wrote "the storylines are deceptively appealing and the cast has mastered a neat line in subtle overacting...one gripe though: deducing the murderer may be a worthy challenge", On 10 June, The Herald-Sun suggested its failure as a drama is irrelevant as its "purely" designed as a money-making gameshow; the newspaper noted the "hammy...over-the-top music hall melodrama" acting and McFadyen's "uncomfortable...ambl[ing]" through the audience, though concluded that the show "relies not on production values or performances for success". While negatively comparing the drama to Chances, he argued that as viewers are looking for efficiently placed clues, it is necessary to have "a plot that goes over the top on exposition [and] characters who over-act." The Sunday Age described the play Shear Madness as "part Theatresports, with a bit of Cluedo thrown in". Of the series 2 premiere "Busy Body" in January 1993, The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that while "homegrown television is a rare and wondrous beast, to be encouraged at all times", this particular production was "not up to snuff and not recommendable." The Herald-Sun noted the "ingenuity" of viewers being able to phone in via a 0055 number to play along, writing that this ingredient made the show a "winner" despite its shortcomings. The show was sometimes referred to in politics, business, and crime; for example Craig Brown of the Sunday Times suggested that Margaret Thatcher would make an "admirable" Mrs Peacock on the series. In 1993 Mary Ann Sieghart of The Times thought a recent parliament leak scandal was as "intricate and entertaining" as Cluedo. In the midst of Enrique Bermúdez' assassination, The Sunday Times titled their coverage, 'Nicaragua gripped by grim game of ''Cluedo'. The Sun-Herald described the scattering of government numbers in the aftermath of the department indexing closures to the clues in a game of Cluedo. Computer Weekly thought solving how IBM would be broken-up was akin to a Cluedo'' mystery. Northern Ireland ITN network executives dropped and replaced the second episode from series one ("Politician's Funeral") a day before airing on UTV (Ulster Television) because it mirrored the recent death of MP Ian Gow; Granada Television commented that showing the episode would have been "in bad taste" while according to Irish Examiner it was thought this coincidence would have caused the series to have a "rather inappropriate start". In discussing the Spectrum Task Force, The Age noted the seriousness of the police investigation, noting it was "not a game of Cluedo, to be trivialised by amateurs". Cluedo was evoked in a piece about the Birmingham Six, which suggested that even "novice" sleuths of the show could have "cracked this one". Effects on cast and crew The show had lasting effects for its cast and crew and was evaluated as part of their careers. In 1993, The Sydney Morning Herald sarcastically called Cluedo one of the "gems" of McFadyen's career, alongside the "unimaginatively dreadful" sitcom Bingles (1992) and the following year The Age nicknamed him "Mr Cluedo". In 2011, The Courier Mail highlighted the series as part of McFadyen's "long and distinguished career". Meanwhile, Badler's experiences on the show, removed from the "special treatment" in her union-supported United States career, was a shock and made her "reevaluate why [she] was in the industry". In 1998, The Age commented that Paull's presence at the Saab Le Meridien International Polo Tournament lent a "pleasant murder mystery feel to the day" while "mingling with the Toorak set and the landed gentry". That year, The Sydney Morning Herald suggested Nadine Gardner's guest appearance in the "truly woeful" show was a dark moment in her career alongside Prisoner, Neighbours, and All Together Now. Tony Cavanaugh, who had worked on the production team as writer and editor, retroactively described the show as "long-forgotten (and totally dreadful)". The 2022 podcast So You Want To Make A TV Show was the first time the Daddo brothers worked together since their Cluedo episode 30 years prior. That year, Paull remembered the show as "a delight from beginning to end" while Prisoner Officers and Inmates magazine deemed Mrs. White one of Westmore's most recognised roles after Prisoner. In 1992, Callan admitted "people laugh when I tell them [I work for the show], but it pays the bills!". Grantham had starred in Cluedo as Colonel Mustard after having been charged for murder in the 80s, an irony brought up by The Sun's reporter at a press conference which angered the actor. Cluedo contestant Tony Slattery, who later turned down a successful show because he thought it was "crap” advised “I have no rules about what I would do but I would not do Cluedo again”. In 1993, Irish Examiner deemed Cluedo one of the "top draw programmes" by British Cluedo director John O'Regan, alongside ''Busman's Holiday while in 1995, The Corkman deemed Cluedo'' one of the "highly creditable programmes" of O'Regan's career, and in 2001 The Guardian suggested that shows like Cluedo, Sabotage and The Mole appealed to Leahy's "devious, darker edge". Asked in later years about the worst show he'd ever done, Tarrant immediately explained that Cluedo was "absolute garbage...the dullest experience ever...a pile of crap" and that he "would get drunk and depressed about it every night in the hotel". In Chris Tarrant: the biography, Virginia Blackburn listed it as one of the "forgettable...middle-of-the-road" programmes of Tarrant's career. Llanelli Star described Dim Cliw as a Welsh version of Cluedo; presented by Emyr Wyn and airing on S4C, each programme started with a short drama written by pathologist Bernard Knight culminating in a murder, followed by five teams of two playing detective locate clues and question suspects to discover the cause of death and who was responsible The prize for the team that successfully solves the mystery, with the winner spending a weekend at the Sherlock Holmes Hotel. The Age agreed that Whodunnit? pioneered the format and potentially made it familiar to Australian audiences prior to Cluedo's airing. and Dalek I Loved You described the show as "an earlier version of Cluedo". CST Online thought Cluedo wasn't particularly original, "re-treading ground already covered" by Whodunnit?. Cluedo was used as a short-hand for describing simplicities in the crime fiction genre (i.e. Mrs White with the Candlestick in the Kitchen). The Stage felt that the cosy mystery series The Mrs Bradley Mysteries' characters were "as shallow" as the suspects in Cluedo. Meanwhile, Leeds Student described Murder, She Wrote as "Cluedo for illiterates", while The Sydney Morning Herald observed an episode "devolv[ing] sharply" into "yet another Cluedo-style whodunnit, complete with an appearance by token oldie". Similarly, Daily Mirror felt Daziel and Pascoe was "yet another cop show, with a cast full of one-dimensional Cluedo suspects". TV Tonight's David Knox thought Sleuth 101 (2010) was an original format of the whodunnit game show genre that echoed forerunners like Whodunnit? and Cluedo, and The Age deemed Sleuth 101 a "contemporary" Cluedo Commenting it had been many years since the whodunnit made an appearance in a television game show, Knox pointed to the relatively recent Cluedo and noted "there have been others harking all the way back to the 1950s game show To Tell the Truth". The Stage compared the "shallow[ness]" of the characters in Supply & Demand (1997) to the suspects in Cluedo. Evening Herald (Dublin) referred to a former whodunnit series being "the most appalling rubbish but I was hooked", noting that Cluedo was shaping up to "be the show's succesor" [sic]. In 1991, police spoof Lazarus & Dingwall had an episode featuring spate of murders that appeared to be imitating Cluedo scenarios. The Guardian thought Cluedo lovers would enjoy the "wacky...cliche[d]" police detective comedy and that also Jack and Jeremy's Real Lives' debut used Cluedo as part of its source material. Sunday Times wrote that watching Casualty was like a "sick, video-nasty variation" on Cluedo in which the viewer predicts the fate to befall the victims. The Observer wrote that the "hammed up detective spoof" Virtual Murder was unsure whether it wanted to be Cluedo or Moonlighting. Copycat Television: Globalisation, Program Formats and Cultural Identity likened the show to TV Globo's Você Decide (1992), You Decide describing them both as "a hybrid, an amalgamation of a gameshow with a fictional situation and story"; Crikey compared the show's story arcs to those of "campy prison romp" Wentworth (2013), a remake of Prisoner. Meanwhile, of the British version, Den of Geek and The Guardian drew comparisons with British series Armchair Detectives (2017) and The Murder Game (2003) respectively. In 2008, The Age wrote "back in the old days all it took to satisfy those wanting a bit of amateur sleuthing on the couch was a TV adaptation of Cluedo", comparing it to the blood and gore of modern shows like Murder and CSI. The Guardian also saw the show's similarity to the 2020 whodunnit À vous de trouver le coupable, described by producer Christophe Dechavanne as Cluedo 4.0, which saw the concept's return to France 3 after the French version of Cluedo 26 years prior. The show's title was adopted for the true crime cold case podcast Clunes Cluedo. '''Reverend Green's potential removal''' The show's depiction of Reverend Green and religious themes effected the franchise. It has been speculated that the British series one had originally been written for Mr. Green (the American businessman iteration of the character) and Professor Plum thereby excluding the Reverend; upon airing, Mr. Green became Plum and Plum had become Reverend Green, however the Reverend was not given any murders in the entire six episode series. Phillip Howard of The Times wrote a column, arguing it is "one of those little changes that can be interpreted as significant social indicators". He wrote that clergymen had long experienced a "social demotion" as murder suspects in the works of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope, which was "now recognised by Cluedo". Sunday Times thought the decision "undermin[ed] the basic appeal of the game and the literary subgenre from which it draws its inspiration". The stunt led to The Mason Williams consultancy picked up a PRWeek award. == Notes ==