Evening Dress, Good Manners and General Knowledge: The Joy of Vintage TV Quizzes

There is something wonderfully comforting about disappearing down a YouTube rabbit hole and finding yourself watching a television quiz show made 50, 60 or even 70 years ago.

Vintage television quizzes and panel games offer far more than an opportunity to test your general knowledge against contestants from another era. 

They provide fascinating little windows into a world of television that operated according to very different rules.

And sometimes the differences are delightful.

One of the first things you notice is how smartly everybody is dressed.

On many programmes, appearing on television was evidently regarded as an occasion. Male presenters and panellists might wear dinner jackets and bow ties, while female guests arrived in elegant evening dresses, jewellery and beautifully styled hair.

Nobody looked as though they'd popped into the studio on the way back from doing the weekly shop.

Then there are the manners.

Watch some old panel shows and you'll occasionally see the male panellists stand when a female guest enters the studio. Chairs are pulled out, introductions are courteous and conversations can have an almost formal quality.

Of course, we shouldn't pretend everything about those times was better. Social attitudes have changed enormously, often for very good reasons, and women appearing on television weren't always treated with the equality we would expect today.

But there is nevertheless something rather appealing about the idea that courtesy itself was considered important.

When the quiz was the entertainment

Vintage quizzes can also feel remarkably restrained by modern standards.

There may be no enormous cash jackpot, dramatic lighting, pounding music or presenter shouting, "IS THAT YOUR FINAL ANSWER?"

Sometimes the prize seems almost incidental. The attraction is simply watching knowledgeable people attempting to answer difficult questions, or witty people enjoying a good panel game.

And the questions themselves can be fascinating.

Some answers that would have been obvious to viewers in 1962 are completely baffling today, while questions considered difficult then can now seem remarkably straightforward. References to politicians, actors, books, plays, radio personalities and forgotten sporting heroes provide intriguing snapshots of what constituted popular culture at the time.

That makes these programmes accidental historical documents.

YouTube's unlikely television archive

One of the great pleasures of YouTube is that programmes which might otherwise have disappeared from everyday public consciousness can suddenly find new audiences.

You might begin by watching one old quiz and, several recommendations later, realise you've spent an evening in a television studio somewhere in the 1950s or 1960s.

The picture might wobble. The sound may hiss. They'll be in black and white, the set may consist of little more than some curtains, chairs and a desk.

Yet somehow it works.

Perhaps that's because these programmes remind us that television doesn't always need to be enormous, noisy and spectacular. Sometimes intelligent questions, interesting personalities, gentle humour and a little courtesy are quite enough.

And when a glamorous female guest walks onto the set and every gentleman on the panel immediately gets to his feet, it's difficult not to smile.

Some of the things happening might raise eyebrows such as smoking on set, but those were different days back then.

Do you watch vintage quiz and panel shows on YouTube? Which forgotten programmes have you rediscovered? Let us know, because there may be some gems the rest of us should be watching too.