Extra: Wednesday 8 July 1981
from the NZ Listener
TV One
10.35am Play School
11.00 A Place in History
11.30 Yoga with Sandra Riddle
11.35 One Day at a Time (Rpt)
Noon News
12.02 The Young and the Restless
12.30 See Here
12.35 Beauty and the Beast
1.05 Crown Court
1.30 Days of Our Lives
2.25 Play School (Rpt)
2.50 Song Book
3.00 Chic Chat
3.30 After School
Includes Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
4.00 The Electric Company
4.35 Fangface
5.05 A Dropa Kulcha
5.30 The Flying Kiwi
6.00 It’s Academic
6.30 News
7.00 Coronation Street
7.30 Regional Programmes
Top Half (Auckland)
Today Tonight (Wellington)
The Mainland Touch (Christchurch)
7.30 South (Dunedin)
8.00 Close Up
9.00 Barney Miller
9.30 The Challenge
10.00 Sporting Life
11.00 News
11.05 Closedown
TV2
2.30pm For Maddie with Love
3.00 Soap (Rpt)
3.30 General Hospital
4.00 All Creatures Great and Small (Rpt)
5.00 Little House on the Prairie (Rpt)
6.00 News at Six
6.30 Give Us a Clue
7.00 The Muppet Show
7.30 Mork & Mindy
8.00 The Sullivans
9.00 Hammer House of Horror
10.00 News at Ten
10.30 Movie for TV: The Girls at the Office
Starring Susan St James (“Kate & Allie”) and Barbara Eden (“I Dream of Jeannie”)
12.15am Closedown
@foxyrover @TelevisionAU In the early 1980s, Kevan Moore & Associates (an independent production house headed by Kevan Moore, who was referred to as ‘the godfather of music on New Zealand television’) hired Les Thompson, an Australian journalist and broadcaster who was based in New Zealand at the time and had worked as a newsreader at Radio Hauraki in those days, to host the New Zealand version of “Give Us a Clue”, with Jenny Maxwell and Peter Rowley leading the celebrity teams.
“Give Us a Clue”, a British televised game show version of charades which was licensed by Thames Television International (now Fremantle) and broadcast on ITV from 1979 to 1992. From 1979 to mid-1984, the show was originally hosted by Michael Aspel, and then by Michael Parkinson from mid-1984 until it ended in 1992.
According to Wikipedia, the game was based on charades, a party game where players used mime rather than speaking to demonstrate a name, phrase, book, play, film or TV programme. Each player was given roughly two minutes to act out their given subject in front of his/her team, and if the others were unsuccessful in guessing correctly, the opposing team would have a chance to answer for a bonus point.
The original New Zealand version of “Give Us a Clue” ran on TVNZ for two years (1980-81).
In 1993, the format was brought back by TV3 (now Three) with Brian Edwards as host and Gary McCormick and Belinda Todd as team captains. The TV3 version was produced by Michael Hockley and Gray Taylor of First Pictures, an independent production house which also produced the Sir Howard Morrison specials for TV3 and, later, TVNZ.
In 1999, “Give Us a Clue” reappeared on TVNZ and ran for 13 shows, plus a Christmas special and a summer special over the Christmas/New Year holiday period. Marcus Lush was the host and Gary McCormick, captain of the men’s team, was joined by actress and comedienne Alison Wall as captain of the women’s team. The shows were recorded at Auckland’s SkyCity Theatre.
You can watch both parts of the 1981 “Give Us a Clue” show, which was broadcast on TV2 (now TVNZ 2) at 6.30pm on the evening of Wednesday 8 July 1981, via YouTube. Featured celebrities were Tina Cross, Diana Lakin, Christine Lloyd, Brent Bodie, Richard Moss and Marcus Craig.