Big Break

Broadcast between 1991 and 2002, 'Big Break' was a snooker-themed gameshow hosted by Jim Davidson with minor snooker celebrity John Virgo helping out. Each contestant is assigned a professional snooker player at the beginning, and show contains a number of similar rounds in which contestants must answer questions, with their player then attempting to pot balls to win the contestants money and prizes when the contestants get a question right, with different balls being worth incrementally larger amounts of money and, in the timed final round, bigger and bigger prizes. And thats it basically, apart from John Virgo's Trickshot, in which Virgo sets up a different snooker ...  Read the complete review

Big Break was a game show based around the game of snooker, mixed with the normal game show elements ,like questions and prizes. The show ran from 1991 to 2002, the show was presented by Jim Davidson and john Virgo a former snooker player. The show was broken down in to four sections RED HOT After introducing and chatting to each constant, the contestant picked a ball from a bag (all the balls being different colours). Each ball represented a professional snooker player. The contestant was then asked questions each question equalling time. The amount of time they won gave their snooker player time to pot as many of the red balls on ...  Read the complete review

Now those who have read my review of Jim Davidson in the Generation Game will already now I am not a fan of this man. In fact not to pout too fine a point on it I think he is as all the grace and humour of a Swedish riot policeman. Not content with the BBC foisting him on for half the year on the Generation Game they seem to think we'd go cold turkey if we didn't have him on screen in Big Break for the other half. To be fair to Davidson (though why I should I don't know) it does seem however that he has toned his comments down a little bit for this show. The end result is he does not make my flesh creep quite as much as normal. There you have it, that is as ...  Read the complete review

Big Break was a largely successful Saturday evening entertainment gameshow that paired a member of the public with a celebrity snooker player and pitted them against two other like teams in the chance to win prizes galore. Jim Davidson was the host, with John Virgo his 'glamorous' assistant and resident snooker expert. The format of the show was the contestant answering a series of questions in the hope that they will give the snooker pro enough time to perform their magic on the table and give them the edge over the other teams. One such game, which was the first in the show, was named 'Red Hot', and involved the contestant receiving 10 seconds on the clock. ...  Read the complete review

Who would have thought that the game of snooker could ever be translated into something midly entertaining. What the BBC have managed to do here is transform what is probably the most boring spectator sport since tiddly-winks into a quiz show which almost works. I am a fan of quiz shows. I love to hurl abuse at the screen when someone messes up a really obvious answer etc. as much as the next person. I also like playing snooker, but to be honest, I would rather take a bath in acid than sit through watching a snooker match on the television. Big Break tries to combine these two mediums into a gameshow, and succeeds mainly because of the hosts than anything else. Jim ...  Read the complete review