Review – Quiz Show

Good cast. Decent script. Decent production values and direction. Ralph Fiennes in particular does a solid job as poor, tortured Charles Van Doren, eye of the storm during the quiz show scandal that at least partially changed the face of television. And that’s where the show goes wrong. There’s very little perspective offered on the real scope of what happened. In its early years people accorded television a great deal of importance. The rigging of quiz shows really injured the faith of a lot of consumers of this new technology, and it helped steer the medium away from its full potential and transform it into an entertainment-oriented industry. This thought is reflected strongly at the end, but without the proper historical perspective it’s hard to really appreciate. Thus in my opinion the best moment in the movie is the conversation between Herb Stempel and his wife right after she finds out that he was getting the answers. Only there do we truly glimpse the impact of the whole mess. Mildly amusing