3-2-1
About 3-2-1
3-2-1 was a popular British game show that was made by Yorkshire Television for ITV. It ran for ten years, between July 1978 and December 1988.
Throughout its' run, the show was hosted by former Butlins Redcoat Ted Rogers. It was based on a Spanish gameshow called Un, dos, tres... responda otra vez and was three shows in one, a quiz show, a variety show and a game show.
The show was a huge success consistently pulling in large ratings. The first series, though intended as a summer filler, attracted up to 16.5 million viewers and subsequent years never failed to peak below 12 million. The show occupied a Saturday early evening slot for most of its run.
The overall objective of the game was to survive elimination through to part 3 of the show, and try to unravel a series of cryptic clues in order to win the star prize. One of the clues, however, referred to Dusty Bin who was the show's booby prize. If the contestants ended up with Dusty at the end of the show, all they got was a brand new dustbin.
Each show had a theme, such as 'Seacruise' or the 'Swinging Sixties'. All of the variety acts, quiz questions, stage sets and clues subsequently followed this theme. In later series Dusty would appear in a costume relating to that week's theme. The changing themes were dropped for the final series where a more generic stage set was re-used each week.
Comments
Enjoyed the 1986 and 1987 series recently - it would be nice in future if we got the see earlier series of this classic gameshow..... :) BH
Bryan Higgins 24 September 2011
I would Like to see the early series of 321 as well.
Mr Chris Penfold-Ivany 15 December 2011
My favorite show on challenge! Please schedule more. Particularly series including The Brian Rogers Connection. Love those guys..!
Will Ingram 25 April 2012
Great show which has unfortunately ben ruined by some really bad editing by Challenge channel just to stop us from seeing the viewers questions. Are there really people so idiotic that they would attempt to enter a competition that ended over 20 years ago? Surely a little disclaimer could be used to cover any phone number? The late, great Les Grey was cut out completely from giving his clue and we didnt hear it until 10 minutes later. Very poor!
Gary Coyle 07 June 2012
I would like to see earlier series too - if we can have Bullseye and Family Fortunes from 1983, why not 321?
Matthew King 19 September 2012
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