TV & Movies
Stephen Fry Is Set To Host Jeopardy!’s UK Comeback
And he’s “dizzy with delight,” too.
After last airing in the UK back in the ‘90s, classic game show Jeopardy! will make its return later in 2023, with a very familiar face in the presenter’s chair. Based on the U.S. game show of the same name, the well-known show reverses the usual question-answer format of most quizzes and mixes things up. Instead of answering questions, contestants are given trivia clues. To score a point, they must reply with a simple quiz-style question containing the correct answer to the clue.
Lost? We’ve got you. The presenter might give a clue like: “This former The Simple Life star claims to be the world’s highest paid female DJ”. The right answer would be “Who is Paris Hilton?” – though any question containing the answer is fine.
Not all clues are created equally on Jeopardy! though, and are worth different amounts depending on how difficult they are. It’s up to each player how high they want to aim, but any incorrect answers are taken off their overall balance of points.
Though we’ve previously had our own version of the show in the UK, Jeopardy! is currently a bigger deal in the U.S. where it now airs every single day after first coming to screens in 1964 and was hosted by the beloved Alex Trebek. Ahead of the quiz show’s UK reboot, here’s everything we know so far.
Jeopardy! Presenter
Quiz-hosting legend Stephen Fry – who presented QI for almost two decades – has been tapped to head up the new reboot. “In the United States, Jeopardy! is a phenomenon like no other. Whenever I’m in America, I do my damnedest to catch it every weekday,” he said in a statement. “The idea of hosting it here in the UK makes me dizzy with delight. Such a dedicated quizzing nation as ours will, I hope, welcome this uniquely beguiling and endlessly rewarding game.”
Release Date
Though there’s not an exact release date just yet, Jeopardy! will land on ITV1 and ITVX in Autumn 2023, with 20 episodes to kick things off. Until then, get in the spirit with this older clip of Ken Jennings, who earned a record-breaking $4.5m (£3.7m) on the gameshow in total, and now hosts it in the U.S.
