Quiz: And My Verdict Is ...

Last night was a good night for mini-series finales.  I just reviewed I Know This Much Is True.  Here now a review of Quiz, which ended its three-episode run on AMC yesterday, and tells the true story of Charles Ingram, who in 2001 won £1,000,000 on the British television show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and was promptly brought to criminal trial along his wife and an accomplice for his success on grounds that he and they were cheating.

First, a bouquet of provisos from me.  I didn't see the series in the U. K. or anywhere in 2001 or after, and have no idea what Ingram and his wife were really like (actually, are really like - oops, am I giving too much away, implying that neither received a death sentence?).  In fact, I haven't read a word of the two books upon which the series is based.   So my impressions and conclusions of the Ingrams' innocence or guilt are based entirely on the little series.   And this is also a good time to repeat my frequently voiced advisory about docu-dramas: don't mistake them for anything like the entire truth, maybe not even the essential truth.  Indeed, even a documentary can't be expected to convey the entirety of any matter, so we certainly can't expect that from a docu-drama.

So, Quiz is a little docu-drama series about a very big matter - well, £1,000,000 is not as much in American dollars as when I was boy coin-collector in the late 1950s, but it's nothing to sneeze at.  Certainly the Ingrams, real and portrayed, were happy to get it.   But did they lie and cheat to get it?

Well, based on what I saw i.e., the testimony of the three episodes, I would say ... no, they did not.  Their defense attorney, well by portrayed by Peaky Blinders' Helen McCrory, was utterly convincing that the plethora of coughs in the studio made it highly unlikely that Charles benefitted from coughs from his wife and accomplice signifying yes and no to possible answers to questions on the show.  And Charles certainly didn't cough his way into Mensa.

And speaking of fine portrayals, Matthew Macfadyen was just perfect as Charles, as he's been in everything from MI-5 (aka Spooks) to Succession.   And Michael Sheen, another actor who's great in everything he does, was just outstanding as host Chris Tarrant (and again, I have no idea what the real Tarrant was like).

But I do have an idea about the mini-series, and that's that it's eminently watchable and enjoyable television.  See it before you research the real Ingrams, if that's your inclination.