Get Your Own Back
Get Your Own Back is a British children's television game show created by Brian Marshall. Each episode staged a contest between teams of children – attempting to score as many points as possible – and their respective adults – attempting to make tasks as difficult as possible for their child contestants – playing a variety of games. The winning child earns a right to get revenge on the adult by ejecting them into a tank of gunge; adult contestants in the show are somewhat embarrassing, for a variety of reasons, to their child counterparts.
Airing on BBC One's children's television block, it ran from 26 September 1991 to 1 January 2004, and was hosted by Dave Benson Phillips. Lisa Brockwell also presented the final three series of the show alongside Phillips, and Peter Simon served the role of voice over in 1995.
Format
The show consisted of two teams, each comprising one child contestant and a parent/relative/older sibling/teacher/celebrity who in the child's eyes had committed some sort of crime that they wanted to seek revenge for. These 'crimes' were usually trivial, such as singing badly or asking the child to tidy their room.Dave and the audience always showed bias against the adults by booing the oppressed as much as possible. The games were always designed to make things difficult or unpleasant for the adults. They often had them dressed in embarrassing costumes.
Throughout every series the final round was called the "Gunk Dunk", where the losing adult was always thrown into a pool of colourful, messy gunge.
History
1991
The first series theme and studio was that of a basic cartoony house. This is also the only series with three teams, and it was also the only series with a green team.In round 1, called "Brain Box", the adults played a game where they scored points by answering questions from a topic the child chose using a carnival game. Round 2 was called "Chumps Challenge", where the remaining adults played another game. The loser of this round went to the final round, the Gunk Dunk.
In the Gunk Dunk, the theme was a small cartoony dungeon with a yellow and black colour scheme, and the adult and child sat over a bubbling cauldron. The adult would get the child dunked into the cauldron if they answered five correct answers in under 45 seconds without using answers beginning with a particular letter. Failure resulted in the adult being dropped in.
1992-1994
The 1992 series was the first of the fairground themed shows, The number of teams was reduced to two. Brain Box was played again as the first round, with the Chumps Challenge round always being an obstacle race. This time the adult's scores in the rounds were added together. The winning adult got the "key to freedom" and left clean, with the loser being sent to the Gunk Dunk.The Gunk Dunk in this era had a darker ghost train theme, and had the same game as the original, but the child got gunged in the booth where the lever was rather the gunk dunk itself. The adult sat over a gunge tank, and would be thrown in regardless of whether they won or not, despite Dave stating otherwise.
In series 4, a third puzzle round called "Puzzle Time" was played as well, where the adult and child in opposite colours played together to win points for the adult. This series had 2 "knock-down bonus" rounds added after the first 2 rounds, where the child played games to deduct the adult's scores.
1995
In 1995, the teams were changed to red and blue. There was also a change where the child with the highest score got to put the adult into the Gunk Dunk. This time, the Gunk Dunk matched the lighter fairground theme and was no longer hidden in another part of the studio.The Gunk Dunk game also changed in 1995 as the grown up would be asked three questions, with a different colour of slime being poured over them for each wrong answer. However, they were always thrown into the tank regardless.
1996-2000
In 1996 the show received a complete makeover and had a production upgrade as the show was pulling in successful ratings for CBBC. The fairground theme used since 1992 was replaced with a stadium theme along with new music and logo to match the "Cool Britannia" era of the 1990s. This series also changed the colours of the teams to yellow and blue.Five rounds were played before the Gunk Dunk, with round 5 usually being a double points round. The Gunk Dunk was changed so adults were moved further from the gunge for each answer they got wrong, making their drop feature more tense.
In 2000, the winning child was given an opportunity to win a grand prize by picking between two switches, with the other releasing gunge on them and not receiving the prize.
Prior to filming of Series 9, the show held a contest where children submitted games ideas to be used on the show. One winning game idea was chosen for each episode of the series to be played. The child with the winning selection was invited into the studio to explain their game idea to Dave, who also awarded each contest winner a small bonus prize. Dave would also select some honourable mentions each episode and explain their game ideas.
2001-2003
Lisa Brockwell was introduced as a co-host. The number of rounds before the Gunk Dunk was reduced to four, but changed back to five rounds in the final series.The Gunk Dunk was changed so that both adults sat above the gunge tank with the winning child from the games being given a one notch head start. If the scores were tied, no head start was awarded. Dave would ask the children some questions on the buzzer and every question that was answered correctly allowed the child to move their adult up one notch. The first child who got their adult to the fifth and highest notch got to gunge their adult by pulling a lever next to them and win a get your own back trophy both children would win a get your own back goody bag with a mug a pen a watch and a sweatshirt.