Earlier this year, English game show host Tom O’Connor sadly passed. One of the shows he hosted, though it never aired, was Pick Pockets, which paired traditional trivia with snooker and featured top players.
Today, it’s beyond fanciful to imagine a game show dedicated to billiards. Especially in the US, no players are household names. Ask most people about billiards and they’ll stare confusedly at you. To my knowledge, Jeopardy! was the last game show to feature billiards. That was in 2014 with the elementary Pool Shots category.
But, while modern game shows have not been kind to billiards, TV game show history tells a more complicated story that echoes the rising and receding popularity of our favorite cue sport.
The first billiards-themed game show was ABC’s Ten-Twenty, which aired in 1959 and lasted approximately 13 weeks. Conceived by billiards evangelist and promoter Frank Oliva, Ten-Twenty was intended to bring pool out of the murky pool halls. Quite the challenge as this was still two years before both the movie The Hustler popularized the sport and the brothers Jansco organized the first Johnston City Hustler Jamborees.
Ten-Twenty pitted top players of the era, such as “Cowboy” Jimmy Moore and Irving “The Deacon” Crane, against one another in games compressed for 30-minute television watching intervals. Though Ten-Twenty was hardly a national success, the fact it ever aired is downright impressive.
The first billiards tie-in that I could find occurred one year earlier, when World Straight Pool Champion Willie Mosconi appeared on To Tell the Truth in 1958. Mosconi subsequently appeared on I’ve Got a Secret (1962) and What’s My Line? (1962), in which celebrity panelists questioned contestants to determine their occupations. Perhaps, it was a harbinger of the future that none of the panelists successfully guessed Mosconi’s job.
Other billiards players similarly appeared on these celebrity panel shows, including a six-year-old Jean Balukas on I’ve Got a Secret in 1966, but the next big step in the billiards-themed medium was Minnesota Fats Hustles the Pros in 1967, followed by the more successful Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats in 1968. Fats, the quintessential showman and impresario, was the perfect host for a game show in which he entertained audiences by playing celebrities for charity. The game show ran for four seasons, and starred a who’s-who of the era’s A-listers.
But, by the early ‘70s, America’s appetite had waned. Indeed, it took 16 years before another billiards game show appeared. This time it was in the UK, where snooker was truly catching fire, as evidenced by 18 million TV viewers watching the 1985 World Snooker Championship. In 1984, the Stuart Hall hosted quiz show Pot the Question launched. Contestants were paired up with a snooker player, and the points per question were determined by what the snooker player potted.
Surprisingly, Pot the Question only lasted one season. The aforementioned Pick Pockets was the next attempt to cash in on snooker’s popularity, but that too failed. It took a few more years before the BBC’s Big Break nailed the formula, launching by far the most popular billiards-themed game show, with 222 episodes across 11 seasons.
Hosted by off-color comedian Jim Davidson and former snooker player John Virgo, Big Break paired three contestants with three professional snooker players in a series of rounds that combined trivia and snooker play. Many of the snooker giants of the era – e.g., Dennis Taylor, Jimmy White, Alex Higgins, Willie Thorne, and Allison Fisher — appeared on Big Break.
Back in the US, billiards was back in the shadows. The sport had disappeared from game shows, with 2002 being the one outlier. That year, in the “Billiards for Gross Eats” episode of Fear Factor, contestants were given a cue ball to sink four balls in five shots. The missed balls had pictures of the gastronomic horrors they would have to eat. In the “Beat the Shark” episode of Dog Eat Dog, a contestant competed against a billiards professional to sink four balls before he cleared two tables. It didn’t help that the opponent was Dave “The Ginger Wizard” Pearson, who set the Guinness World Record by potting two consecutive racks of 15 pool balls in 82 seconds.
In 2005, what many hoped would provide an industry resurgence proved to be the final nail in the coffin. That game show was Ballbreakers. Executive produced by Mars Callahan, director of Poolhall Junkies, and featuring commentary by Ewa Mataya Laurance, the show consisted of contestants competing in 9-ball for a chance to win $20,000. Intended to be the “coolest pool show ever,” according to its creator, Ballbreakers was an unmitigated disaster, lasting only one season and proving there is no joy watching amateur players compete in 9-ball.
Assuming Jeopardy! emerges from its current PR apocalypse and begin its 38th season, I have a suggestion – or more precisely, an answer — for whomever replaces Mike Richard as executive producer.
This sport, often maligned and portrayed unfairly in popular culture, is overdue for some recognition.
Answer: What is Billiards?
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This article first appeared in BCA Insider, BCA Holiday Issue, November 1, 2021.
