History
The series began as a 1977 BBC documentary about a London auction house doing a tour of the West Country in England. The pilot roadshow was recorded in Hereford on 17 May 1977 presented by Nationwide contributor Bruce Parker and Going for a Song antiques expert Arthur Negus. The pilot was so successful that it was transmitted and the format has remained almost unchanged ever since. (Negus appeared on Antiques Roadshow until 1983). In the original BBC series, various towns or famous places are advertised as venues. The show has since visited a number of other countries (including Canada in 2001 and Australia in 2005) and has been imitated by other TV production companies around the world.
In the United Kingdom, annual children's Christmas specials aired from 1991 until 2006. These specials aired under the title Antiques Roadshow: The Next Generation (except for the 1991 edition, which was titled Antiques Roadshow Going Live) and used a specially reworked version of the regular theme music. However there was no children's special in 2007; instead an edition was devoted to "antiques of the future" dating from the 1950s to the present day.
A spin-off series, 20th Century Roadshow, focusing on modern collectables, aired between April and June 2005. It was hosted by Alan Titchmarsh.
Two other spin-off series, Antiques Roadshow Gems (1991) and Priceless Antiques Roadshow (2009–10), revisited items from the show's history and provided background information on the making of the show and interviews with the programme's experts.
In the 1980s, a young girl wrote in to Jim'll Fix It to ask if Jimmy Savile, would "fix it" so she could "accidentally" drop and smash a seemingly-valuable vase on an episode of Antiques Roadshow. This was broadcast as part of a regular edition of Antiques Roadshow (as well as in the Jim'll Fix It episode), with many of the crowd at the Roadshow looking on, horrified, until the antiques expert, David Battie, explained the ruse.
The most valuable item to ever appear on the show featured on 16 November 2008. This was an original 1990s maquette of the Angel of the North sculpture by Antony Gormley, owned by Gateshead Council, which was valued at £1m by Philip Mould. Glassware expert Andy McConnell later valued a collection of chandeliers at seven million pounds (their actual insurance value), noting as he did so that this beat Mould's record; however these were fixtures of the building in which the show was being filmed (Bath Assembly Rooms) rather than an item that had been brought in. Conversely, many items brought before the experts are worthless. However, these are seldom shown in the broadcast episodes, in order to spare embarrassment for the individuals involved. Value is not the only criterion for inclusion; items with an interesting story attached, or of a provenance relevant to the show's location, will often be featured regardless of value, and counterfeit objects are sometimes included to give experts an opportunity to explain the difference between real and fake items.
The theme music for the show was written by Paul Reade and Tim Gibson and was published by Air Edel.
Read more about this topic: Antiques Roadshow
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