Incredible Games

Incredible Games was a popular children's game show which was broadcast between 30 January 1994 and 14 March 1995 and aired on BBC1. It included a variety of games, performed by contestants between the ages of 10 and 13. The show itself was set in a fictional skyscraper (which was depicted in the titles by a London council tower block, Trellick Tower, in North Kensington) with a talking lift. In the first series, the lift was played by David Walliams, who later starred in Little Britain. In the second series, the lift was given a name, Sam, and was played by Gary Parker. Sam the Lift is popularly confused with the character played by Mark Speight in the CITV show Scratchy & Co..

The aim of the show was to complete each game (set on a "floor" of the skyscraper), gradually rising up the tower. In the first series this climaxed in the alphabet soup game, and in the second series upon reaching the penthouse, where prizes could be won. In series two if a player lost a game, they were sent to the "basement" of the tower (the laundry room), and the other players had to take the lift back down to rescue them. In the first series the lift doors would open directly into game, whereas in the second series the lift doors would open to a generic corridor which had a series of doors, with a light above a door in the corridor indicating the relevant room. On occasions during the second series the lift door would open to reveal a darkened corridor with the dark knight walking slowly to the lift, which required the contestants to quickly shut the lift doors.

Two of the more famous games were the alphabet soup game and the dark knight game. The first game was where giant letters had to be fished out of a swimming pool (supposedly a soupbowl) to make words on the "fridge". In the second game the contestants had to move from square to square on a chess board (they could only move one space per turn, and every forward movement had to be followed by a sidestep), until they reached the end. The catch was that the "dark knight" was attempting to stop them, though he could only see the player's last move which was lit up.

A special celebrity edition of the show was aired at the end of the first season. Philippa Forrester, Keith Chegwin, and Rowland Rivron featured as the contestants.

Simon Shelton, who played the Dark Knight in the series, later became Tinky Winky in Teletubbies. Marco Sabba, a contestant on the fifth series of the UK version of the TV show Big Brother, competed in Incredible Games when he was younger.