Jeopardy! host Mayim Bialik unwittingly helped spoil an episode’s results (Picture: Jeopardy!/ YouTube)
A producer on game show Jeopardy! has apologised after a recent slip up saw the final results of an episode shown before any clues were even given.
First screening back in 1964, the long-running series reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many other quiz shows and instead gives contestants clues before they have to phrase each response in the form of a question.
While countless episodes have hit screens without a hitch, a recent one ruined the result for audiences after the final result was aired early.
During the March 8 episode, a shot of the contestants’ final scores showed up on the screen at the beginning of the show.
They appeared just after host, The Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik, had congratulated the players for making it onto the show and wished them luck.
Contestant Jackson Jones’ number was shown as $24,000, while Justin Bolsen’s tally was $13,570.
Their competitor Maya Wright’s score came in at $3,370.
This week the mix-up was addressed by executive producer Michael Davies, who apologised about the mishap and admitted they had ‘totally blew it’.
‘Right off the bat, apologies to the audience, we totally blew it,’ he said when appearing on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast.
He went on to explain a ‘horrible series of errors’ that lead to the oversight, and how it had not been noticed in multiple stages of preparing the episode to go to air.
The Big Bang Theory star Mayim has presented the quiz show for the past two years (Picture: AP)
After saying the teams involved were focused on learning from the mistakes, they had now put in place a series of protocols that would ‘prevent this from happening again’.
‘We live and we learn, but we apologise to anyone whose experience of this program was ruined,’ he added.
‘We take these mistakes to heart so hard.
‘[But]… there is no excuse for this. It’s too basic and we are going to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
While there have been four UK versions of the game show over the years, the last local season aired back in 1996.
But last year it was reported that there were talks happening to revive it yet again.
Stephen Fry will host the latest UK revival of Jeopardy! (Picture: David M. Benett/Getty Images)
At the time an ITV source confirmed to Metro.co.uk that the broadcaster was looking into developing a rebooted version of the classic game show.
Then, last month, it was announced that Stephen Fry would be the new host of the UK version.
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In a statement, Fry, 65, said: ‘In the United States, Jeopardy! is a phenomenon like no other. Whenever I’m in America, I do my damnedest to catch it every weekday.’
The ITV reboot will air during the daytime, with 20 episodes said to be in production already.
Jeopardy! airs on NBC in the US.
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‘We totally blew it.’