British current affairs debate show, running from 1979 to the present.
Each week, in different locations around the UK (and sometimes outside it) a group of five or six panelists answer unseen questions from a studio audience (who also comment on the issues) on matters of current affairs. The panel usually consists of three members from the three biggest UK parties and two other public figures. There usually is a government minister present. If the show is coming from Scotland, the SNP will have a panellist, with Plaid Cymru turning up for Welsh editions. When the show goes to Northern Ireland, the four main NI parties are represented and the big three aren't present.
Sometimes called "Iraq Time" these days, due to the frequency of the topic turning up in a question. More recently, the expenses scandal is sure to turn up with tiresome regularity, often in the form of a failed attempt at humour by the questioner.
Spoofed in the Thursday Next series as "Avoid the Question Time", presented as a gameshow in which politicians win points for how skilfully they avoid answering the audience's questions and twist them into non sequiturish attacks on the other parties present. Which is painfully close to the real thing. Was also the subject of a parody by Not the Nine O'Clock News, where the programme is supposedly being recorded shortly after the Soviets had launched nuclear missiles at the UK, and besides one Only Sane Man panellist, they spend their time bickering about which party's period in government is to blame for the crisis.
The former presenter David Dimbleby had a heavily-parodied tendency to refer to audience members asking questions as, e.g. "You, sir, in the orange shirt with the grey hair," and amusingly frequently got the gender wrong. The current presenter, Fiona Bruce, has largely avoided parody, but the show has felt a need to answer charges of political and partisan bias under her presentership. note
This show contains examples of:
- Angry White Man: Arguably Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, during his controversial appearance on the show.
- Deadpan Snarker: Dimbleby can sometimes cross into this, for example when Eric Pickles was trying to justify claiming expenses for a second home when he lives only 37 miles from Westminster.Pickles: Look, the House of Commons runs like clockwork, if you are in a committee, you have to be there, at the hour, on the hour, every day of the week-Dimbleby: Like a job, then?
- Failed a Spot Check: The producers always seem to somehow get audience members who will do this.
- In the very first episode, right at the end, an elderly lady was trying to get her question she'd prepared, but it wasn't in her handbag like she thought. Cue five minutes of waiting for her to get it/make up another question on the spot, and she... found it. Only to be a very non-political question anyway. Although it did start the tradition of the final question being more light-hearted.
- Get Out!: The oft-quoted episode where Dimbleby asks a rowdy audience member to leave, and gets applauded by the audience.
- The episode before the 2019 election, where one audience member who earned £80,000 per annum, insisted he wasn't
in the top 5% of earners in the UK.
- The episode before the 2019 election, where one audience member who earned £80,000 per annum, insisted he wasn't
- The Heckler: When the producers mess up and get a more rowdy audience member, audiences are prone to doing this. It puts a massive downer on the show.
- Live Episode: While the majority are filmed a few hours before broadcast, a few editions have been done live.
- Although the Director General of the BBC did apologise for making the episode after 9/11 live, in which audience comments about the US being ultimately responsible because of its own foreign policy prompted thousands of complaints.
- Once per Episode: The program usually likes to end on a high note, with a more light-hearted audience question. See Failed a Spot Check for how it came about.
- Sound-to-Screen Adaptation: The show is a visuals-added version Radio 4's Any Questions?, which started in the 1950s and was for a long time hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby, David's brother.
- Studio Audience: Along with the panel, probably the most important thing about this show.
- Younger and Hipper: Young Voters' Question Time, broadcast on the Younger and Hipper BBC Three.
