YMMV / Wipeout (1988)

• Awesome Music: Peter's Theme (the theme song) and the Bonus Game theme, which unfortunately are missing; Otis Conner, the composer, said he doesn't have a copy. There recently have been efforts to restore Conner's score as much as possible by isolating the effects with increasingly improving audio technology, such as here for example.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The British version lasted much longer than the original American version- indeed, this was the third game show hosted by Paul Daniels that originated as a short-lived American game. The others were Odd One Out (1982-85)^note  which started as NBC's Knockout (hosted by Arte Johnson, produced by Ralph Edwards, and knocked-out in the ratings by Family Feud on ABC and Every Second Counts (1986-93)^note  which started with the same name in syndication, hosted by newbie Bill Rafferty and produced by Group W/Westinghouse (since absorbed into CBS); that version's time ran out because of A: not getting enough clearances in certain markets, including New York, and B: per Rafferty himself, certain Westinghouse execs preferred their talk shows to game shows.
• Seasonal Rot: The Bob Monkhouse era in the UK- the show was moved to daytime (which meant massive budget cheapening, especially for the BBC), the cool set, music and graphics were ditched, the gameboard was tough for viewers to read, and Monkhouse himself was in a similar situation to Bill Cullen on The Joker's Wild- slowing down and unable to keep up with the shows' fast pace (indeed, it's been speculated that the hectic taping days- Monkhouse wrote in his diary "I am wiped out"- may have sped up the prostate cancer which took his life in 2003).

---