Quiz is one of the strongest TV shows of the year

Wonderfully performed, smartly written and perfectly structured, this three-part miniseries is one of the best TV shows of the year.

For a few years around the turn of the millennium, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was a sensation.

The prime time quiz show had everything TV producers and audiences frothed over – high stakes, real-life dramas and heart-aching decisions that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That obsession was felt acutely by a contingent of British pub trivia fans who found in the show a focal point into which they could pour their competitive ambitions – and the million-pound prize helped.

Among them were Charles and Diana Ingram, an army major and a teacher, who became embroiled in one of the most bizarre fraud scandals to go through the courts. Charles ended up being dubbed by the British papers as the “Coughing Major”.

That scandal is now the subject of a gripping and tightly structured three-part miniseries, Quiz, starting this week on BBC First on Foxtel* and Fetch, starring Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen, Fleabag’s Sian Clifford and Michael Sheen.

This clever drama upturns what you think you may know about the Ingrams and, quite possibly, the nature of truth itself. By the end of the three episodes, you won’t know what to believe – did they cheat or didn’t they?

Sian Clifford, Matthew Macfadyen and Michael Sheen in TV series Quiz. Picture: BBC Australia

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Confidently directed by Stephen Frears from a script by James Graham, adapted from Graham’s stage play, Quiz is riveting television, as suspenseful as those early episodes of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire when it seemed the whole world was glued to the screen.

Part of the charm is the familiarity of Millionaire, and watching its producers Paul Smith (Mark Bonnar, Catastrophe) and David Briggs (Elliot Levey) successfully pitch this ambitious prime time quiz show to the folks at TV network ITV, including Claudia Rosencrantz (Aisling Bea), works as a nostalgia hit.

So when Diana (Clifford), a keen pub quiz participant, becomes hooked on the show, it’s easy to relate. Well, until Diana and her brother Adrian (Trystan Gravelle) take it to extreme levels.

By the time Charles (Macfadyen) is in the chair opposite host Chris Tarrant (Michael Sheen), you already think you know how it’s going to go. Many people think they know the bare bones of what happened: The Ingrams conspired to cheat their way to the million-pound win with a series of well-timed coughs.

Sian Clifford, Matthew Macfadyen and Michael Jibson in Quiz

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Macfadyen is the impeccable choice to play the unimpressionable Charles, a man so personally inoffensive and unintentionally enigmatic, that something as binary as guilty or innocent couldn’t possibly apply.

Not coming down either way on whether the Ingrams did it or not is key to why Quiz is such excellent television – it presents two persuasive cases and actually leaves you to decide.

There are no clear villains or heroes, and that is what makes Graham’s writing so smart. Quiz is also so well-paced and structured it actually can’t be faulted.

Quiz is one of the strongest TV shows we’ve had this year.

The “Coughing Major” story was splashed across the front pages of UK tabloids for weeks, though you’d be forgiven for not knowing about the case in Australia – the episode in question was taped on September 10, 2001.

But what Quiz illuminates is that even in a notorious scandal, what you think you know isn’t necessarily what happened.

Quiz starts on BBC First on Foxtel and Fetch on Wednesday, June 24 at 8.30pm

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*Foxtel is majority owned by News Corp, publisher of news.com.au