Quiz Show

Quiz Show (1994) is Robert Redford's historical drama, available to watch online on iFILM. In the late 1950s, the whole country tunes in to Twenty-One, a TV game where ordinary contestants win fortunes answering questions. What the audience doesn't know: the answers are handed out before the cameras roll.

Herbert Stempel, an awkward champion from Queens, is told to throw his match to the polished Columbia professor Charles Van Doren, and the humiliation eats at him. When young congressional lawyer Richard Goodwin starts digging, he uncovers a rigging operation run by ratings and sponsor money. John Turturro pours every ounce of Stempel's bitterness into the role, Ralph Fiennes makes Van Doren a man slowly drowning in his own lie, and Paul Scofield, as his father, brings a quiet ache to the whole thing.

The story comes straight from the real quiz-show scandals that rocked American broadcasting. Redford isn't interested in the cheating itself so much as the price people pay chasing approval. It was up for the Best Picture Oscar that year. Stream Quiz Show (1994) online on iFILM.