The Great Egg Race: Story, Cast and Series Facts

Story and premise

The Great Egg Race was a BBC television series that ran from 1979 to 1986 and featured Brian Cant (1979), Professor Heinz Wolff (originally head judge, later promoted to series presenter) and Lesley Judd, who joined the series in 1984. It was later revived on BBC Choice (now BBC Three) and was presented by Johnny Ball.

In a similar vein to the later Channel 4 series Scrapheap Challenge, the show featured teams creating Heath Robinson-esque mechanical creations in an attempt to solve a problem set at the start of the show. The series obtained its name from the initial challenge of making a device capable of transporting an egg the furthest possible distance without breaking it.

Series details

• Title: The Great Egg Race
• Format: Game Show
• Language: English
• Premiere date: 1979-01-02
• Final broadcast date listed: 1986-09-12
• Status in TVmaze: Ended
• Network listed by TVmaze: BBC Two
• Network country: United Kingdom
• Typical episode runtime: 30 minutes
• TVMaze ID: 9630
• IMDb ID: tt0943651
• TVDB ID: 253678

Seasons in the TVmaze catalogue

• Season 1: premiered 1979-01-02; final listed air date 1979-01-30.
• Season 3: premiered 1981-05-05; final listed air date 1981-05-05.
• Season 5: premiered 1983-09-06; final listed air date 1983-09-06.
• Season 6: premiered 1984-06-12; final listed air date 1984-07-10.
• Season 7: premiered 1985-05-03; final listed air date 1985-06-07.
• Season 8: premiered 1986-09-05; final listed air date 1986-09-12.

Source and licence

Adapted from The Great Egg Race on TVmaze. The synopsis is reproduced as plain text; catalogue facts, cast and season records are selected and reformatted. This adapted text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, following the TVmaze API licence. Network and web-channel credits identify the service listed in this source; they do not establish current streaming availability.