'Quiz' Episode 2 Preview: Charles Ingram 'coughs' his way to a million pounds with help of wife and accomplice
The next episode of AMC's 'Quiz' is just a few hours away. In the previous episode, we saw Diana Ingram (Sian Clifford) and Adrian (Trystan Gravelle) getting obsessed with the quiz show, 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire', while Diana's husband Charles (Matthew McFadyen) couldn't really care less. He sees himself as a military man, who likes the Army because it’s “wholly away from the limelight, the uniform anonymizes you,” and after a long time in Bosnia, he has decided to retire to the English countryside with his family, in the hope of some peace.
However, Adrian's intentions aren't all that clean. He is heavily in debt and has been desperately trying to call the Millionaire hotline every day, hoping to be a contestant on the show. He embroils himself with a group of other kindred spirits, who want to game the show and don't have very noble methods planned to do so either. In order to make it to the Hot Seat, potential contestants must take part in a qualifying round called “Fastest Finger First”, where they’re asked a question with answers that must be placed in a particular order and the fastest respondent is chosen.
Adrian devises his own Faster Finger First machine to practice on and he finally gets to be opposite Millionaire host Chris Tarrant (Michael Sheen). Unfortunately, his luck runs out, and he limps away with only 32,000 pounds. It's not enough to free him from debt. This is where he enlists the help of Diana, but she doesn't have much luck either. So she pushes Charles in and that's where it gets tricky.
The synopsis for the second episode reads, "When seemingly hopeless contestant Charles Ingram returns for his second night in the hot seat, he is a brand new man with a brand new strategy. With the audience on the edge of their seats, Charles dithers and about-turns up the question ladder while an increasingly suspicious production team launch an investigation that will lead them to an incriminating pattern of coughs in the studio audience."
'Quiz' is a retelling of the coughing scandal that shocked the UK back in the late 1990s, where Charles Ingram cheated his way to win a million pounds, with the help of his wife Diana and accomplice.