Entertainment 1, Corruption 0

Rating: 7/10 (7 February 2005)

About 20 minutes into the movie, I noticed the Rob Morrow character had a Boston accent. I hadn't caught his name, so I thought Bobby Kennedy? Dick Goodwin & wife Doris Kearns Goodwin are probably more familiar as professional PBS talking heads on those Ken Burns dynamos. But apparently around 1958 or so Goodwin was fresh out of Harvard Law, buried in a decidedly unfresh Capitol Hill library ("Must've been an oversight." "We're an oversight committee.") & working for a Senate committee.
Assigned to investigate wacky game show contestant Herbert Stempel's (John Tuturro, in bravura performance) complaints about network failures to deliver on promises (to put him on another show), Morrow's Goodwin is portrayed as a knight wanting to bring down networks & sponsors; he finds that his fellows merely want to bring down people: Stempel & his "Twenty One" successor Chas. van Doren. (The names are the same: only the degree of sincerity's been changed to protect the guilty.) Officials & their constituency thought TV was an entertainment medium & were determined to find it @all costs.
Turturro's desperate madness & Morrow's cool methodology make for some great exchanges: Quiz Show's best feature is its highly literate script (see memorable quotes @this site). With Martin Scorcese as the Geritol rep. & Barry Levinson as orig. Today Show host Dave "Peace" Garroway. Paul Scofield is riveting as literary brahman Mark van Doren.