Chain Letters was a British television game show produced by Tyne Tees and Barry & Enright Productions.
The show was recorded at their City Road studios in Newcastle Upon Tyne and first broadcast on ITV in the United Kingdom from 7 September 1987 to 6 July 1990, then again from 2 January 1995 to 25 April 1997.
The show's original host was Jeremy Beadle, followed by Andrew O'Connor, Allan Stewart, Ted Robbins, Vince Henderson and Dave Spikey.
Each contestant chose one of four hidden four-letter words and had 45 seconds to create as long a chain as possible by changing one letter at a time.
The contestant in control chose one four-letter word from a group of four, then selected one letter to change.
If the new word matched a prediction at any time, the opponent received the money at stake instead, and the contestant lost it and ended their turn.
Both opponents won the money if each of their predictions were correct, or if the contestant formed an illegal word.
A third round was added in the revival of Chain Letters in 1995 and would eventually involve two different formats.
The host read a toss-up clue whose answer differed from the displayed word by one letter.
Buzzing in also stopped a randomiser that determined the value of the word: £10, £20, £40 (£30 in the last two series), or "Tie," which if hit by the second- or third-place contestant, immediately increased their score to match that of the leader.
The sixth series aired on Monday to Friday afternoons, at different time depending upon the viewer's region, since this series was not networked, with the Granada and Border regions airing episodes after a few weeks at 5:10pm on certain days, which took until August to complete.