Long before we became accustomed to oxymorons like “scripted reality” shows, there was a time when viewers could expect to trust what they saw on TV. One of the pivotal events shattering that illusion in the US was the 1950s quiz show scandal, in which producers of popular broadcasts like Twenty-One were revealed to be feeding contestants the answers in advance in order to manipulate audience ratings. 

Robert Redford’s Quiz Show is an engrossing chronicle of the investigation that blew the lid on Twenty-One's fixing, revealed when disgruntled champion Herb Stempel became a whistleblower. Stempel (played with nervous brilliance by John Turturro) was pressured to flunk a no-brainer question to make way for golden boy Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), a ratings-friendly photogenic academic from a prominent WASP-ish family. What’s so sharp about Quiz Show is that it doesn’t just recreate the scandal for drama’s sake: it needles in on the greed and privilege that drove the fraud, paying particular attention to Van Doren’s angle of the morality play, the influence of his class and ethnicity, and the secret hand the show’s studio and sponsor had in the whole affair. In an era when practically anything goes in the name of entertainment, this interrogation of TV’s corrupt origins feels ever-relevant.

Quiz Show is the kind of drama they depressingly don’t really make anymore: a cerebral movie (that is, ironically, about the disintegration of intellectualism as a value in society), it’s handsomely made and very well-acted. Its prestige trappings even extend right down to the stellar bit parts: the great Martin Scorsese appears as a slimy corporate executive, Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson plays a genial TV host, and famous faces like a young Ethan Hawke, Calista Flockhart, and William Fichtner make surprising, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos.