Column #699 Nothing in Hollywood is straight – especially dartboards

Saturday, October 25, 2025
Column 699
Nothing in Hollywood is straight – especially dartboards

If you are anything like me, every time you spot a dartboard on television you shout, “Dartboard!” And if you are really like me, you immediately notice that it is almost always hung too low or too high.

Television and movie set designers have never been much for rule books. The bull should be five foot eight off the floor, but rarely is it. The explanation is simple. Directors and camera operators want an actor’s face and the dartboard in the same shot. Drop the board a few inches and you can see the smirk, the squint, and the throw all in one frame. Lift it a little too high and you avoid lamps, boom mics, and other clutter. Regulation has nothing to do with it.

Televised darts itself goes back to the early seventies with Fred Trueman’s Indoor League. That show gave pub games their first wide audience and even featured a Yorkshire board with no trebles. A decade later came Bullseye, which turned Sunday evenings in Britain into quiz show darts theater. Jim Bowen, Bully the cartoon bull, and millions of viewers made it a phenomenon.

Sitcoms have always loved a dartboard in the background. MASH had one pinned up in the Swamp. Hawkeye and B.J. lobbed more wisecracks than tops, but the board was there. Cheers added darts to the atmosphere of Sam’s bar. The Big Bang Theory gave Leonard and Sheldon an apartment with a dartboard that looked hung for hobbits. Friends had one too, next to Joey and Chandler’s foosball table. In The Simpsons, Moe’s Tavern wall sported a dartboard that seemed to shift height depending on who was animating that week. And of course, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia raised the stakes when Dennis held his hand flat against the board while his pals hurled darts at it. Coronation Street and EastEnders have had dartboards on the wall of their pubs forever.

The movies have had their share as well. Young Frankenstein turned darts into slapstick in a village pub. An American Werewolf in London gave us the Slaughtered Lamb, with locals tossing darts until the strangers walked in. Shaun of the Dead let Simon Pegg grab darts off the board at the Winchester Tavern and stick one in his own head during a fight with zombies. The World’s End scattered dartboards throughout a doomed pub crawl. The Wolf of Wall Street went off the rails with dwarf tossing at a giant dollar sign board.

Commercials and specials have joined the parade. Guinness built entire campaigns around pub darts. Top Gear once hurled cars at a quarry wall painted like a dartboard. It was a bullseye only if the car exploded in the right spot.

Then along came Ted Lasso. In one of the most memorable darts scenes ever filmed, Ted challenged Rupert at the Crown and Anchor. With his “be curious, not judgmental” speech as background, he calmly threw treble twenty, treble twenty, and bull for the win. The board was mounted properly. The lesson was delivered. The scene was perfect.

So yes, dartboards have crept into sitcoms, soaps, films, and commercials for decades (I’ve mentioned only a few), and they’re almost never hung at the right height. That’s fine by me. Every wrong one I spot is a little gift: a reason to yell “Dartboard!” at the screen and shake my head. Honestly, I don’t mind – it just means job security for me in my next life… as Hollywood’s first official dartboard-hanging consultant.

Stay thirsty, my friends

Dartoid