The WORST episodes of Fake or Fortune?
Every episode of Fake or Fortune? ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Fake or Fortune?!
Journalist Fiona Bruce teams up with art expert Philip Mould to investigate mysteries behind paintings. It's a world of subterfuge and intrigue as they grapple with complex battles often unseen beneath the apparently genteel art establishment.
#2 - Munnings and Churchill
Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 7/26/2015
Charles Henty, the man in charge of the Old Bailey, has a problem - the death of his uncle has left him with a working farm to run in France and a crippling inheritance tax bill to pay. He is desperate to protect the jobs of the farmworkers and keep the farm running in his uncle's memory, but the only way he can do that is by selling two paintings he owns - if he can prove they're genuine. One, believed to be by Sir Winston Churchill, was discovered in the coalhole of Charles' family home in London in the 60s. It's a picturesque scene of a medieval village in the south of France. But which village? For the painting to be accepted as genuine, the Fake or Fortune team must first find the exact location and then prove that Churchill painted the scene. There's a lot at stake, with a Churchill painting selling at Sotheby's in 2014 for £1.8 million, but a leading expert has grave misgivings about the authenticity of the picture. Charles' other painting is a landscape of Dedham in Essex, believed to be by Sir Alfred Munnings, best known for his paintings of horses and once the most expensive British artist of his day. However, Dedham was also the home of Tom Keating, Britain's most notorious forger of the 20th century. Presenter Philip Mould is drawn into the murky world of fakes and forgeries, where nothing is quite as it seems. The Fake or Fortune team pull out all the stops in this dramatic and emotionally charged investigation, but can they prove that both pictures are genuine?
#4 - Portraits
Season 5 - Episode 4 - Aired 8/21/2016
Every year, the Fake or Fortune team receive hundreds of requests for help from the owners of mysterious portraits. Everyone wants to know two things - who is it, and who painted it? The team choose three of the most promising portraits to investigate further - a child, believed to be by prized modern artist Willem de Kooning, a young lady, attributed to 18th-century society painter Philip Mercier, and a formidable-looking man, said to be by 19th-century German master Adolph von Menzel. Philip Mould takes on the de Kooning case, meeting Belgian owners Jan and Chris Starckx. Could a speculative online purchase for 450 euros be a lost work painted by de Kooning in Brussels at the very start of his career? The quest to prove it leads to Miami, Florida, where scientific analysis of a similar work has the potential to yield vital evidence. Fiona Bruce wants to know how an 18th-century portrait of a lady ended up in the flat of Richard and Jenny Williams, a retired couple in Eastbourne. Conservation work might help reveal some secrets while research into the life of the artist provides some clues about the identity of the mystery lady. The investigation into the portrait of The Old Gentleman takes an unexpected turn when the team delve into the story of owner Lance Miller's grandfather, a German industrialist who bought the painting in 1947. With Menzel's work frequently targeted by forgers, has Lance inherited a rare treasure - or something more sinister? Three pictures, three important artists - but as scientific testing and investigative research unlock long-held secrets, will every story have a happy ending?
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#5 - Nicholson
Season 7 - Episode 1 - Aired 8/12/2018
Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould examine a still life that may have been painted by prolific artist William Nicholson, but which has been rejected by leading experts on his work. They discover a useful source of evidence in Nicholson's own paint box, but as they delve into the painting's history, they discover it may have been connected to one of the 20th century's greatest art crimes. Fiona meets a reformed forger to discover if he ever faked a Nicholson while Philip takes the painting to Canada to compare it to another of the artist's works.
#6 - Constable
Season 6 - Episode 1 - Aired 8/20/2017
The team try to find out whether a beautiful English landscape is a work of national importance - a lost masterpiece by John Constable and quite possibly an alternative view of his greatest work, The Hay Wain. Now owned by a Gloucestershire businessman, the painting appears to have all the hallmarks of Constable's sketches - his more impressionistic, preparatory works. If genuine, it could be worth at least £2 million.
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#7 - Freud
Season 5 - Episode 1 - Aired 7/17/2016
Fake or Fortune returns for a fifth series, beginning with one of the most challenging cases the team has ever encountered. Can art detectives Philip Mould and Fiona Bruce prove that a painting of a man in a black cravat is one of the first pictures ever painted by celebrated and controversial British artist Lucian Freud, even though Freud himself denied painting it? London-based designer Jon Turner is eager to prove that a painting he inherited from two friends is in fact an early portrait painted by Freud whilst at art school in 1939. If it's genuine, it could be worth around half a million pounds. But who is the mysterious man in the portrait - and why did Freud deny it was his work? As the team hunt for clues, they are drawn into a world of feuds, rivalries and intrigue. Can those who knew Freud best help unlock the painting's secrets?
#8 - Joshua Reynolds
Season 11 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/3/2023
A painting bought from an online auction in Monaco described as 'in the style of Sir Joshua Reynolds' looks promising, but could something murkier be lurking beneath the paint?
#9 - Giacometti
Season 7 - Episode 5 - Aired 9/9/2018
Fiona Bruce and art expert Philip Mould investigate the first work of sculpture featured on the show, an unusual piece called The Gazing Head, which may have been made by Alberto Giacometti in 1930s Paris. The quest to uncover the truth is complicated by the fact that the sculpture was once broken into several pieces by a cat.
#10 - A Double Whodunnit
Season 7 - Episode 4 - Aired 9/2/2018
Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould investigate the origins of two paintings by unknown artists dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, which unusually for the period, depict black subjects. One is a portrait of Dido Belle, a famous former slave adopted into an aristocratic English family in the 1760s, while the other depicts two children against a tropical landscape, and is believed to have been painted as a protest against the slave trade.
#12 - The Lost Gainsborough
Season 8 - Episode 1 - Aired 7/25/2019
The team investigate an 18th-century landscape that could be a lost work by of one of the biggest names in British art, Thomas Gainsborough.
#13 - Henry Moore
Season 7 - Episode 3 - Aired 8/26/2018
Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould investigate a small watercolour sketch that could be the work of sculptor Henry Moore. The piece was found in 2012 in a hoard of artwork stolen by the Nazis. While the unidentified piece has many characteristics of Moore's work, none of the other artworks recovered were by British artists, so it remains a mystery how it came to be there. The team must not only find out who created it, but also who it belonged to, since it may have been looted from Jewish owners during the Holocaust and will need to be returned to surviving descendants.
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#14 - Toulouse-Lautrec
Season 7 - Episode 2 - Aired 8/19/2018
Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould must prove that a sketchbook is the work of a young Toulouse-Lautrec, overturning a decision made by a committee of experts on the artist. The drawings in the book are of a very different subject matter to Lautrec's famous works, and are dated to when he was a teenager - a period of his life that is largely a mystery. To get to the truth, Fiona and Philip travel to the town in the south of France where Lautrec grew up and visit the grand family home where he spent much of his youth.
#15 - Turner: A Miscarriage of Justice?
Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/23/2012
Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould investigate three landscapes once thought to be by JMW Turner, which were bequeathed to the National Museum of Wales.
#16 - Flemish Old Master
Season 10 - Episode 4 - Aired 9/13/2022
Fiona and Philip visit a church in Port Glasgow to investigate whether a mysterious work depicting Christ after the crucifixion could be a lost masterpiece by one of the great painters of Northern Renaissance art.
#17 - Landseer
Season 9 - Episode 3 - Aired 8/11/2021
Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould investigate a painting that could be the work of the celebrated artist Sir Edwin Landseer. If it is, they will have rediscovered a much-loved Victorian masterpiece that was thought to have been destroyed by a catastrophic flood almost a century ago.
#18 - Delaroche
Season 5 - Episode 2 - Aired 7/24/2016
The Fake or Fortune team have been called in to investigate a mysterious painting in Castle of Park, a grand house in Aberdeenshire now run as a bed and breakfast by Becky Wilson. The painting once belonged to Becky's late husband Neil, an art dealer, and although it was unsigned he always believed it was something special - a lost masterpiece by celebrated 19th-century French artist Paul Delaroche, whose work graces some of Britain's finest collections.
#19 - Chagall
Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 2/2/2014
The Fake or Fortune team plunges into the murky world of the Russian art market when they investigate a painting attributed to modern master Marc Chagall. In 1992, a property developer seized the chance to invest £100,000 in a work by one of the 20th century's greatest artists - Marc Chagall. The picture had surfaced in Russia after the fall of communism, and was offered at a fraction of its full value. There was just one catch - it hadn't been fully authenticated by the Chagall Committee in Paris. Twenty years later, the owner wants to find out if he made a shrewd investment - or an expensive mistake. The search for clues leads Fiona to Chagall's hometown of Vitebsk in the former Russian republic of Belarus, where she makes connections between the painting and the artist's life story, but events take a more sinister turn when she discovers a news report about the sale of a fake Chagall in the city of Minsk. With scientific testing raising more questions than answers, Philip travels to Los Angeles to consult a notorious forger called Tony Tetro who specialized in faking the work of Chagall. As the team grapple with the shadowy world of the modern Russian art market, everything hinges on a critical test to determine the date of a suspicious pigment as the investigation threatens to turn into a 'whodunnit'. And when the dust settles, there is one more shocking and unexpected twist that leaves the owner with a difficult decision.
#20 - Van Dyck: What Lies Beneath
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/30/2012
Art detective Philip Mould has a reputation for finding sleepers; paintings that hide dark secrets. His most remarkable finds are pictures whose true authorship has been confused, masterpieces lost beneath years of dirt and over-painting. Although Philip is used to investigating other people's paintings, this time the tables are turned as Philip's own purchase is put under the microscope. With his keen-eyed researcher Bendor Grosvenor, Philip has bought a painting that he says could be the find of a lifetime; a work by our most important portrait painter, Sir Anthony Van Dyck, one which is worth a small fortune. The only problem is that, in order to prove it, he will have to remove later layers of paint to uncover the truth. "It's a bit like open heart surgery" says Philip, as the expensive and irreversible process begins. A thorough restoration is needed, and inches of canvas are cut away as an earlier image begins to appear. Fiona is not convinced, and insists that the work undergoes a thorough investigation and is authenticated by an independent Van Dyck expert. Will Philip's reputation and the painting make it to the end of the journey unscathed?
#21 - De Chirico
Season 8 - Episode 3 - Aired 8/8/2019
Bought for just £1, could a small still life be the work of one of the masters of early 20th-century art, Giorgio de Chirico?
#22 - Gainsborough
Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/9/2014
The team find what could be several important lost works by Thomas Gainsborough in Britain's public art collections.
#23 - Modigliani
Season 10 - Episode 2 - Aired 8/30/2022
Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould investigate a delicate sketch depicting a mother and child, purported to be by one of the modern art world's most famous names, Amedeo Modigliani. Its owner, Henrietta Sitwell, inherited the work and always believed it to be genuine. However, a leading auction house recently cast doubt on its authenticity. If the work is genuine, it could be worth up to £100,000. If not, just a few hundred.
#24 - A Venetian View
Season 8 - Episode 4 - Aired 8/15/2019
The team investigates a beautiful 18th-century Venetian view. Could this be a work by one of the Italian masters - either Francesco Guardi or Michele Marieschi?
