TV Watch - week of 20th September

TV Quiz Watch 21st September 2008

Mastermind - Episode Three

BBC Wales excels itself. Everyone else gets to watch it on Friday evening - we have to wait until the Monday. Still, why am I surprised ? They didn't even realise that the champion of the last series was living in Wales - until I told them !

For the first time this series we have a full complement of mastermind virgins, or to put it another way, none of the four contenders have taken part before. They were, respectively, an IT consultant, a GP cum Stand-up comedian ( John Humphrys seemed tickled by this ) , a solicitor and a mortgage consultant, so for the first time this series there was no teacher taking part.

As ever the specialists were an interesting bunch. I will admit to never having heard of Noor Anayat Khan, the spy. So its difficult for me to make observations about the relative merits of the specialist rounds. Good scores were achieved anyway, with the lowest being a praiseworthy 12.

Special praise should be reserved for Chris Atkins. He scored the rarely achieved 100% of no passes, and all questions correctly answered.

It didn't do him any good in the long run, though. I thought that all of the General Knowledge rounds were very fair, and felt that there was the potential for one of the contenders to have achieved 15 or more, though none of them did. Winner was James Corcoran. 29 was a good score, and there's no reason why he couldn't get through to the final if he can match this in the final. However there were some weaknesses on GK there which makes me think that we haven't yet seen the series winner so far.

For the record, here's the results: -

Chris Atkins	Noor Anayat Khan	IT Consultant
Specialist	17 right - none wrong
General	10 right - 5 passes	27 points and 5 passes
Paul Sinha	Ferdinand Magellan	GP and stand up comedian
Specialist	13 right 1 pass
General	12 right 1 pass	25 points and 2 passes
Christine Adam	The Life and Major works of Edith Wharton	Solicitor
Specialist	12 right 1 pass
General	14 right 5 passes	26 points and 6 passes
James Corcoran	The Mod movement in Britain	mortgage consultant
Specialist	16 right and no passes
General	13 right and 3 passes	29 points and 3 passes

University Challenge

I haven't that much to say about UC this week. Paxman seemed to be in remarkably mellow mood, his best moments being his evident surprise that Adam Ricketts, Coronation street actor, had a hit in the charts once upon a time. He pointed out, correctly, that Southampton University had answered a lot of starter questions correctly, but failed through failing to convert enough of the bonus questions into points. Sometimes being quick on the buzzer isn't quite enough.

Final Score

Southampton 135 Brighton 190

I am told that the BBCs "Only Connect " began on BBC 4 last week. As with "Battle of the Brains" I was invited to audition, but we couldn't make it . I didn't get to see it, so I will review it when I do get to see it on the iplayer this week.

Daftest Answer of the Week

I'm sorry, but the answer of the week is the best of a very bad lot - nothing that stupid at all. I am forced to resort to Monday's The Weakest Link.

Question - What are 35 and 27 ?

Answer - 63 ?

Nothing to write home about there, I'm afraid.