Sunday 21 September 2008

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 KhanIT Consultant
Specialist 17 right - none wrong
General 10 right - 5 passes 27 points and 5 passes
Paul SinhaFerdinand Magellan GP and stand up comedian
Specialist 13 right 1 pass
General12 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 CorcoranThe Mod movement in Britain mortgage consultant
Specialist16 right and no passes
General13 right and 3 passes29 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.

2 comments:

JC said...

David,

Thank you for your comments - and your right my GK does lack in certain areas!

Chris Atkins was very unlucky - most weeks he would have won with that score.

It's great that now we are 5 weeks in and my score of 29 is still top score this series!

All the best,

JC

jpcorcoran.blogspot.com

Simonte said...

Nice to see a run-down of this episode, considering my Father is the Chris Atkins that appeared on the show!