Yes, I’ve finally managed to find half an hour to catch up with the first heat of the new series of “Antiques Master”, the ‘difficult second series’ so to speak. As is often the way with new quizzes that manage to survive to earn a second series , there have been a couple of tweaks. For one thing, when I reviewed the first show of the first series, I made this comment : -
“I have to say that I really didn’t need Disembodied Voice Woman to keep telling me
“Deidre has scored 10 points. That means she has 20 points. That is ten more than she had before she scored them. If she scores another ten points then she will have 30 points “ I half expected her to say "If Deidre can score 50 points in 20 minutes, how many points could 3 Deidres score in 10 minutes ? ". The arithmetic For Beginners aspect of the show I could well do without.” “
Well, Voiceover woman is still there, but only seems to make brief interjections, and the constant harping on about the various possible score permutations are a thing of a past so it seems. Lets be thankful for small mercies. Other changes ? Well, for one thing we start now with three rather than four contestants. They play two rounds, the first being the round where they were given several objects from their own field of choice, and had to identify the oldest, the most valuable, and the odd one out. The second round was also a return for an old favourite from last year, the one where they were given 5 different objects, and asked to place them in order of age. These two rounds were all that served to whittle down three players into the two who would contest the final. So we’ve lost the ‘what is it – mystery object round –‘ frankly no great sadness here to see that’s gone. For all that we’ve lost a round, the show didn’t feel unnecessarily padded out. Then in the final round there was another tweak. Here, instead of a straight buzzer quiz shootout, a correct answer to a general question entitled the contestant to nominate a question from one of five categories – Steiff, for example being one of them on Monday. Once the question was asked, then that category was eliminated. I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have minded this section being a little longer, but there we are.
Monday’s show was won by Stella, who said she felt ‘shattered’ and to be honest looked gobsmacked – having lost the first game quite heavily. Well done there !
As for the show itself, I don’t think that the tweaks have done any harm at all, and when all’s said and done its an amiable little snifter of a half hour with which to wash down the banquet that is University Challenge.
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2 comments:
I think there's a flaw in the questions round. When someone buzzes before a question has been fully read out Ms Toxic continues to read the full question which seems to me to be unfair given that there's no penalty imposed for buzzing in early but incorrectly. The early buzzer seems to me to gain an unfair advantage with no risk of penalty. No other respectable quiz does this.
Hi nollub
Yes, I understand your point. What it does, I think, is to highlight that the show probably was never really conceived as a very serious quiz as such, more of a half hour's entertainment based around antiques, with a quiz involved in it somewhere.
Still, with regards to the buzzeer, the rules are the same for everyone. I found in my Brain of Britain semi final that although we were told quite clearly not to jump the gun, and that we had to wait for Russell to say that an answer was wrong before buzzing in for a bonus, one of my fellow competitors was jumping early every time, and not getting penalised for it. In such circumstances it was up to me to start doing it the same way myaself. 'Play to the referee' is a much used old saw, but its an appropriate one too.
Dave
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