The LAMMY Awards for 2021

Yes, dearly beloved, for the first time since my quizzing lost weekend, on this, the last day of 2021, I’d like to present just a few LAMMY awards. So without further preamble: -

Award for the Best New Quiz Show of 2021

Let’s look at the new shows I have actually watched during the year.

Gordon Ramsey’s Bank Balance – I never reviewed this show at the time, but I found it suffered from a somewhat glacial pace, and just not being a match for Gordon Ramsey’s perceived on-screen persona. It wasn’t quite as much of a mismatch as Jeremy Kyle’s High Stakes of years gone by, but certainly in the same street.

Quizness – I watched the celebrity show a couple of days ago, and you can read my review I the previous post. With slebs it made an entertaining show, with very good play-along-at-homeability.

Moneyball – Ian Wright’s show, delayed due to equipment problems, was one of the shows given the difficult task of holding an audience on an ITV Saturday evening with no big entertainment spectacular, like the X Factor. It’s not a bad game either, but lacking any adversarial ‘head to head’ action is, I think, a weakness.

Sitting On A Fortune – Gary Lineker’s Saturday Evening show made the most inventive use of chairs since “Ejector Seat”. That didn’t last long, and I’m not sure that this early Saturday Evening show will either. It’s a little too big and grand for a weekday teatime show, but I somehow feel it’s too small for Saturday night. It falls between the two, and as I may have mentioned once or twice before, things which fall between two stools often just fall.

The Tournament – Daytime quiz shows come, and daytime quiz shows go. There are things I like about The Tournament – I think that host Alex Scott has potential, and the quickfire nature of the show is very watchable. However I would strongly advise producers to make some tweaks. The ‘battle cries’ each contestant issues at the start of each show are cringe-inducingly embarrassing. Junk them now. Likewise, the show needs a proper endgame, where the winner plays for a guaranteed amount.

Well, ladies and gents, there have been years when none of the new shows have interested me enough to receive the award. I’m glad to say that this isn’t one of them. The LAMMY for the Best New Quiz Show of 2021 goes to –

Quizness. A clear winner in my opinion – and since I’m the only member of the judging panel, it’s the only one which makes a difference.

Award for the Finest Performance in a Broadcast Quiz

As has happened so often in the past we have some very worthy nominees.

Karl Whelan – who had to defeat Mastermind champion Dave McBryan to win Brain of Britain

David Stainer –2019 champion of BOB who became the latest Brain of Brains

Jonathan Gibson – who became the youngest person ever to win a series of Mastermind, beating the record of Gavin Fuller

Puzzle Hunters (Paul Taylor, Katie Steckles, Ali Lloyd) Only Connect Champions, narrowly defeated in a head to head with the previous champions the OO7s in a Christmas special.

The University of Warwick – The team defeated Magdalene, Cambridge to win University Challenge.

As I said, a bumper crop of nominees, all of whom would be worthy winners. However, after due consideration the award goes to

Jonathan Gibson, youngest ever Mastermind Champion. Not only that, but a contender who managed the feat of answering every question in his semi final correctly. Congratulations.

Now that the most serious awards are out of the way, there’s just a couple of more personal ones to dish out.

Award for the Best Contributor to LAM 2021

After the number of false revivals of LAM during my lost weekend over the last 5 years, I was pretty sure that nobody was going to bother reading the blog again. So I would like to recognise the contributions made by those readers who have taken the time and trouble to leave comments on posts, and in particular to pay tribute to the winner –

George Millman

As for my final award, well, in a year in which there has been no Brain of Mensa competition, I would like to make this one

Award for Staging a Quiz Despite the Pandemic

I would give one for every pub, club or venue that has managed to keep a quiz going since the lifting of the second national lockdown. However I hope I will be forgiven for making specific awards to

Aberavon Rugby Club – for keeping the Thursday Quiz going since the late Spring

Neath Gwyn Hall – for the monthly themed film quizzes.

That’s the LAMMY Awards for 2021. May I wish you all a happy and safe New Year.

Quizness

I finally watched my first edition of “Quizness” last night, having recorded the celebrity edition from the night before. Granted, this was a celebrity edition, and I will take this into consideration in this review, but I think it was certainly enough to give me a flavour of the show.

The idea behind the quiz is that it’s not a general knowledge quiz. Or rather, that it IS a general knowledge quiz, but it’s more than a general knowledge quiz, as it is also a test of mental agility. This became obvious from the first round onwards.

I don’t know if they play different rounds in different shows a la ‘House of Games’ – and yes, I shall be returning to this particular comparison –but I think that the rounds stay the same in the same order each show. On the show I watched the slebs started off with a game called Subbly Jubbly. This was a seemingly straightforward buzzer round with a twist. 3 letters were selected by the computer, and assigned a word which began with each – for example – sickie for s, picky for p and tricky for t. Any word beginning with any of these letters would have to be replaced by the appropriate word, so for example – if the question was ‘Which Western film was based on the Japanese film “The Seven Samurai”’ the answer would be ‘The Magnificent Sickie”. You get the point. The round was replayed as round five, Doubly Jubbly, with three different words, and double points for some of the answers. It was also replayed as the final round, but we’ll come to that in a while.

Round 2 was called Brain Chain. A straightforward round of GK, but with the twist that the contestant had to say the answers to all the previous questions – so you might get a chain like –‘ Adverts – according to an old TV advert, which deodorant ‘won’t let you down’?’ – SURE – which is the 18^th letter of the alphabet – SURE R – She sells seashells on the sea what? – SURE – R – SHORE – On a football pools coupon what could be score or no score? -SURE R SHORE DRAWERS (show us your drawers). Yes, there’s a vein of schoolboy humour which runs throughout the show like the words running through a little stick of Blackpool rock.

I will admit that I haven’t seen a round like the third, Risky Quizness, before. Again, it’s like a straight buzzer round, but there’s a twist. Most of the answers are the same. But some of them aren’t. So for example, the first four answers might all be ‘love’, and then the fifth ‘hate’.

The last round before the first elimination was called Double Trouble. Here some real mental agility was called for. Now, what happens here is a little complicated to explain. The contestants see three questions. Above each one is an answer. The answers do not actually relate to the question. So let us say that the question is ‘Where was Donald Trump born?’. The contestants have to find the correct answer – in this case New York. Then they have to read the question below the answer – let us say it’s ‘In the Lord of the Rings, where does Sauron live?’. So, then the contestant has to buzz in and say that Donald Trump was born in the Land of Mordor. It’s after this round that the lowest scoring contestant is eliminated.

I’ve already explained that Doubly Jubbly is round five. Round six was Pundreds and Thousands. As the name suggests, this is a round of questions whose answers are rather groan inducing puns. For example ‘which circus performer exercises bleached hawsers?’ – answer – a Whiterope walker. Lowest scoring contestant after this round is eliminated.

The round which sorted out who would play for the cash was called Dental Mexterity. This is a round in which ordinary questions had to be answered in Spoonerisms – so for example ‘Which TV show was named after the flag shown by a ship which is ready to leave port?’ would have to be answered with ‘Poo Bleater’. You get the point. The celebrity with the most points went through to the final, and the other didn’t.

So, I did say that the final round is Super Subbly Jubbly. All six words from the previous jubbly rounds are in play, together with three more to make 9 in total. The winning sleb, then, had to answer 7 questions correctly, substituting words where necessary. They didn’t have to be consecutive correct answers, but when the time was up, that was it. Essentially it’s 8 quickfire rounds for your money, each of which has a significant mental agility challenge as well as a general knowledge challenge.

Even if you haven’t yet seen ‘Quizness’ for yourself, you might well, having read the above, be able to see why I drew the comparison with ‘House of Games’ earlier. There’s the inherent silliness of the twists in many of the rounds – that’s not a criticism, by the way. Yet a lot of what is being asked isn’t silly at all. The level of questions may not be of Mastermind or University Challenge level, but it’s solidly mid-level, and noticeably higher than on ‘Tipping Point’ for the sake of argument. The amount of mental agility required is not of the level of ‘Only Connect’ for example, but it certainly demands as much as ‘House of Games’.

Of course, ‘House of Games’ has a trump card in the shape of the host, the great Richard Osman. ‘Quizness’ has Tom Allen. Now, I first became aware of Tom Allen through ‘The Great British Bakeoff – An Extra Slice’ and I wasn’t impressed. However, I was a lot more impressed when he took over ‘The Apprentice – You’re Fired’. Maybe this is because the former is essentially a Jo Brand vehicle, and Tom is left with the scraps – making waspish comments to the audience about the bakes they’ve brought in, and a monologue of a couple of minutes. Whereas in the latter he’s in charge and can impose his own style on proceedings. I felt he did a good job on ‘Quizness’ too, where his delivery and style were a pretty good fit for the fast and furious nature of the rounds.

Granted, this was a celebrity version of the show which I’m sure served to highlight the similarities with ‘House of Games’. This meant that the contestants were all experienced and confident telly performers which made for exactly the kind of atmosphere you’d want in a show which is essentially an entertainment vehicle. Unlike ‘House of Games’ though the series which went out earlier in 2021 was for members of the public. I’d want to see how well this worked, and what sort of atmosphere was created in the majority of the shows.

Is it coming back in 2022? I don’t know. I rather hope so. There’s plenty of room in the schedules for this kind of show. If we think back to a previous BBC teatime favourite ‘Eggheads’ was the first real ‘pro-am’ quiz show and became very popular and successful with it. ‘The Chase’ also took the idea of quiz pros v. amateurs, and did something different with it, becoming extremely popular and successful in its own right in the process. ‘House of Games’ took a basic quiz format and turned the games into something different and very entertaining. I think ‘Quizness’ does the same in a different way. It’s a breath of fresh air, and I hope it gets a chance again.

Merry Christmas

 Just a very short post to wish all LAM readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and thank you for your support since resurrecting the blog in August.

The Better - Late - Then - Never - Mastermind 2021 Grand Final Retrospective

You know, since reviving the blog in August I have felt a little guilty that I didn’t review the 2021 Grand Final of Mastermind. Apart from anything else, I like to recognise what must be one of the high points and most memorable achievements in any quizzer’s quiz career – contending in a Grand Final. LAM reader Carly, in a comment to a post from 18^th December asked about the possibility of writing a review of the final. Well, it’s maybe a bit late for a real review – but if we call it a retrospective, then maybe I can get away with it.

So, in order to write this post I did watch the final again. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember much of the series and the semis leading up to the final, other than thinking that Frankie Fanko had a very good chance of adding the Mastermind Bowl to the OC trophy. Mind you, after having a good performance to win his heat, Jonathan had achieved the feat of answering every single question correctly in his semi-final, and if that’s not a declaration of intent I don’t know what is.

Dan Afhsar started us off. His filmed insert gave us a pretty good idea what a covid-era filmed insert was going to look like. Yes, he did have an away day, but this was to Dulwich College to see the James Caird lifeboat, rather than to the island of South Georgia or some other redolent location. We also learned of his interest in running and saw that families of the contenders were also going to make important contributions to the films. As regards the round, Dan put in a fine performance to score 10. As you might expect, none of the contenders passed on their specialist rounds at all.

In Claire Barrow’s film she gave us cycling as opposed to running. Claire interestingly revealed that she’s been on a number of quiz shows, and revealed that one of her motivations for Mastermind was to expunge the memory of a second round exit in the early days of The Weakest Link – which incidentally made it’s return to the Beeb last Saturday. Personally I don’t like it when they seem to have asked the contenders how much they want to win, and what it would mean to them. I mean, you can take it for granted that it means a massive amount, and each of them are going to be doing their very best to win. It goes without saying, so there’s no need to say it. When I was asked the question ‘How do you rate your chances of winning?’ for my own filmed insert in the 2008 SOBM I stonewalled it with the answer ‘1 in 6 – same as everyone else. If the questions go my way I’ll do well, and if they don’t then I won’t.’ I think they edited that out of the final cut. Coming back to Claire, she’d obviously worked like stink on Cole Porter, but sadly a couple of points just got away from her. Three points behind is not an insurmountable gap, but bridging it is a lot to ask.

Frankie’s spotlit hobby of choice was singing in a choir. Various members of the family were featured in the insert, including husband Andrew – fellow winning team member in OC, and a contender in his own right in the current series. Frankie talked of her love of quizzes and general knowledge, and to be fair this shone through, and is something I can really get on board with. As was her specialist subject, the Vienna Secession. I spent a few days in Vienna in the October half term of 2019, and particularly enjoyed a visit to the Belvedere Museum, where I learned a little bit about the movement. Frankie knew more than a little bit. 9 put her just one point behind Dan.

Harry Heath’s film also focused on his family, at the family farm. Now, I may be wrong, but I think that Harry would also have beaten Gavin’s record as youngest champion if he had won, yet I don’t recall this being mentioned on his film. Maybe it was covered and then edited out after the final itself had been filmed. The new element introduced in this insert was the personal letter of congratulations and encouragement from Jimmy Carter himself – that’s a former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, mind you. Impressive. Harry’s round on the man himself was pretty impressive too. As had Frankie before him, Harry managed 9 and no passes, and again was sitting just one point off the lead.

Jonathan Gibson’s insert was value for money too. Firstly we had some rather lovely scenery from the beautiful east coast of Scotland. We had contributions from Jonathan’s sister, and another nice location in the shape of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. We had the message of encouragement, this time from Gavin Fuller – 1993 Champion and Champion of Champions Grand Finalist, and the man whose record of being the youngest champion stood to be broken. Finally, we had Jonathan himself singing one of Flanders’ and Swann’s on stage – rather pleasantly, if truth be told. Well, after all of this it would have been easy for the round to be an anticlimax, but it wasn’t. After the way the previous contenders had performed, nobody was going to blow everyone away in the first round in this final, but Jonathan’s exceptional preparation put daylight between himself and the pack, as he scored 11.

Hazel Humphrey’s film appropriately took place in a lovingly renovated Curzon Cinema. Support from family came in the shape of partner Paul, and Hazel spoke of her Mastermind career, and her progress through appearances in previous years, to the stage when she’s made the final. And let’s all raise a glass to that, gentle readers. Because to make a Mastermind Grand Final IS something special. With 6 players contending each final, obviously 5 of them are going to go away disappointed, but think about the achievement for a moment. According to the always excellent Weaver’s Week, less than 300 people have ever made it to a Mastermind Final. To put it bluntly – duffers don’t get to the final. Capping off Hazel’s film, the film within a film she was watching in the cinema was a message from none other than film maker David Cronenberg, the subject of her specialist round. Sadly, the round itself did expose a couple of gaps in Hazel’s knowledge. Her 6 was by no means a bad performance, but it wasn’t a winning one.

To the general knowledge round, then. Hazel returned to the chair and put in a good round of 11 and 2 passes, to set the bar at 17. There was a wry smile, as I think she knew that it wasn’t going to be enough. Claire Barrow did something very similar, well, in terms of her score it only differed in passes, 11 more points and no passes. This was enough to take the target to beat to 18.

Frankie answered like a TV quiz veteran in her GK round in the way that she answered very quickly, giving just surnames where possible, without dwelling on wrong answers. A few of the questions just didn’t fall her way. She too scored 11 points and no passes, but her superior specialist round gave her the lead with 20.

Frankie was guaranteed a place on the podium when Harry fell just a bit short on his round. In fact his round illustrated just why Gavin’s record had lasted as long as it did. There seems to be nothing that Harry lacks as a quizzer, short of a few more years at the quizface, picking up that  vast treasury of quiz knowledge that comes with it.

So to the top two. Dan was just one place and one point off the top of the leaderboard at half time, and the question was whether he could put in a round which might win him the title. And the answer was, well, frankly, yes. Dan put in a really good GK round to score 14 and take the score to beat up to 24. This was easily the best GK round of the night.

Of course, we all know now that by that I mean the best GK round of the night. .  . so far. Because Jonathan was going to deliver another absolute belter of a round. Yes, he missed. . . what, 1? 2? My goodness, though, the things that he either knew, or knew enough to guess! To have that kind of GK at that young age is, well, remarkable.

My commiserations to the other contenders, especially to Dan, who I recall as having his finest performance in the final. To Jonathan, my belated congratulations, and apologies that I didn’t post about it at the time.

The Details

Dan Afshar	Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition 1914 - 1917	10	0	14	0	24	0
Claire Barrow	Cole Porter	7	0	11	0	18	0
Frankie Fanko	The Vienna Secession 1897 to 1905	9	0	11	0	20	0
Harry Heath	Jimmy Carter	9	0	9	1	18	1
Jonathan Gibson	Flanders and Swann	11	0	17	0	28	0
Hazel Humphreys	The Films of David Cronenberg	6	0	11	2	17	2

Mastermind 2022: Round One: Heat Sixteen

Well, here it is, dearly beloved, the last Mastermind before Christmas. Which is some recompense for feeling like absolute poop again. No, it’s not covid again, but it feels like the flu. Ironic really since it’s not long since I had my flu jab. Oh well, enough of such things.

Dev Kumar Parmar kicked us off, answering on Eric Cantona. I picked off a couple, but I was just a little disappointed that there was no reference to possibly the greatest soundbite ever to fall from a French footballer named Cantona’s lips – seagulls following trawlers, etc. Mind you, a few old chestnuts were there. Dev knew his stuff, but just failed to push into double figures, ending with 9 and no passes.

Tonight’s was one of those shows when I knew just a tiny bit about each of the subjects. Second contender Daniele Gibney’s specialist was Charlie Booker’s inconsistent but always interesting anthology series ‘Black Mirror’. It’s worth going to Netflix and having a look at some of these to see what you think. Of course, Daniele has done considerably more than just taking a look at a few. Her knowledge of the show is comprehensive, and she laid down a marker with an impressive 11 and one pass.

If her score was impressive, though, Sarah Trevarthan’s score on Rocky Horror, both stage and film versions, was even more so. I do like to see contenders who have got their preparation pretty much absolutely right. It would have been so easy to have gone to town on the film version, and not so strongly on the early stage productions. The question setters put together a testing set, but they didn’t manage to expose any weakness of Sarah’s whatsoever. As we say in Port Talbot, da iawn.

This left Sean Smith to answer on one of my favourite 20^th century novelists, John Steinbeck. There’s been a couple of times during this series so far when contenders have been answering on novels, and something seems to have gone wrong with their preparation. I don’t know for certain what went wrong with Sean’s round, but judging from the questions about books by Steinbeck that I’ve read I’d venture to say that he didn’t know the novels as well as he thought he did. It’s a shame. He finished his round with 4 points.

Even more of a shame is the fact that Sean, first to return to the chair  was actually doing pretty well in his GK round, and heading for a good score in the low teens, when he was given three consecutive stinkers in a row – questions which I’d never heard before myself, didn’t know the answers to, and couldn’t guess. Once is not unusual, twice in a row is, and three times is very bad luck indeed. Nonetheless he did add 9 to his score to finish with 13.

If we’re talking about rounds which didn’t work out – alright, that’s what we’re talking about now – then I point you in the direction of Dev’s GK. He’s obviously a highly intelligent guy – he’s a lawyer for one thing – but this set of questions just seemed to unerringly hit his GK blind spots. If you quiz for long enough you’ll sooner or later experience a perfect storm of a set of questions like this, and it just didn’t work out for him. Dev finished with 14 overall.

Our first double figure GK round of the evening came from Daniele. Being two points behind Sarah while the halftime oranges were being passed round, there was everything to play for, especially if she could whack in a high enough title to place Sarah within the corridor of doubt. To be fair, she gave it a lash, setting the bar at 21. This meant that the least Sarah would need was 8 and 2 passes.

In the end, Sarah achieved this quite easily. In the same way that her specialist round was clearly the best of the evening, so was her GK. Not perfect mind you, but the way she kept firing out answers maintained a good momentum right up until the line of death had encircled the score, leaving her with an impressive 15 for 28. That’s a really good performance, and you never know, this may well be a contender to watch in the semis. Well done, and I wish you good luck in your semi final.

The Details

Dev Kumar Parmar	Eric Cantona	9	0	5	0	14	0
Daniele Gibney	Black Mirror	11	1	10	2	21	3
Sarah Trevarthen	Rocky Horror	13	0	15	0	28	0
Sean Smith	The Novels of John Steinbeck	4	0	9	2	13	2

Sixty + Shows Later . . .

Prompted by recent posts about shows being revived, and shows being ended before their time, I was moved by curiosity, and having just a little Christmas school holiday time on my hands, to look back at the new shows that I’ve written about in one form or another since I started LAM in 2008. My good ness, but there’s been a lot of them. I make it 60. And of those 60, 39 were in the first five years of LAM – I went off the boil after that, and embarked upon my quizzing lost weekend from 2016, when I really wasn’t posting a great amount of stuff at all for a good 5 years or so. There’s tons of quizzes I missed in that period.

Still, if it shows anything, it shows that television is a voracious consumer of new shows and formats. It also shows that the vast majority of quiz shows never stand the test of time. Only one of the new shows I reviewed in 2008 is still being made – Only Connect, in case you’re wondering. Not including the new shows that I’ve reviewed since I started regular blogging again in September, there are just 6 more of these shows still in production. The Chase – Pointless – Tipping Point – Richard Osman’s House of Games – Tenable and possibly Impossible. All of these shows have proven viewer appeal and staying power.

One thing which occurred to me as I was compiling the list was that most of these really aren’t what you would actually call ‘bad’ shows. For the most part they were shows that had been made with some time and care, but which just didn’t catch the audience they needed. For example, I wouldn’t say that “Million Pound Drop” and “Five Minutes To A Fortune” were intrinsically bad – I was biased against them in the same way that I am biased against anything presented by Davina McCall. No doubt she is a perfectly nice person and a wonderful friend, but her TV persona has always set my teeth on edge. And indeed, one or two on the list surely weren’t helped by the rather strange choice of host. I think in particular of Jeremy Kyle’s “High Stakes”, and Andrew ‘Mahogany’ Castle’s “Divided”. In some of them the format just hadn’t been worked out well enough – we’ve all seen new quiz shows that are too difficult – I don’t know if you remember Break the Safe (probably not) the show in which the rules had to be changed and the endgame of several shows reshot because in its original format nobody could win it. In some cases you couldn’t maybe put it down to anything other than being the right show at the wrong time. After all, if you’re a teatime show and you have to take on Pointless and the Chase, for example, you might just as well not bother turning up at the ground, let alone getting changed to use a sporting analogy.

For what it’s worth, looking at the 55 or so shows that came and went, these are the ones I wouldn’t have minded seeing a longer run of:-

Perfection

Breakaway

The Common Denominator

The Link

The Code

A purely personal choice, and I don’t for one minute expect everyone – or indeed anyone – to agree with me. Oh, and if Impossible has been axed the BBC, that would also definitely be on my list.

Fondly Remembered Old Show

Well, I am going to tell you about some quiz shows that I used to enjoy and so let's start with the first quiz show that I fondly remember from days gone by. I’ve mentioned it before, in fact I’m sure it featured in one edition of the LAM podcast I used to make several years ago. This is “Ask the Family”. Now, yes, I know that you’re much more likely to be biased towards something you enjoyed while you were growing up, and the show was in its heyday in the 70s when I was doing just that.

As it happens, I wasn’t that bothered about the show’s USP, that it was contested by family teams. What I did like were the different types of questions on the show, and the original host, Robert Robinson. I’ve written about him before, so I shan’t labour the point here, but there was something about his dry delivery that I really liked. I still sometimes use his oft used phrase ‘the mental equivalent of a quick jog around the block’ to refer to the first round when I’m being quiz master myself.

As for the rounds, this wasn’t just a straightforward General Knowledge quiz. There were rounds that required a real amount of working out, as well as visual rounds like the popular – familiar object seen from an unfamiliar angle -.

Ask the Family was a thing of its time, and the couple of revivals never really worked. A faithful resurrection presented by Alan Titchmarsh never set the screen alight, and it’s best to draw a kindly veil over a very strange show presented by Dick and Dom which borrowed the title. By about 1980 the show was being mocked by “Not the Nine O’Clock News” for its obviously middle class values, in a skit which pitted Giles and Serena Brainee (both quantity surveyors) and their children Julian 16 and Nigel 14 (also both quantity surveyors) against Giles and Serena Smart-Awse (both quantity surveyors) and their children Julian 16 and Nigel 14 (also both quantity surveyors), answering questions about quantity surveyors.

In recent years we’ve seen a couple of shows do something similar to the concept of "Ask The Family". Sky’s ‘Relatively Speaking’ which came and went without causing much a stir, and even more recently ITV’s ‘Britain’s Brightest Family’ have both presented family quizzes, although both took a thankfully wider definition of family more appropriate to the times we live in. Of the two I preferred ‘Britain’s Brightest Family’  - it was nice to see Anne asking rather than answering the questions.

I’m not saying "Ask the Family" should be revived – as I said, it was a thing of its time. But I liked it a lot. 

The Weakest Link Revival

It was recently suggested, after my post about “The Code”, that I should do a series on fondly remembered quiz shows that should be brought back. Being perverse, I’ve ended up writing this post about a quiz show which is being brought back, asking the question whether it should be or not.

I write, as I am sure you’ve figured out, about The Weakest Link, which is due to return to our screens on December 18^th, hosted by Romesh Ranganathan. Now, as I haven’t seen any of the revival yet, nor have I heard any gossip about it, I can’t comment on the quality of the reboot. I can’t help wondering how well the show will work in the 2020’s, though.

I’ll try to explain what I mean. In fact, mean is the operative word. All of this is just my opinion, and of course you must feel free to disagree, but it always seemed to me that “The Weakest Link” rode in on the zeitgeist of the new Milennium, in which not only was it okay to be mean, rude and personal to anyone who dared to put their head over the TV parapet, it was highly desirable. And you have to admit that “The Weakest Link” rode that zeitgeist very well throughout the noughties, with only the format of “WWTBAM” selling to more countries. I’m not sure whether the ratings were slipping at all when Anne Robinson came to call it a day in 2012, but the production team certainly said that they were going out while the show was still popular, because they didn’t think anyone could fill Anne Robinson’s shoes.

In case you are too young to remember the show, or have forgotten how it worked, these were the mechanics of the game. Each show started with 9 contestants. In the first round, questions are asked to each contestant in turn until three minutes have elapsed. Subsequent rounds are each ten seconds shorter than the previous. For each correct answer they add a link to a money chain. Before they answer, if there are any links in the chain they can choose to bank what has been earned in the chain so far, and the chain starts to build again. If they answer incorrectly, then the links are lost, so is the money and the chain begins again. If the chain is completed before the time has run out, then the round stops and the money is banked. Then the real fun starts.

After each round, the contestants have to write down the name of the player they want to eliminate, who is then dubbed the weakest link. After Anne Robinson has scattergunned disdain in all directions, then the weakest link is told to leave with nothing. Play proceeds like this until just two contestants remain. The final head to head is a straight shoot out, with the winner being decided by the best of five questions.

That’s it basically. Well, that’s the game play, but that ignores the part played by Anne Robinson. Like her or loathe her, I think you’d have to admit that Anne Robinson understood exactly what her role in the show was, and played it to perfection. It didn’t really matter whether a contestant had done particularly badly, sooner or later they were going to be the subject of a comment along the lines of “You have 4 A levels, Roberta. Are they giving them away with cornflakes packets now, then?” and “Are you old enough to remember when your hairstyle was in fashion?”, and man, many, many others of the “Do you have a braincell?” variety. I will not lie. Some of them I laughed at. In later years I did find some of them a bit strained, and sometimes Anne was obviously reading off the autocue. By the time that the show had been going for a year or two I’d say that contestants had no excuse for not knowing what they were letting themselves in for by applying, but the poor sods who applied for the first series must have left the studies feeling shell shocked, and maybe in some case needing counselling.

The show was mean-spirited, and it knew that it was mean-spirited and it was proud of being mean-spirited. You didn’t watch the show if you wanted to feel good about your fellow citizens. No. You watched the show to see ordinary people giving often silly answers to very easy questions, and then being verbally torn apart for the privilege. In many ways this made it a perfect show for the noughties. As an aside, I was sounded out on whether I’d be prepared to appear on a quiz champions’ special in the last week of the show. Of course I was – sadly they went with much greater luminaries than myself.

Will a perfect show for the noughties, the decade of mean, really cut the mustard in the 2020’s? In all honesty, I don’t know. The producers have made the probably wise decision not to replace like with like for the presenter. I have no idea whether they asked Anne Robinson – if they did I think she was right to refuse. She’s recently taken over hosting duties on “Countdown” mind you, and I have to say that this seems a bit of an odd fit to me. Her delivery is not quite what it was, and she seems rather stiff and uncomfortable to me. Still, I digress. I think we can expect a different style from Romesh Ranganathan. I think he’ll still have some pointed comments to make, but maybe with a little more warmth – to be honest it would be hard to do it with less warmth than Anne Robinson. They’ll all have to be careful though. Meanness seems to be out of fashion. Launching it with celebrity editions seems like a gentle easing back, but one can’t help thinking that a defanged Weakest Link might hardly be a Weakest Link at all.

Whatever the case, I’ll certainly be watching at least one of the revived series. Whether I will watch more than one – well, we’ll see. Watch this space.

Catching up with "The Code"

Last month I reviewed the new daytime quiz show “The Tournament”. In the comments, George Millman was kind enough to fill me in on “The Code”, a show which I managed to completely miss during my quizzing ‘lost weekend’ period. Having finally watched an episode on Youtube, I feel that I understand why George enjoyed it so much.

I did wonder if there was going to be any similarity to Omid Djalili’s ‘Winning Combination’. Thankfully not. It’s a much simpler game, and it's all the better for it. What it boils down to is this. One team, or single contender, plays at a time. They have to guess from the digits 0 – 9, to see which 3 make up the combination to unlock a safe. In order to do this they face a choice between three questions with answers, only one of which is correct. So, for example, they might be faced with

·       Which word in Bohemian Rhapsody is the name of an Italian clown character ? – answer given – Fandango

·       Who was the arch enemy of Flash Gordon? – answer given – Fu Manchu

·       Which is the German name for the city of Aix La Chapelle? – answer given – Aachen

So the player/team have to identify that the third question is the only one with a correct answer given. They get this wrong and it's so long and thanks for the memories. Get it right and they choose a digit, which will either be eliminated, or enter the combination. Now, when they have identified their first correct digit, the game play changes. For now the player/team gets to see all three answers, but can only pick two of the questions. This makes it trickier, but crucially, not impossible. If you know that you’ve picked out two wrong answers, then it is obvious that what remains must be correct. This continues until either the player/team picks a wrong’un and gets eliminated, or picks another correct digit.

So, once two digits from the combination have been identified, the game becomes more difficult again. This time, the team/player gets shown just the three answers, and can only elect to see one of the questions at first. The player/team then has to decide whether it is correct, or whether the answer is not the right answer to the question. Only then can the player/team choose one of the other questions to see. He/they must decide if it’s right or wrong. Again, the player/team keeps on laying until either they choose a wrong answer, or they complete the combination, in which case they walk away with the contents of the safe. Another player/team takes the stage, and we begin again. As I watched I was worried that when we got to the final digit the gameplay would degenerate into a guessing game. But it didn't - if you were good enough, you would never have to guess. 

George particularly liked the non-adversarial atmosphere and I know where he was coming from. At no stage do you think that host Matt Allwright is being insincere in his support for each player. Likewise, expert Lesley-Anne Brewis, of the QuizQuizQuiz organisation fulfilled a role similar to that of the great Richard Osman on Pointless, and manages to explain a lot of the answers without grating on the nerves in the least, which is a considerable skill. What I most like about this show is that I think you’d need an incredible slice of luck to be able to win if you weren’t at least a good quizzer. You have to actually know things to have a chance of winning. I like that. I think it would have been accessible to the non-quizzing viewer, while offering something to quizzers of a wide range of abilities, like both Pointless and Impossible.

Yet it came and went after just two series of 25 episodes. Which I suppose is one more series than a lot of new shows get, but it’s a bit of a shame that it just didn’t last longer. I often come back to William Goldman’s observation from “Adventures in the Screen Trade”, but that’s because it’s so true – nobody knows anything. Sometimes an inferior show catches on, while a superior one dies the death. If I had to suggest a reason, all I can really say is this. I do think it’s quite a bit harder for a non-adversarial show to catch on than one which involves contestants battling it out against each other. The real behemoth of the genre - Who Wants To Be A Millionaire had mouth wateringly huge sums of cash , and the life changing amounts of cash that a contestant could throw away with a careless answer ( which is what I did) generated their own drama. And even then, each contestant had to beat the others in a fastest finger round. When I watched “The Code” I was just put a little in mind of the Kaye Adams version of The People Versus – (which I like to think of as David Briggs’ Difficult Second Album – even though it probably wasn’t the second show he invented after Millionaire – he certainly also created the successful National Lottery Winning Lines amongst others). So maybe audiences thought that The Code lacked a little drama. Who knows? All I can say is that what I saw on Youtube, I rather enjoyed.

University Challenge 2022: Round 2: Birmingham v. St. Andrews

The Teams

Birmingham

Mark McParlan

John Robinson

Michael Joel Bartelle (capt)

Jaimy Sajit

St. Andrews

Alastair Fennell

Harry Alderson

Jack Wigg (capt)

Aine McMenamin

This was the last heat before the UC at Christmas romps take over for the festive season, so let’s make the most of it. The form guide tells us that Birmingham thrashed Sussex by 245-10. Which isn’t really helpful as a guide to form, since we just don’t know whether Sussex were just not any good on the buzzer, or whether Birmingham were out of this world. One the other side of the coin, St. Andrews squeaked past Emmanuel 140 – 135, which at least showed they have a certain amount of grit if put under pressure.

With the first starter, the moment the Royal Engineers were mentioned among a list of seemingly unconnected organisations I knew we were dealing with the first FA Cup. Mark McParlan was the first to buzz in to open Birmingham’s account. They added to it with one bonus on Medieval Britain. The next starter had a long preamble until it became obvious we were looking for USVP Kamala Harris. Michael Joel Bartelle won that particular buzzer race. Areas of Australian states and territories brought two correct answers. Harry Alderson made an early attempt to stop the Birmingham charge by buzzing in too early on the next starter about a composer, leaving the skipper to take his second consecutive starter with Mussorgsky. Bonuses on botanical terms brought us both just the one correct answer with rhizome. For the picture starter we saw the flags of San Marino and the Vatican. I answered Italy/Italian, confident that the question either wanted the country they both bordered, or the language they shared. It was the language required, and Harry Alderson was first to buzz in correctly. With the bonuses that followed I could identify the flags, but not always the shared non European language. I thought that St. Andrews did well to take two. Now, I’m sorry, but if a starter has the words ‘now familiar equation’ in it, I’m going for E=MC squared every day of the week. So did John Robinson, and we were both right. French composers with names beginning with M yielded neither of us any points. So, as we approached the 10 minute mark, Birmingham had established a comfortable lead with 65 – 15.

The next starter was a UC special giving definitions of teasel, weasel and Rudolf Diesel, and asked for any two of the set. Aine McMenamin provided the 2^nd and 3^rd. November 9^th in German History added just the one bonus to their total. Still, at least they were hitting the buzzer with more accuracy now. Alastair Fennell was first to recognise two poems written by different Emilys – Bronte and Dickinson (who was the great, great grandmother of Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson. Did you know that? Not surprised, since I just made it up.) Bonuses on Physics brought me nowt, and although St. Andrews only managed 1, it still brought the gap down to 20 points. It widened immediately, though, when John Robinson correctly identified Svalbard as the archipelago of which Spitsbergen is a part. Bonuses on 2020 Nobel laureate Louise Gluck brought us both our first full house of the evening, and seemed to extinguish the flame of St. Andrews' resistance. Harry Alderson buzzed in very early for the music starter and offered Beethoven. This is not actually a bad tactic, especially if your team does not have a music specialist – it’s as often going to be Beethoven as it’s going to be any other specific composer. But it wasn’t this time. To be fair, it didn’t take Michael Joel Bartelle much longer to identify Bach correctly. 3 other recordings made in Columbia’s 30^th Street Studio brought a single bonus, but Birmingham were through the 100 points barrier, and extending the lead. John Robinson was the first to buzz with the names of Puma and Adidas, two sportswear companies founded in Germany in the 1900s. Symbols in physical science provided perhaps my finest hour of this show. You had to take the letter used to symbolise an SI unit, and then give the chemical element whose symbol it was. For capacitance I had fluorine, for Inductance I had hydrogen and for power, Tungsten. Honestly – a full house! If I could have managed a triple lap of honour around the sofa, I would have done, but 1 had to suffice. Alright, Birmingham also managed a full house. Fair play to St. Andrews, they were still plugging away and Harry Alderson buzzed in to identify Nauru as the world’s smallest republic. Bonuses on words beginning with – theo – provided a further  points to their total. Neither team managed the mathematical/geometry thing which provided the next starter. As soon as the name Milton Obote was mentioned in the next starter a buzzer race ensued, won by John Robinson who correctly identified the country in question as Uganda. Double Oscar winning film directors brought them another full house, which meant that they led by 10 – 60 at the 20 minute mark.

Michael Joel Bartelle knew that the building known as the Turning Torso is in Malmo to stretch this lead to 100 points. They avoided a duck on bonuses on ducks, taking one for dabbling ducks. They’re the ones which don’t exactly throw themselves into being ducks. The Birmingham skipper was far too fast for everyone else when we saw the 2^nd picture starter. Yes, it seemed obviously the work of Van Gogh, but while the rest of us were realising this, he had already buzzed in and said it. The bonuses were nothing like as easily recognised and I thought Birmingham did well to get one of them. When it’s not your night it’s not your night, and I felt for Alastair Fennell. Given a series of names of what were obviously either pacemakers or defibrillators he zigged with pacemakers, allowing Jaimy Sajit to zag with defibrillators. It didn’t bring them any joy with the set of bonuses on minerals, mind you, but they were far enough ahead it was all surely academic by this stage. Neither team recognised the term bucolic for the next starter. I’ll be honest, I did think that an opera containing the character Phillip II of Spain was a bit of a giveaway, but no buzzer race ensued. Harry Alderson speculated first, before Michael Joel Bartelle offered the correct answer of Don Carlos with a hands open gesture, seeming to be surprised that it was right. That took Birmingham past 200. Fictional political movements brought two correct answers and a very facetious answer that JP himself might have written a 1928 work by Aldous Huxley. In terms of European capitals, John Robinson was the first to work out that if D is C and P is both W and L, then H is B. Hungary and Budapest, don’t you know. Birmingham missed out on the first bonus on the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich before the contest was buzzed, leaving them winners by 225 to 50.

Hard lines to St. Andrews, a better team who put on a better performance than their bare scoreline suggests. No doubt about the winners though. Birmingham go through to the quarters with a second consecutive 200 plus performance. Well done!

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week

Svalbard means Cold Coast.

Mastermind 2022: Round One - Heat Fifteen

We’re getting there, dearly beloved. Heat 15 already. I had a bit of a ‘mare last week in the specialists with a measly  (and frankly lucky to get a couple of them). Tonight’s subjects promised me a little more. Well, three of them did.

First of these three was Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy, as offered to us by Claire Spinks. Now, the think is, it’s a very long time since I read the books. Bearing that in mind I shouldn’t feel too disappointed with the brace of points that was all I could manage. Claire did quite a bit better, getting herself into double figures, even if it seemed like it took a little while for the scoreboard to really get moving. Good round.

I also thought I might well get a couple in the next round, Shajeev Anigasekara’s round on All Blacks Test Matches 2004 – 2015. I don’t blame Shajeev for having such a relatively short period to revise, but it does make me wonder about how the production teams ecide how long or short a period they will allow for such a round to cover. Yes, in my first ever appearance I had to do the Modern Summer Olympic Games, which at that time stretched from 1896 – 2004, and so yes, I am jealous! Mind you, probably because he was dealing with such a relatively short period of time, the questions did require Shajeev to show wome pretty detailed knowledge, which he did, to finish with 9.

Sometimes it is difficult to pinpoint just what happened with a contender’s round. I think it was pretty clear what happened with Ruth Joesbury’s on the Golden Age of MGM Musicals. She began confidently enough, but sadly a wrong answer pushed her into what appeared to be a horrible pass spiral. I don’t think that she was undone by a lack of knowledge, but by nerves, and I felt huge sympathy. It must be the most horrible feeling. Ruth scored 4.

With decent whacks in both of the previous rounds I had pushed my score on the specialists up to 11, and this was where I would stay until the end of Dom Walker’s round on The Life and Works of John Clare. Yes, I know I studied English Lit at uni, and I know that I’ve taught English for nigh on 35 years, but somehow I’ve managed to avoid his work in all that time. Which is a shame for me, but not for Dom, who whacked in a good 12 and no passes to put daylight between himself and the peloton.

I can only imagine how hard it must be to compose yourself on your return to the chair after a specialist round which has just not turned out the way you would have liked. So respect to Ruth Joesbury for mentally dusting herself down, and scoring a respectable 9 points on her GK round, to take her total to 13. Still, with all due respect, it was the other three contenders who were going to be duking it out for the win. Shajeev weighed in with a good 11 and 2 passes, to set a total which would mean that the remaining contenders would at least have to dip a toe into the corridor of doubt.

Claire was up to the challenge. Granted that she only managed to match Shajeev’s GK total of 11 and 2 passes, but crucially she had begun the round 1 point to the good, and so this was all that she needed to guarantee second place. Could it guarantee the win, though?

There was precious little suspense about the result though. Dom Walker was too good to leave it to any chance. I was a little surprised to see that he only finished with 12 for his GK round. Somehow it felt somewhat better than that. It didn’t matter, though, for the daylight that he had placed between himself and the other contenders in the first round had widened, and he won with a score of 24 which frankly seemed the least that he deserved. Well done to you, sir, and as always, the best of luck in your semi final. 

The Details

Claire Spinks	Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” Trilogy	10	1	11	2	21	3
Shajeev Wanigasekara	All Blacks Test Matches 2004 - 2015	9	1	11	2	20	2
Ruth Joesbury	The Golden Age of MGM Musicals	4	5	9	1	13	6
Dom Walker	The Life and Works of John Clare	12	0	12	0	24	0