Apologies if this review seems a little grumpy, dearly beloved. I don’t mean it to be, but I was ill at the dog end of last week, and it’s been a difficult day at work today. So if I seem a little out of sorts, please be forgiving. This too will pass.
Yesterday’s show didn’t start too badly for me. I mean, I
would never describe myself as a fan of Madonna’s music, but then she’s kind of
always been there, so it seems, a bit like the Brecon Beacons. So I managed
three of these. If you can score 11 on your specialist, as Ashleigh Evans did,
then you have every right to pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself
on having done a good job on your preparation. Question level-wise I thought
that this was a pretty fair set of questions.
It's often interesting to look at the kinds of specialist
subjects that are offered in each series. I may be wrong, but I don’t remember a
set of questions on just one character from just one TV series – albeit a long running
one. That’s not meant in a pejorative way, by the way. I think that the
jeopardy you put yourself in when you’re answering on a subject which has a
pretty narrow focus, like this one, is that the question setters have a right
to expect that you will have learned your subject in real detail and will set
questions to test this. So while Sirin Kamalvand certainly knew a lot about George
Clooney’s ER character, she was still caught out enough times to ensure that
while she reached respectability, she didn’t really put herself into the best
position at half time.
Some contenders look impassive as they take to the chair for
the first time. Some contenders look nervous as hell. Then there are those who
look as if they are loving every minute of the experience. Into this category
fell our third contender, Jason Hill. And well he might, for he knew his
subject, The Rivers of Yorkshire (which was apparently rejected by Boney M as
the title for their number 1 single) well enough to get a double figure score. Just
one point behind Ashleigh, Jason was going to be in the shakeup when we got
down to the serious business of the GK round.
Not before Eva Harrison had her chance at The National
Hockey-League 2000 – present, though. I always like to see fellow teachers
giving it a lash, and Eva certainly did respectably. I would make the same
observations about Eva’s round that I made about Sirin’s. Taking a narrow focus
– 20 years – did mean that the question setters were going to really test her
detailed knowledge, which is probably why, like Sirin, she ended with 8 points.
Perfectly respectable, but some way off the lead.
So to the GK round.
Right, let me start with a disclaimer. Not doing very well in
a general knowledge round shows nothing about you, other than you didn’t do very
well in that general knowledge round. It is certainly no reflection on your
intelligence, despite certain sections of social media claiming otherwise. Why
do I make this point now? Well, in the same way that the luck of the draw can
throw up a heat in which several contenders throw in superb GK rounds, the luck
of the draw threw up a heat in which all
contenders scored, well, for want of a better word, rather modestly. It
was what it was.
First back to the chair was Sirin. She scored 4. To be
honest, there’s not much I can say to sweeten the pill. It just wasn’t a good
round. Eva’s round was a lot more interesting. She had the joint highest score
of the GK round, with 7, but what made her round interesting was the way that I
thought she managed to get some of the harder questions right, while missing
what I would think of as bread and butter. Of course, it’s all in the eye of
the beholder and the ear of the behearer. What was also interesting was the
play of emotions across Eva’s face. It looked like the round really mattered to
her, and that’s something I can get on board with.
Jason returned next, still clearly enjoying the experience immensely.
After a reasonable start with the first few questions, this smile was somewhat
tested as the round progressed. 6 points, which was his total for the round, is
certainly not a disaster. But it isn’t great, even if it did mean that Jason
was in the lead with one contender to go.
Surely Ashleigh was going to smash this, I thought. Well, not
really. Yes, he did have the joint highest score of the round, but at the end
of the day this was still only 7. It was enough to bring him the win by a
couple of points, though, and that was what mattered. Well done, sir.
For me, though, it does beg the question – should we be going
back to semi final slots for highest scoring runners up? I’m sorry if I am
starting to sound like a stuck gramophone record, but yes, I think we should.
The luck of the draw will always play a part in any knockout competition. But
come on. Andrew Fanko scored 25 in his heat, 7 more than Ashleigh scored in
his. Ashleigh won, and he has a place in the semis – and quite right too. He
earned it. But Andrew doesn’t have a place in the semis, through sheer bad
luck. His score would have won many of the heats. This probably just serves to
highlight why the original series had repechage places, and why the Humphrys
era had them for the best part of 10 years. So come on, Hindsight and Hattrick –
look at this one again please. You have a great show – but this is just one way
you could make it even better.
The Details
|
Ashleigh Evans |
The Music of Madonna |
11 |
0 |
7 |
2 |
18 |
2 |
|
Sirin Kamalvand |
The ER character Doug Ross |
8 |
0 |
4 |
2 |
12 |
2 |
|
Jason Hill |
The Rivers of Yorkshire |
10 |
0 |
6 |
0 |
16 |
0 |
|
Eva Harrison |
The National Hockey League 2000 present |
8 |
0 |
7 |
1 |
15 |
1 |
7 comments:
I agree with your concerns about the lack of highest scoring runner up semi final places which is particularly tough for those eliminated at the heat stage with 20+ scores. You mention Andrew Fanko as an example. He scored 26 points in his heat and Dan Sheehan secured 23 points in third place. Both would certainly have won the majority of heats broadcast to date.
I'm not sure I would go so far as to say Andrew Fanko was unlucky. He was fairly beaten by a better quizzer (in Patrick Buckingham) who was able to handle what must have been a highly pressurised GK round more effectively. Saying Andrew was unlucky doesn't do justice to Patrick who, as I think you pointed out, followed Andrew's GK round, knowing that only a humdinger performance would secure a win. That wasn't the least bit easy and he pulled it off with aplomb.
In my view, the Buckingham/Fanko/Sheehan dogfight represented one of the most exciting moments of this series so far. High scores have been recorded in some other heats but usually by one player leaving the rest of the field in their slipstream. Which is nowhere near as exciting to watch. In the absence of highest scoring runner up places, the producers need to balance players within particular heats and you have to admit that the Buckingham/Fanko/Sheehan heat was a noted success in this respect.
Hi Unknown. I take your point and by no means intended to cast any aspersion on the brilliant Patrick Buckingham. By unlucky, I meant that he was unlucky to be in the same heat, when his score would have won many of the others. I might have expressed it better, I concede.
For what it's worth, I understood what you meant by being unlucky!
Here's a thing: I don't normally have much of a preference as to which contestant I'm supporting (and if I do, it's normally because they've chosen a specialist subject in my areas of interests, something which the National Hockey League is certainly not) but for some reason I really found myself warming to Eva Harrison and wanted her to win. I think it's because, as you said, she's one of the most expressive contestants I've ever seen on the show; she looked supremely satisfied with every correct answer, completely heartbroken with every slip-up and you could normally tell from her expression as Clive was asking it what the outcome would be. The one thing I was particularly impressed by was her speed... when she knew the answers she fired out the answers with hardly a gap. I think perhaps nerves got the better of her as she looked as though she knew at least a few of the questions she slipped up on. With that speed, I wonder if she'll be one to watch in subsequent years.
Also, I think I would find it harder to research a single character from a TV show than the show generally. If your main source of revision is watching the episodes back to back, I'd find it really hard to focus entirely on one character and ignore the rest of it.
There's an excellent, and funny, article in The Guardian today by one of the contenders in this episode, Sirin Kale:
I’ve started, so I’ll panic: what it’s really like to go on Mastermind
I really like how it confirms a lot of things you've said about Specialist selection and GK. I doubt, based on this performance, you would have described Ms. Kale as a quizzer, but she clearly is!
Sirin's recollection is odd, because there are a few things she's got wrong. Firstly, the final scores aren't accurate, although I think that's understandable - I'm not sure I'd be able to recall everyone's scores perfectly.
But she says that she went first, and Ashleigh went first. Unless they filmed them in a different order to what they broadcast them in, but I can't see why they'd have done that.
Hi Martin,
Thanks for this. What a good read! Certainly no, Sirin didn't come across as a regular quizzer, no, I would say that there can be a world of difference between a member of a team who regularly win their local quiz, and someone who is going to be able to post an impressive GK score in Mastermind. But, yes, I can easily accept that this is what nerves can do to you. As a regular quizzer, under normal circumstances I am sure that she would have done a lot better.
Hi George,
Yes, I noticed that. I found that I made a similar mistake when I watched my 2007 first round back. I was sure that the order broadcast was different from what I remembered - yet it can't have been, because it wouldn't have been the right order for the GK round it it had been the way I thought it had. Certainly all of my shows were broadcast in the correct order.
How interesting that the Ashleigh Evans heat provoked this discussion of Andrew Fanko and the lack of highest-scoring loser places, given that Andrew replaced Ashleigh in the semi-finals when Ashleigh couldn't take part, and did so because he was the highest scoring runner-up.
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