Way back in the mists of time (last year) I wrote about Rob Brydon’s Destination X. As I recall I rather enjoyed the show, even though there really was next to no quiz content within it. A couple of weeks ago he launched the first instalment of the ITV version of a show that has been a hit stateside and in other countries. This is The Floor.
I may have elements of this wrong, so don’t take everything
I say as gospel, but as I understand it, the show works like this. 81 players
occupied spaces on a 9x9 grid. Each player had their own nominated specialist
subject. The player who starts can choose the players in any square adjacent to
theirs to play against. So if, for the sake of argument, the player chooses to
play against Bob who has nominated early Etruscan Pottery as his subject, then
the two square off in a head to head on Early Etruscan pottery. The head to
heads are short rounds. Basically the two players are both given 60 seconds on
their clocks. In turns thy are asked questions about – what did we say? Oh yes,
early Etruscan Pottery. A correct answer moves the question to the other
player. When the time runs out on one of the players, the other wins. Whoever
wins takes over the other player’s square as well as their own, and I believe
that the opponent’s specialist subject becomes their’s. Whoever loses leaves
with nothing.
Now, on paper at least this format is not without interest.
After all, with a little effort we can all be good on our own specialist
subject. But a wide range of them? I can see strategic thinking being involved
but sooner or later contestants are going to need to show decent knowledge of a
potentially wide range of topics. I like that. For that matter I like Rob
Brydon, one of Port Talbot’s finest. So having got all of that in its favour, I
think that I should own up to a salient fact. I watched all of the first show.
I haven’t watched it since. Partly this was because I forgot that it was on.
But that in itself tells its own story. Because when you get right down to it a
show like this should have gripped me. But it didn’t grip me enough to make an
appointment with myself to watch the next show.
It’s hard to be absolutely cut and dried about why this
doesn’t quite deliver for me, but I’d say it boils down to a couple of things. If
you’ve been with me for a while you know that I much prefer shows where the
questions – chat ratio is slanted much more towards the former. I haven’t sat
down to work out just how much of the show’s length is given up to questions
being asked and answered, but in all honesty it didn’t seem like a lot to me.
Also, on the show I watched it seemed to me that at least a
couple of the contestants had only a brief passing acquaintance with their
specialist subjects. Now I will admit that I don’t know just how the allocation
of specialist subjects worked on the show – whether it was totally up to the
contestants themselves, or whether they were given a selection of subjects to
choose from, or whether it was dictated to them – you will do this subject. But
if they had a free hand to choose their own subjects, well, some of them
weren’t that impressive to be perfectly honest. As for the moolah, well it is
possible to pick up £5000 bonuses as you go along. The grand prize is £50,000.
Ok, that’s certainly not to be sniffed at, but it isn’t riches beyond the
dreams of avarice, is it? Not when you compare it to other shows of the genre.
Well, there we are. I may watch again. But then again I may not.
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