Show Me The Telly

This ITV show had escaped me until I saw it reviewed on Daniel’s Quiz Addict blog. Quizzes about TV are not new to our screens. You might well recall Tellyaddicts, It’s Only TV But I like It, That’s Entertainment, We Love TV and if like me you’re getting on a bit you might even remember Those Wonderful TV Times. By the very nature of the subject, none of these were serious quizzes, and so I didn’t expect this to be. As I always do, I tried to judge the show on its own merits.

It’s a bit of a hybrid really, between quiz show and panel game. It’s a variation on the ‘pro celebrity’ format. A team of challengers, the TV Lovers of the day compete against a team of TV Experts – Chris Tarrant and two TV faces of varying importance. The mechanics of the show are fairly simple. Lovers play Experts in three games. The Lovers’ object is to win time for the final round, in which they try to win money. The Experts’ object is to match or defeat the Lovers in each round, thus denying them time for the final round. In the final round one of the 3 TV lovers is chosen by the captain to answer a series of 8 questions. The team might have a s little as 60 seconds, if they haven’t won any rounds, or as many as 95 if they won each round. There are lifelines available, but they can’t be used on the last question for the money. That’s pretty much it.

Despite the fact that I’ve said that I always try to judge a show on its own merits, I really didn’t think I was going to like this, and I didn’t at first. The FAQ ( Faffing About Quotient) is as massive as you might expect for a show of this ilk. Well you wouldn’t get even some of the , how should I put it, D list celebrities on this show just to answer the questions. They want their share of the screen time. But it does mean you have to keep your finger on the fast forward button for a long time before the first question hoves into view. As for the question, well, nearly all them were of the ‘how-the-hell-did-the-contestants-manage- to-get-that-wrong?’ variety. The TV lovers on the show I watched still managed to do so, mind you, which suggests that anyone with a decent knowledge of TV probably need not apply. Yet despite myself, I found that I was mildly enjoying this. Getting Chris Tarrant as a team captain was a good move, and Richard Bacon’s banter with him about the number of pilots he has done in his time was entertaining – I could have watched more of that.

So, of its type, there are certainly worse things out there to watch, but there are better things as well. I shan’t be hurrying home from school any time soon, and I won’t be troubling the on demand that much for it either.