A Question of A Question of Sport

Suppose I had put a less obvious title to this post, and I asked you the question – which TV quiz show began in 1970, and has run for 51 series? What would you have answered? In some ways Mastermind would be the closest fitting wrong answer – having begun in 1972, and run for 45 series – 3 of which were broadcast on Radio4, and one of which was broadcast on the Discovery Channel.  But, not, it’s A Question of Sport.

Cards on the table, I’ve rarely written about Question of Sport in the past on the blog because , well, certainly since I started the blog in 2008 QOS has been as much an entertainment show as anything else. And if you take it as that, then it’s worked pretty well. I’m fortunate enough to have played in charity quizzes against both Matt Dawson and Phil Tufnell, and what you saw on TV seemed to me what you got in real life. Now, the thing about the Barker – Dawson – Tuffers set up was so much of your enjoyment depended on how much you liked the three of them. If, say, you found Tuffers got on your nerves – I didn’t, but I know people who did – then there was progressively less and less pure quiz content for you to get your teeth into as the years went on.

The new series kicked off this week, and so I decided to give it a go. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t too hopeful when I saw that Paddy McGuinness was presenting. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Paddy is an assured and comfortable broadcaster, whose manner would be at home on the show. However, the show has always been presented by either someone respected within the sporting community like David Coleman, or a former sportsperson like Sue Barker. Paddy’s presence made me wonder if we were going to be moving even closer to Sky TV’s “A League of Their Own”. Like the BBC’s own “They Think It’s All Over” of a couple of decades ago, there are occasionally sports questions in the show, but it’s far more interested in extracting comedy and entertainment from the captains and the guests.  Which is great, and it’s an entertaining show. A sports quiz though?

If you haven’t watched the show for about 20 years, well, it’s quite a bit different from how you remember it. Still, what I did like was that the two team captains, Sam Quek and Ugo Monye, don’t yet have the kind of relationship between them that Daws and Tuffers had. The show had become very much about the banter between the two of them, and so at least this has freed up some more space for sports questions.

However, that having been said, I really don’t like the section where the two captains have to try out a sport and compete to win a couple of points. This is the sort of thing they do in “A League of their Own”. The thing is, though, in that show they do it for laughs, to make the captains/participants look a bit ridiculous. And this is the sort of thing you can’t afford to do by halves. So when you have the two team captains who were both sportspeople who reached the top of their game, doing a sport which is unfamiliar to them quite well, but obviously nowhere near as well as people who actually do the sport, then it just doesn’t work. In a quiz show, this sort of thing is just pointless padding. I’d

I’ll be honest, I only tuned in after seeing a couple of extremely negative reviews in a couple of the national papers. Well, to be honest, I think this was a little unfair. It’s still pretty watchable – although purely as a matter of personal taste I’d like to see still more genuine quiz content. The Home and Away round went the way of all flesh some time ago, and that’s a shame. Surely there must be enough clips available to start doing the What Happened Next as well. There you go, though, If you haven’t watched the new series yet, I’d give it a try and make your own mind up.