Afternoon. I can't go to the Aberavon home match today because I'm looking after my grandson who's not very well, so I just thought that I’d share some observations about a couple of returning quizzes. I’d like to start off with “The Tournament”, a 2021 newcomer which returned this week. The Beeb often seem to give new quiz shows a couple of series to find an audience, so I don’t know if “The Tournament” was a hit first time round, or merely showed a bit of promise.
So let’s start with a couple of positives. I praised Alex
Scott last year for speaking clearly, projecting a little warmth and not
getting in the way. She seems to have grown into the role and seems more at
ease and confident. That’s a positive. The show still delivers a pretty decent
number of questions for your money too. That’s a positive.
Now, I was kind enough in my review last year to point out
a number of tweaks the production team could make to ensure that the second
series would be even better. I’m sad to see that they haven’t taken any of them
on board. This means that the show still suffers from these flaws:-
· The
god-awful, cringe-inducing ‘battle-cries’. At the top end of the show, each
contestant is forced to issue a statement of intent along the lines of ‘ I’m a primary
school teacher and I’m going to teach the opposition a lesson or two tonight’.
Even if these were well done – and they are not – it goes totally against the
friendly atmosphere of the show. But as I said, they’re not well done. The
contestants aren’t professional actors, and their delivery is more wooden than
a walnut kneehole desk. They are obviously scripted and are pure gorgonzola.
Please – I beg of you – should you get another series, then DROP IT! It doesn’t
matter how many times Alex says ‘Great Battle cries!” I find the whole business
buttock- clenchingly cringeworthy.
· The
business of telling us who is ‘favourite’ for which game. It doesn’t make a
blind bit of difference, and at the end of the day – who cares?
· The
sameiness of each head to head round
· The
lack of a proper endgame in most shows. I didn’t get to watch every episode of
the first series, but I have never seen a contestant knock out the other
finalist and then get an opportunity to have a go at a gold run to double their
money.
As I said last year when the first season aired, the show
has potential. Without a few tweaks to sort these flaws out, though, then this
potential will stay unfulfilled. Yes, of course that’s just my opinion. Feel
free to disagree.
As for the other returning show, Jason Manford’s “Unbeatable”
has been running for a couple of weeks now. I’m not in a position to discuss
whether any tweaks have been made to the show or not, because I never saw any
of the first series. I was just really starting to emerge from my quizzing lost
weekend when it aired and wasn’t watching shows just so I could blog about
them then.
“Unbeatable” as it is now does several things well, I
think. I like Jason Manford – he’s a gifted comedian – and actually a very good
singer too, as we saw in the first series of The Masked Singer. He doesn’t grate on the nerves at all, and he
doesn’t try to make the show all about him, which is a lot of what I want from
a host. If anything, he’s maybe a little wasted here. He’s very good, but
someone without his skills could do just as well with what’s required.
Which probably goes to highlight another thing I like about
the show. I actually like that it doesn’t waste a lot of time talking to the
contestants. I know many people have the opposite view – to which everyone is
entitled. But when you get right down to it I’m not really that interested in
anybody who appears. In fact, the only thing I want to know about them is how
well do they do with the questions.
I also appreciate that it is not all popular culture. I
would dare say that it must be a great temptation to slant a show like this
more heavily towards film, TV and music.
The gameplay is pretty straightforward and easy to understand,
but just complicated enough to spike a little more interest – yes, you at home
may know that one of the two contestants in each round has the unbeatable
answer – but do they know? Will they say it is the unbeatable answer? However, I believe that there is an issue
with the gameplay.
It works like this. The how is a series of head to head
battles. Each battle consists of 3 boards. So a board will say – for the sake
of argument – which of these people was the first to win a series of
Mastermind. There will be 6 options – Kevin Ashman – Fred Housego – Nancy Wilkinson
– Christopher Hughes – Nancy Dickman – Gary Grant. (Brownie points for modestly
not including myself? No, didn’t think so.) So one contestant gets to choose
what they think is the correct answer. Then the other gets to choose from the
remaining five. Then the two contenders have a few seconds be first to buzz if they
think they have the unbeatable correct answer. So let’s say player 1 chooses
Nancy Wilkinson and buzzes. The answer is compared with each of the others, and
when it turns out to be unbeatable, that player wins the board. First to win 2
boards wins. Lets say player 2 buzzes instead having chosen Fred Housego. That
turns out to be beatable, and so the board goes to player 1.
If neither player buzzes, then both players answers are
played against each other. Nancy Wilkinson wins. 1 – 0 to player 1. Then player
1 picks again, and so does player 2. Player 1 picks Kevin, and player 2 picks
Chris. Chris is the earlier – so it’s one – all. So they pick between the last
two. Player 1 picks Nancy, player 2 has Gary, and so player 1 takes the board
2- 1.
Now, my issue with this is that there is a distinct
advantage to being picked to go first on the first board. Let us suppose that
we have two equally good players. Player 1 gets the unbeatable answer on the
first board, player 2 on the second, and player 1 wins by getting the 3rd
board. I’m not sure what the production team could do about this, but it is a
slight weakness in the format.
Well, a new era began this week for a show with a very
tried and tested format, Pointless. Richard Osman – I feel I should write ‘The
Great Richard Osman’ because he’s funny, smart, successful and on the back of
his excellent novels, rich. I should hate him for these very reasons, yet he’s
never come across to me as smug, and I’d like to think we’d get on if we ever met.
Which rather brings me to the point that anyone having to follow Richard as the
pointless friend on “Pointless” would surely be raising a poisoned chalice to
their lips. Don’t get me wrong, Pointless has a very good, strong format
anyway, but let’s be honest, it was the relationship between genuine old
friends Zander and Richard that cemented the popularity of the show. Yeah,
quite often their spontaneous banter didn’t quite hit the mark as it went
galloping up a comedic blind alley, but what the hell, that was all part of the
fun. So I think that it’s a smart move to have guest friends doing stints. It
was Sally Lindsay last week, and Alex Brooker, Lauren Laverne, Steven Mangan,
Konnie Huq and Ed Gamble are all lined up to have a go. I don’t know whether
they’re going to keep this ‘this week in dictionary corner’ format, or whether
they intend to judge audience reaction and then pick the best fit. As for who
this would be, it all depends on whether the producers take an ‘and now for
something completely different ‘ approach. If not, then although it’s not exactly
a like for like replacement, I can see the lad Mangan doing well, although I’ll
be watching Alex Brooker with interest. Sally Lindsay did a perfectly decent
job, for what it’s worth.
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