During the last week I was lucky enough to meet a reader who has only been reading LAM regularly since my lost weekend ended in August 2021. I was a little taken aback by one of her observations, which was and I quote, “You don’t like new shows a lot, do you?”
I’ll be honest, I was a little taken aback by this
observation. I stammered out a self-justificatory response along the lines of –
well, I do try to find positives as well as negatives in each review, but then
I also feel that I have to be honest and say what I really feel, yuttah yuttah.
I’ll be honest, I was trying to justify myself, and didn’t have the presence of
mind to ask which, if any, new shows she felt I’d been unfair about, or if she’d
read any of the reviews of new shows in the last 14 years or so that the blog
has been running.
Still, it did make me question myself and although this can
sometimes be a painful process, it can also be a salutary one. In the last 12
months I’ve reviewed 9 new quiz shows. These are:-
The Tournament
Moneybags
Sitting on a Fortune
Moneyball
Quizness
Unlimited Win
Bridge of Lies
The 1 Percent Club
A One and Six Zeroes
I’ve read the reviews of each of these shows and . . .
okay, maybe she has a point. The only two of these 9 shows that I said that I
liked without reservations are “Bridge of Lies” and “Quizness”. To be fair, the
only ones that I really didn’t like at all were “The 1 Percent Club” “Unlimited
Win” and “A One and Six Zeroes”. As for “Moneybags”, “Sitting on a Fortune”, “Moneyball”
and “The Tournament” I said that each of
these had varying degrees of watchability for me.
Well, there we are. Like anyone else I have things that I
like, and things that I don’t like. Objectivity only takes me so far, and all
of this nonsense we’ve been sharing on the blog for the last fourteen years of
so has just been me talking about things the way that I see them. I’d be prepared to admit that
as I get older I probably get a lot more curmudgeonly and a lot less flexible
and prepared to try new things and to change my opinion.
I do accept that any TV quiz or game show takes an awful
lot of care and hard work to get onto the screen in the first place. So, for
example, even though I and the majority of the audience who actually watched it
didn’t like Robert Kilroy-Silk’s “Shafted” of years gone by, this doesn’t mean
that a lot of people didn’t work very hard on it, and didn’t try to make it the
best piece of television that they could make it. But sometimes shows don’t
work, and I find it interesting to try to examine why they don’t work, or,
thinking more subjectively, why I don’t like it. In the case of “Shafted”,
which has become a byword for unsuccessful quiz shows, the answer is relatively
simple. As the great Richard Osman once said, “Of course, absolutely nobody in the whole of Britain actually
likes Robert Kilroy-Silk.” Harsh, but a fairly succinct summing up of
what was wrong with the show.
TV is voracious in terms of
the material that it uses up. New shows in all genres come, and the majority of
them go. Trying to predict which new shows will click with an audience is at
best an inexact science. Like anyone else all I can do is call it as I see it.
As you know, this is all just my opinion. Feel free to disagree.
3 comments:
The 2010s decade was, in my view, really strong for amazing quiz formats. As you know, my personal favourite was The Code, but I also enjoyed Perfection, The Question Jury, The Link, Two Tribes, Decimate, Pressure Pad, Impossible and, of course, the revived version of Fifteen to One with Sandi Toksvig (which I appeared on). Amazing decade for quiz show formats... or it would be, were it not for the fact that none of these really great formats are still going, and most of them didn't last more than two series.
Of course, just because I myself enjoyed these programmes doesn't necessarily mean that they quite hit the spot as far as success goes. I'm not sure how success levels are judged with quiz shows, if it's to do with viewing figures or public reaction to the show or whatever, and no doubt they're under a lot of pressure from those above to hit on the next Weakest Link or Who Wants to Be A Millionaire... but sometimes I feel like these days that pressure manifests itself in cancelling something before it's quite reached its peak, often to replace them with things that maybe have less potential. I don't think there's anyone specific to blame for this, just an unfortunate byproduct of the way we consume entertainment nowadays, but it does feel like that's happening and it's a shame.
Of course, it could also be that it has always been like this and it's only within the last decade or so that I've noticed it - prior to 2010 I was a child, and as a child things seem to be around for longer so maybe I'm remembering older things as lasting longer than they actually did. I do think though that the correlation between number of years and number of episodes has changed a lot - Kaye Adams era People Versus (something I really liked as a kid, and still do with old episodes on YouTube) was actually only on for a year, but in that time they made more than 100 episodes of it... so certainly, the run may have been relatively short but they made sure to get the most out of it in the time they had, and even someone such as myself who liked it can concede that it had run its course by the time it was axed. You'd never get a new format running to that number of episodes in that timespan nowadays.
I myself haven't tried any of the programmes you reference, apart from The Tournament, which I watched the first minute of and was immediately put off by the way the contestants introduced themselves. (The most recent new format I got quite into was Head Hunters with Rob Beckett, which was actually a really good show, with a good host, likeable contestants and difficult questions... I'm not sure if the COVID-pandemic happening immediately after it was the cause of this, but it didn't even get as much as a Series 2 - in my view undeservedly, but that's just personal opinion.)
Certainly, every piece of television has a lot of very talented people working on it, and I presume they're working to the best of their energy on everything. But the fact remains that most of their job roles are not going to make a great deal of difference to whether or not it's a good show. One show from the past decade that I HATED was The Boss - that show was such a stimulus overload that it caused me to actively get anxiety watching it; I had to go on a long walk to clear my head after my one and only episode and I could never bring myself to watch again, not even when a close friend was on it. The one thing I did like about it was Susan Calman, who I thought was a great host... but the host is only as good as the show, and she couldn't save it for me. I'm sure the same is true of most of the team members... clearly, there was something in the initial concept/design that was never going to work for me, no matter how well each person on the team did their jobs after that point.
Hi George,
I often come back to the comment that the great William Goldman made in his excellent "Adventures in the Screen Trade" - 'no one knows anything'. Yes, he was making the point that nobody has a definitive answer to the question - why does one movie work, and another with equally good cast, script, direction, effects etc. fail, but it works as well for why some quiz shows are a success and others aren't. I also accept that what I like in a quiz - typified by quizzy Mondays where three of my favourites air back to back - Mastermind, OC and UC - what I like in a quiz isn't necessarily what the majority of quiz watchers likes. It isn't necessarily about the quiz elements of a quiz that give it longevity. Case in point - Tipping Point. When it first aired I gave it a stinking review. As a quiz I thought it was very poor. In fact I still do - but that's missing the point completely. Because it isn't JUST a quiz. During the first lockdown I got into the habit of watching it every weekday afternoon with my grandson Ollie. He loved it, and I have to say that while I still thought a lot of the questions weren't worth asking, I did enjoy watching the show. Which is odd when you think about it, because while I quite like playing a Penny Falls arcade machine, you wouldn't catch me wanting to watch someone else playing one.
You make an interesting point about the choice of host as well. It's ironic I'm writing this today. As quite a few posts on this very blog testify, I am not a fan of Davina McCall. I can willingly accept that she is a very successful broadcaster with a massive body of work of many different genres, and that she has staying power. But there is just something there that I don't like. I sat down to paint yesterday morning and switched the radio on to radio 2 - I rather like Claudia Winkelman. Well, 'Claud' wasn't presenting her own show yesterday. Sitting in was none other than Davina McCall, and one of her special guests was Sara Cox, another presenter who is on my 'not watching it if she's presenting it list'. All of which is probably grossly unfair to both ladies, but you can't help feeling how you feel. It would be lovely if we could all like everyone else, but human nature doesn't seem to work like that, I'm afraid. Getting to the point, hosting a quiz show is a skill which we probably don't appreciate enough. Providing the right atmosphere, and not giving out an aura of 'look at me, I'm the star and this is all about me' can't be easy. I was amazed on my first ever show, the live 'Come and Have A Go If You Think You're Smart Enough' o see the professionalism with which Nicky Campbell dealt with the constant squawking in his ear from the Director - clear during the dress rehearsal.
I agree with you about Nicky Campbell - I've been on TV with him twice (been in the audience for Sunday morning's The Big Questions a few times) and both times he really struck me strongly as someone who is highly charismatic, professional and interesting. Weirdly he doesn't particularly strike me in that way when I watch him on TV, but in person he very much does.
I think host choice is really important, but I also think it's got to a point where they're a bit bigger than the show much of the time. I remember when I was on Fifteen to One, they normally filmed three episodes in a day but they weren't doing that on the days I was there because of Sandi Toksvig's other commitments. And I thought, 'Why don't they have a stand-in host then? Why is the entire production schedule dictated by one person like that? It can't be very efficient with how much this all must cost.' It's not Sandi's fault, or indeed the fault of any host - but it could be good to have the odd guest host on things. I was quite into BrainTeaser when I was a kid (don't judge me!) and I liked the regular rotation of hosts, which being live was unavoidable. It was quite fun to settle into an episode not being quite sure who you were going to get, and thinking, 'Goody!' if it was your favourite one. Having more stand-in hosts would also make it easier to become a TV host, which seems to be increasingly difficult - no one is known JUST for presenting a quiz show these days, are they? They're always a celebrity in some other respect first. I suppose they think that's what audiences go for - but new aspiring hosts could start out as stand-ins, and then it would give them some experience to potentially get a full-time gig in the future.
I always think (as a professional writer) that in a story the characters are more important than the plot. You can have the best plot in the world, but if you don't care about who it's happening to it's not going to work for you. I largely feel the same about quiz shows - it's the contestants who are the stars of the show, they're the people we're watching it for and grow to care about. I wouldn't enjoy a show like Mastermind or University Challenge if each episode was a separate contest... the appeal comes in large part because you grow to care about the contestants over an extended period of time. But having said that, if it's a quiz the game should be fundamentally about the questions. I don't enjoy Tipping Point for exactly that reason.
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