Yes, gentle reader, it’s that time of the year again, when we at LAM Towers (me) hand out the gongs popularly known as the LAMMYs. As is traditional we begin with the ever popular award for the best new quiz show of the year. Here are the shows that I reviewed this year :-
New shows 2023
Puzzling
007: Road to a Million
Alan Carr’s Picture Slam
The Finish Line
Cheat
In With A Shout
Working from the bottom upwards – April saw the debut of In With A Shout. Now we all know that one of the great pleasures of watching a
quiz show is shouting out the answers. So why not get the contestants to the
show to do just that? Sorry, but it left me cold.
In the same month Netflix gave us Cheat. I like Ellie
Taylor and don’t dislike the scion of royalty, Danny Dyer. But the whole
cheating and calling out the cheats dynamic just didn’t work for me and I
thought Ellie was under used.
In September the humble picture quiz round proved the inspiration
or Alan Carr’s Picture Slam. I’m not a fan of picture rounds, and Alan C’s
particular form of hysteria did nothing for me either.
Other streaming services than Netlix are available and one
of them, Amazon Prime gave us 007: Road to a Million. This was an unusual
hybrid between a challenge based show like, say, Survivor, and a straight quiz.
It was not without interest, but I found each edition too long for the amount
of content it actually provided.
So all of this leaves us with a shortlist of two, and the
awards committee (me) had a real dilemma. One of the two shortlisted shows was
a pure quiz, with a gimmick, which was a little easier than I would have liked
but was relatively undemanding and enjoyable viewing in the afternoon slot. The other was absorbing,
very challenging, had great play at home potential, but was not a pure quiz. The
former, the Finish Line is a perfectly good afternoon quiz – better than the Tournament,
but not as good as last year’s LAMMY winner Bridge of Lies. My opinion, feel
free to disagree. But the 2023 Best New Show goes to (drum roll)
Puzzling
It’s difficult to describe the show without mentioning some
similarities to Only Connect. Well, if you’re going to take inspiration from an
existing show, it makes sense to take it from a good ‘un. Cogratulatios to Lucy Worsley and all involved.
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