should I create a 'quiz show' tag?
Sep. 22nd, 2013 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI watched Celebrity Fifteen to One – I wonder if they saw this as a trial run at bringing the show (or a celebrity version) back. They did go to the bother of a snazzy set after all. I enjoyed watching the show back in the day, so I had to watch it. Although, because I was in the middle of reading a fic on Friday, I watched it on 4OD.
The opening was daft, but Madge from Neighbours playing Adam Hills’s mum made it brilliant. There was a bit of tension because he’s Australian and some of the questions were culture-specific. He didn’t have the same gravitas as William G. Robinson – though he’s sharp as a tack, my default adjective for Hills as a host is genial. But it’s a different beast of a show – questions on a tablet, not cards these days!
The format was the same, and the first round was a bonding experience, with all of the celebs clearly nervous. I was aghast that all the contestants who dropped out at this point were women. The second round gets tactical and nasty, and there was still quite a lot of audience participation. Fern Britton got a lot of political questions, Jonathan Ross didn’t get quite enough pop culture questions.
Unexpectedly, we were left with Alex Brooker (but he had learned to think about the questions before answering after the first disaster), Fern (whose memory for facts and trivia is better than it is for dance steps) and Jo Brand (actually, not that unexpected). She was excellent in the final run of questions – and one was pleased every time there was a medical question.
It was a reminder of how good a format this show was, and format is king in quiz shows (e.g. I remember reading that Pointless works so well, apart from Alexander and Richard’s rapport and attitude, because it rewards general knowledge and obscure stuff). I did miss what I always associated with the original show – questions about English counties. I remember them because I nearly always got them wrong. My default answer was Kent. I think that’s why Jonathan said ‘Yorkshire’ when they were looking for the city, he was expecting it to be a question about a county. Or, of course, he didn’t think about the question.
Which is to say, I wouldn’t mind it coming back, celebrity version or no.
The opening was daft, but Madge from Neighbours playing Adam Hills’s mum made it brilliant. There was a bit of tension because he’s Australian and some of the questions were culture-specific. He didn’t have the same gravitas as William G. Robinson – though he’s sharp as a tack, my default adjective for Hills as a host is genial. But it’s a different beast of a show – questions on a tablet, not cards these days!
The format was the same, and the first round was a bonding experience, with all of the celebs clearly nervous. I was aghast that all the contestants who dropped out at this point were women. The second round gets tactical and nasty, and there was still quite a lot of audience participation. Fern Britton got a lot of political questions, Jonathan Ross didn’t get quite enough pop culture questions.
Unexpectedly, we were left with Alex Brooker (but he had learned to think about the questions before answering after the first disaster), Fern (whose memory for facts and trivia is better than it is for dance steps) and Jo Brand (actually, not that unexpected). She was excellent in the final run of questions – and one was pleased every time there was a medical question.
It was a reminder of how good a format this show was, and format is king in quiz shows (e.g. I remember reading that Pointless works so well, apart from Alexander and Richard’s rapport and attitude, because it rewards general knowledge and obscure stuff). I did miss what I always associated with the original show – questions about English counties. I remember them because I nearly always got them wrong. My default answer was Kent. I think that’s why Jonathan said ‘Yorkshire’ when they were looking for the city, he was expecting it to be a question about a county. Or, of course, he didn’t think about the question.
Which is to say, I wouldn’t mind it coming back, celebrity version or no.
