Wednesday, 8pm,
Dave
A game in the loosest sense, but if there’s a show that’s likely to be of interest to genre fans it’s likely to be this one.
For episode one Andrew Maxwell and Mark Watson go up against Dara in solving Marcus du Sautoy’s dastardly maths challenges. But is it easier to find answers in a comedy practical way or by using maths (it’s usually maths)?
Enjoyed the first series, although we’re hoping the atmosphere for series two is a bit lighter (or at least a little bit wackier like the Japanese show its based on), the first series had good content but felt a little bit too much like being done in a library.
OC series 7 has been bumped to 20th May. Sorry, don’t know why.
Apparently the next WWTBAM:TPP has a new app that you can use to playalong live to it. And does it have Android support? Does it buggery.
Can someone show app makers this graph, please?
http://waracle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Global-Mobile-Platform-Market-Share.png
Apparently it was another show that got bumped. OC is still on for the 13th (aka International Rachel Stevens Day). Apologies for the confusion.
5MTAF just had about 5 minutes of the most uncomfortable TV I’ve seen in a while….
Uh-oh, this could get interesting.
Apparently, the question was using the data from 2010. However, if they used the latest official information available at the time of recording, the finalised 2011 figures, then the clock would have stopped at £41,500 because one of her guesses – “Hong Kong” – was at #10 in the 2011 list.
Pretty poor showing if that’s the case. Even Wikipedia had the 2011 figures so, without any of the usual Osman/Pointless-type provisos, you’d expect that this would be the data set to use.
I hope they get their money without the need for a court case.
A question like that needs to be very specific as to where the information is coming from or based on- Pointless and Who Dares Wins are very careful about that, as well as any restrictions to possible answers…
One of the basic rules of asking list-based or list-like questions; make sure the information is accurate & the latest information that could’ve been retrieved is used!
For the record, this question (though for a different reason) was disputed and eventually the couple won some money out of it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2326682/Final-answer-Quiz-couple-win-26k-Channel-4-admits-bungled-answers.html
School of Hard Sums: I enjoyed this a lot. Starts off as a reimagining of Fun and Games now, more emphasis on props and logic puzzles than I remember (albeit old chustnut with the hat one). Still think the studio feels a bit big and empty, and despite now having 12 mathmos as a sort of audience they didn’t really do anything with them. Still, though.
This show needs to decide if it’s got a studio audience or not, it seems like they dub laughter and applause on for some bits and then forget for the other bits.
I still enjoy it, anyway. I think it sums up all that’s hopeless about Channel Four that they’ve commissioned panel shows in the last twelve months on TV, adverts and the past, and the much-maligned Dave have commissioned one on maths.
+1 to both parts of this.
A load of gameshows have been commissioned by France 2 for the summer:
– They’re bringing back Le 4e duel for a run at weekends, likely to be with a different host to the previous couple who’ve fronted it.
– In the week, there’ll be two new shows – one of them a format which was kicking around a couple of years ago but never made it to air – ‘Avec ou sans joker’ – straight quiz, player decide if they want to answer questions unaided or with help, except they don’t know what the help will be. Host TBC.
– It’ll be followed in the access slot to the 8pm news by The Cube – finally coming to France after TF1 passed on it – hosted by Nagui and his production company.
Just looked up the French wiki entry for ‘Le 4e duel’, it says that France 2 is screening a septet of contenders to front that show. And that the format is reworked yet again.
I suspect ‘Avec ou sans Joker’ bears resemblances to ‘Sell Me The Answer’ (Sky1).
If so, France 2 will be the third channel to commission this format after SF1 (the Swiss-German channel picked it up in the Winter of 2010 and achieved solid ratings for 2.5 years, but Secret Fortune and The Voice vacate its spot on Wednesdays right after the 8pm news).
I’m back, everyone. 🙂
Almost three months on from my father’s untimely departure, and me and my mother have just about adjusted to life without his physical presence.
I have still been following the game show world in that time, though. I’ve watched Conor Travers become the greatest Countdown contestant ever, and glanced at the new Catchphrase without taking a tremendous liking to it.
And, of course, I’ve watched the latter stages of University Challenge.
As one may or may not already know, I haven’t enjoyed this series a lot – certainly not as much as any of the others since the blue-and-purple set was adopted. I have ranted about there being too many matches that have been too low-scoring or too one-sided for my liking (or even both), and I have also expressed displeasure at the non-appearances of Edinburgh and the 1992 universities.
And I also feel that only a few of the teams have been really memorable. Last series, of course, all eight teams that made the quarter-finals were fun to watch in some way, not least of all Jamie Karran’s UCL. The London university was fun again this series, especially Tom Tyszczuk-Smith and *that* answer which prompted many Twitter users to call Paxo a [willy] – but the Bangor, New Oxford and King’s Cambridge teams were pretty much the only other ones that made any sort of a lasting impression. Even the Manchester team wasn’t the most exciting in the world, despite the manner of their win over Lincoln Oxford.
That, of course, is said without any disrespect intended towards them – or, indeed, any of the other teams that took part in the series. Not even Bristol and Wadham Oxford, despite the nature of their first-round match.
As for the latter stages of the series, sadly there were only two really good matches – UCL v Bangor, and the all-Cambridge clash between King’s and Pembroke. The former, of course, featured the aforementioned incident with Tyszczuk-Smith, while the latter was low-scoring but in a good way, due to Pembroke’s huge comeback at the end.
Other matches, like Manchester v Imperial and New v St George’s London, were fairly good, but not quite good enough to last in the memory. And, unfortunately, there was another match that was both low-scoring and one-sided in not-good ways, that being Bangor’s 195-70 win over King’s.
And one can’t really say that the final lived up to expectations. It wasn’t a bad final by any means – and one certainly couldn’t help but smile at the bonuses that name-checked Roger Tilling – but the fact is that Manchester held a comfortable lead almost throughout, and never looked worried.
As if to top things off, the scoring statistics from the series reveal that UCL’s 260 against Exeter in the first round is the lowest series-high score of the Paxman Era (just 10 more than Clare Cambridge’s losing score against Manchester in the last series! 😯 ), and that there were just 16 scores of 200 or more, 13 of those coming before the quarter-finals…
I can only think of one thing to blame for all this, and that’s the recession.
Paxo has, as always, taken every opportunity to sneer at a bad answer (no matter how far he’s gone when doing so), while the questions have continued to interest and occasionally amuse. But one has to be fair – the show really can’t rely entirely on these two things…
I’ll finish by offering my belated congratulations to Manchester (no grudges, honestly!) for retaining their title and matching Magdalen Oxford’s four series wins, and by saying that I hope the next series – the 20th of the Paxman Era – is considerably better.
Feel free to think that I’m being boring, grumpy and perhaps even a little bitter, and to disagree with any of the above remarks. I know a rant isn’t a good way to mark a return to this site, and I apologise for this rant. It’s just that I had it on my chest, and I simply wanted to get it off. 🙂