Thursday, 10pm,
Quest (Freeview 37) or online (live or catch-up)
Well this is a bit of an oddity and no mistake, Al Murray (the person, not the character) in a makeshift pub hosting a pub quiz with Shaun Williamson, slowly but surely losing his Barry From EastEnders moniker after about twenty years, playing the barman whereas seemingly Al Murray, the pub landlord character, is nowhere to be seen. Maybe it’s for the best, Fact Hunt and Compete For The Meat didn’t do great things after all.
Two proper pub quiz teams, along with a celebrity team captain, compete in a quiz to win a golden tankard and cash prize. Al asks the questions, Shaun is the Pointless Friend. Hopefully comedy will ensue (it was pitched as comedy I believe), but it sounds like the quizzing element will be played fairly straight.
It’s certainly a unusual commission for Quest, which is Discovery’s Freeview arm. Let us know what you think in the comments.
I used to quite like Fact Hunt, I know there was nothing much to it but it made for amiable entertainment and was suitably cheap and cheerful. Although I mostly liked it for getting that name on ITV.
Scott Mills had been doing The Big Fact Hunt on Radio 1 drive for a year or two before Al got to ITV. Always thought it was a bit odd until the penny dropped in my naive mind
Kind of reminds me of Quiz Night, fronted by Madeley, Robbins and, um, Stuart Hall. Quite jolly but the pacing is a bit pedestrian and seems unsure whether it’s for ‘serious’ quizzers or fans of ITV2 fare. Clear effort in delivering fun questions though!
I enjoyed this, genuinely.
For a jovial comedy quiz, hitting both notes of “it is ok to know nerdy things” and “it’s ok to poke fun that you know nerdy things” is rare. At the core, it is a pub quiz, and it is expected that the questions will be answered properly. But the framing around it is pleasant.
The celebrity guests were a positive. The pacing was fine, the rounds were varied.
I can’t tell if every week would be like this, but it is in the “yes, more like this please”.