Weekdays, 3pm,
ITV1
As if Tenable and Lingo wasn’t enough, ITV selfishly look for a third successful show to add to the 3pm rotation with R¿dd?culous.
Good Morning Britain‘s Ranvir Singh is joined by Riddlemaster Henry Lewis (better known, for now, for The Goes Wrong Show) as three teams of two answer general knowledge questions to be in with a chance to tackle one of Henry’s riddles, the most successful team will get the chance to take on Henry’s Riddle Run at the end of the show for moderate-to-big cash prizes.
Riddles feel like an untapped idea for a quiz show really, and I suspect people are going to either take to them or get annoyed extremely quickly. I’ve not got much idea as to the sort of form they might take, but this interview with Ranvir suggests that many are going to be visual and rebus-like, and basically everyone likes Catchphrase don’t they. Apparently Paul Farrer uses THREE different types of harpsichord on the soundtrack.
Let us know what you think in the comments.
First episode broadcast, so here’s the format run-down.
3 pairs answer general knowledge questions and riddles to bank as much money as they can.
In Round 1, the questions are worth £50 each and a correct riddle is worth £100. The teams answer the questions until one of them reaches 3 correct answers, which unlocks a riddle from Henry. If a team answers a question wrong, it’s thrown over to the other teams for a steal and all the questions are on a theme, e.g. the answers all began with the letter E. For the riddles, a team can ask for a clue to make it easier, but this can only be used by each team once across the whole show. After 4 riddles have been asked, the lowest-scoring team is eliminated and the viewers are given a riddle to solve over the break.
In Round 2, the questions are worth £100 each and a correct riddle is worth £250. This time, there are 3 categories on the board for the riddles (the ones today being Animals, Letters and Numbers) and are visual puzzles, only one of the pair can answer it and if the riddle is answered incorrectly, it’s thrown over to the other pair for half the money.
In Round 3, the questions are worth £150 each and a correct riddle is worth £500. After 3 riddles have been asked, the lowest-scoring team is eliminated, allowing the winning pair to progress to the Final. In the Final, the winning pair has 60 seconds to answer 6 riddles to win their bank. These were introduced as Rebuses, but they’re actually more like Dingbats, consisting of a single image to relay a phrase instead of a series of images making up parts of the words like a Rebus would. If a team manages to answer 6 in 60 seconds, they can, if they wish, take on a final riddle with 20 seconds of thinking time in a double or nothing gamble.
Just starting it. The questions are very slow and boring and as of round 1 the riddles are few and far between. I feel like they’re going to run into issues of compliance with the riddles as there probably will be a few answers that no verifier will have thought of but a contestant does and are ultimately equally correct. Think they just about got lucky with ‘snowflake’ not quite being the correct answer to the first riddle for example.
Ranvir is quite slick yet her chat is kind of… nothing, if that makes sense? Her “well dones” are a bit annoying.
The sound effects are very ‘quiz show that doesn’t last more than one series’ aren’t they?
I should add I can’t watch this until this evening so I will be looking forward to reading your comments more thoroughly in due course.
It was ‘OK’ but not something I would be rushing to tune into every day, they’ve basically mashed up Pointless, The 1% Club and even Catchphrase then shoved in generic general knowledge rounds to pad out the hour
#hoststaringdownatagoldipadmostoftheshow was pretty annoying compared to Henry who looked a lot more ‘natural’
Also I can’t see too many contestants having a crack at the BIG GAMBLE RIDDLE, I don’t think it was made clear if they could still use their clue should they have kept it up until that point
As a general comment I kind of feel like any quiz show that inherently ‘feels’ like a daytime quiz is kind of doomed to fail these days. The fonts, colours, sound effects and music on this just feel so very daytime whereas ITV’s other daily quizzes tend to feel like they’ve could fairly easily also air in primetime which I think adds something that makes them more watchable. I just don’t know if there’s much of audience anymore for quizzes that feel this… unspecial?!
Not too bad at all really – bit of a low rent 1% Club really. Only point I’d criticise format wise is in round 2 for the picture clues having just one of each pair answer and giving them a full 60 seconds to do so – a full minute of people thinking to themselves isn’t the best use of airtime.
Not sure it needed the additional gamble round either.
Another entry in the “pleasant 30-minute quiz that’s been dragged out to a full hour” genre, innit. Can’t really point at anything stupendously wrong except that it really doesn’t have the variety to keep attention. Theme’s pretty nice but otherwise visually and aurally it’s a bit blah.
It felt like a combination of other shows smashed together and linked loosely with riddles
Mmm, not *really* feeling it to be honest. I’m down with the riddles – in the main – but the quiz element is irritatingly paced, not quite quickfire, a bit like The Tournament.
Ranvir is clearly lovely, Henry doesn’t seem quite comfortable and there’s not a great deal of chemistry between the two which feels like an absolutely crucial thing for daytimes. I think the Riddlemaster needs to be believable, and whilst I think he grew into it, for possibly the first time in my life I spent quite a lot of time thinking “I wish they had Gyles Brandreth”. I think it’s quite a brave choice, but on the basis of the first episode (which according to ITV Hub is actually episode nine) I’m not sure it’s quite paid off.
I too am intrigued by the possibility of other answers with the riddles, I came up with ‘pin’ for the “I’m three letters, I do what I am and I am what I do and whatever” one and I’ve got no idea whether it would have been acceptable or not. I noticed David B and Quiz Quiz Quiz were amongst the riddle writers, a veritable Who’s Who right there. The excitement of rebus-style riddles in the endgame immediately tempered when it turned out to just be Dingbats and not Concentration. And if nobody’s gambling in episode one, I do wonder how many are going to go for it throughout.
It doesn’t feel like a “day off treat” like other shows have felt like to be honest, I can’t say I’m desperate to seek future episodes out, in a competitive slot you’ve got to be a bit better than “if I’m in and it’s on.”
down to 660k yesterday…
Ouch. That’s considerably lower than Tenable.
For reference, I was told ep one did 0.9m, which would have been pretty good for the slot if it held, but 660k is a good 10-15% down on Tenable.
I quite like Henry Lewis (The Goes Wrong Show was one of the revelations of BBC comedy in the last few years) so was hoping this would be good, but unfortunately, it’s not grabbing my attention. Not helped by the fact that it feels incredibly similar to Lingo and various other shows in terms of set up.
Suggestion is 950k yesterday.
This is doing alright, over a million twice a week, probably not far off the other days. would probably come back on those numbers given other shows in the slot.
Some real lowering of the prize budget for series two, with many of the cash amounts reduced thus:
Round 1 General Knowledge Questions are now only worth £25 each (halved from £50). Riddles stay the same.
Round 2 GKQ £50 each (also halved), and the riddles are now £200 (down £50).
Round 3 GKQ £100 each (down £50), riddles £300 (down £200).
I notice they’ve also dropped the theming element of the question rounds and just made them straight General Knowledge.