Watching Telly: Perfection

Thanks to Martyn of the parish for going to see Perfection being recorded, and being kind enough to tell us how it works and his thoughts:

• So, Perfection then. 30x45min editions for BBC TWO made by 12 Yard Productions, and will be the latest bombing raid sent over by the BBC to breach the Bristol Box Openers defences and likely to be aired according to our host “erumm, some time in the next 4 to 6 weeks”.
• The Basics
  Music – Only heard a couple of the in-game stings and round beds, which appear to be the usual Will Slater/Paul Farrer produced mix of tense pounding keyboards and rising strings.
• Graphics –  Not shown the opening tiltles, (and the show title graphic is not the same as presented on the SRO Audience shout-out) but the in-game studio and on-screen graphics, are mostly blue coloured rounded off oblong shaped boxes with white text, which looks like, for all you font fans is Arial Narrow Bold. Cat and Mouse probably do the computers, as theylost some of the graphics and there was a delay whilst the operator had to go find them.
• Host – Nick Knowles. Did what was expected. Kept the pace up, joked and bantered with the contestants (both in and out of recording mode) Paused for suspense in the right place, and took on audience advise for tricky name pronuncations. Pleasant without being chummy.
• Set – A real sum of parts from other 12 Yard shows. It’s basically a 3 walled rectangled box. The stage is laminated black with 6 small red/white coloured rectangle sidewalk style ‘grills’, and the whole thing is raised around 2ft off the ground. The left/right hand backwalls are colour backlit red (and black for the end game) and also have those swirly white lines, similar to the backwall at the
  start of In It To Win It. There are of course, varilites pointing beam upwards parked around the place.
• The LH side has a projection screen to display the questions to the player and for Nick to read off. The centre wall of the set is made up of a bigger projection screen showing what is going on in the ‘pod’ and is the way Nick and the player communicates with the others in the pod. Nick’s MC podium is a silver affair placed top right of the stage (it serves no purpose other than something for him to lean on) and the contestant is sat on a stool in front of him – or as we look at a head on shot – to his right. RH side wall has nothing to do and is blank.
• The pod, serves the same purpose as the same on Eggheads and Who Dares Wins. Almost identical backdrop to Eggheads question area plays in the pod, and the contenstants are shown sitting on stools, but with a wider 3/4 body shot than the tighter shot used in Eggheads.
• Audience sits in two long rows, in front of the raised stage, the camera run is behind the audience seating and the pod 4 waller is behind that.
• Right, on to game play. Every programme will feature two different games. Four players start in the pod, and by way of on-screen graphic, a player is chosen to come out of the pod and play the game on the main stage.
  I can’t see any rollover opportunities, but every player can get the opportunity to eventually play the game, unless they take an active part in the end game, where they could take a trip to the exit on their own accord/greed/bad tactics. A bit like Pointless, every game (not programme) the prize fund is not won £1,000 more is chucked into it. Yes, it is possible that we could get to the show 30 and there will be £62,000 waiting to be won.
• So, off we go. The game is made up of 3 rounds of 4 true or false questions/statements. They are a pleasing mix of the downright obvious, vauge or specific (e.g. ‘The currency of Ireland is the Euro’ or ‘Sean Connery once auditioned for the Royal Ballet’ or ‘Paco Raban is an Argentinian tennis player’).
• The 3 remaining players in the pod – who Nick by now has nicknamed ‘The Usual Suspects’ have the lights/sound turned off and are shown in shadow, but they can see the four questions, but not for the time being, the answers the player on stage has given.
• The player (now next to Nick on stage sitting on a rather uncomfortable stool) has 45 seconds to answer the four questions. Once the four answers are locked in, Nick goes back to the pod, the lights are turned on and the sound is restored and answers are displayed to them.
• By way of some gentle “so xx, which answer do you think he/she has got wrong” by Nick, the 3 in the pod chew over the form. The questions and player answers will be on screen at all times during this process. Once done (which doesn’t go on for to long) Nick then asks how many answers did the
  player got right – but not – which ones. A counter appears and a pleasing old skool ‘DING’ sounds for every right one. At this point the format can head off in two directions: If the player gets all four right – they have achieved ‘Perfection’ and the next bit is irrelevant.
• If they got one or more wrong, then the pod can acheive ‘Perfection’ by trying to identify which answer(s) they think are wrong. Debate and then answers from the pod are given. A duel contestant/pod side by side answer graphic appears along with the 4 questions, and then Nick goes through each one, adding reference points for each false answer.
• Getting Perfection means for the final game the player can really help themselves. In the final game they have to answer 6 True or False questions. The subjects of which are drawn for a displayed selection of 12 – again specific subjects (The Moon, Snooker – or vauge – Weddings, Science, etc.).
• If the player achieves Perfection in each round, they get to choose 2 subjects for the final game. If the pod gets perfection, they get to choose 2 subjects for the player to answer in the final game. If neither the player or the pod achieve Perfection that round is declared a stalemate. If this happens in either round 1/2, then whoever wins the next round chooses 4 subjects. If it’s stalemate in round 3, then a usual 12 Yard ‘penalty shoot-out’ of choosing 3 subjects each in alternate goes is employed.
• And here we are at the final round for the money. The Pod is plunged into to darkness and silence, and player (now standing up for no logical reason other
  than it’s the final round) answers the questions on the 6 subjects chosen. This time there is no time limit.
• Once over, The Pod brought back to life, and again Nick asks what they think as per previous rounds. This time though, the player is offered the chance to swap some of the answers they have just given and we go all Sell Me The Answer, because if a pod player knows the player has got one wrong,
  they can offer to come out of the pod, and help out and change one or more answers for an mutually agreed amount with the player of the prize fund for that game – but – here’s the twist, once out of the pod they can’t go back in for another game. So, dilemma time, come out and help hoping they are right to win some of the money along with the player, or sit tight in the pod, and hope the fund isn’t won, and stay to fight another show.
• Once that is done, Nick goes though the 6 questions and answers, and if one is wrong, end of game, nothing won. If all 6 are correct, all hell breaks loose with punching of the air and varilites blind everyone in the studio (I’m guessing here as it didn’t happen in my recording).
• There we have it – hope I didn’t lose anyone along the way – happy to respond/clear up any points in the comments box. Final thoughts – Perfection probably isn’t what I’d call the show as it’s fairly undemaning stuff, but,
  that said will offer a choice to Deal Or No Deal, and has the feel of BBC Two trying to find a new rotating stablemate for Pointless in the 4.30 slot. Not really sure though, that this is it. 7/10.

Thanks Martyn. I have to say I wasn’t all that enamoured from it from the premise description, but I like it a bit more now I know the mechanics of it, especially the end game.