Watching Telly: Cleverdicks

This is quite interesting, we have been sent a review of a show called Cleverdicks by someone who was in the audience, Dave Matthews. Thanks very much, Dave!

Programme is Cleverdicks and it’s a Splash Media production for Sky (both Splash Media and the Cleverdicks twitter account say it’s for Sky Atlantic, but the Sky people at the filming weren’t so sure – I’d be surprised if it was Sky Atlantic, as that doesn’t seem to fit that channel’s brand and I can see it starting on Sky One and moving to Challenge at some point).

The host is Ann Widdecombe – a formidable woman, who is clearly very clever and, unlike many hosts that feel parachuted in to a format, had no problems reading the questions.  Her main problem was that she lacked any chemistry with the contestants – there was no warmth, which was a bit of a shame, but not a huge surprise.

Sunday’s 6:30 recording was the first show proper (there were two ‘trial run’ recordings before this).  Attendance was quite low – about 40-50 in a 120-seater audience – made up of SRO and Sky Rewards customers.  We had squash, biscuits and portacabin toilets.  Filming was due to finish by 8:30 and we were actually out by 8:45 – not bad considering this was the first ‘proper’ show.

The set was quite nice.  Contestants stand behind one long podium, side-by-side and Ann is opposite.  There’s a big screen where the questions show up.  When there are no questions it’s occupied by a red silhouette of a ‘cocky’ man in a suit, which seems to be the show’s logo.  There are lots of neon boxes suspended from the ceiling behind the contestants that changed colour occasionally.  The podium has seven screens arranged in 3 Vs – for round 1, the contestants’ scores are on screens 1,3,5,7 and they move to the lower screens 2,4,6 for round 2, which felt quite nicely done.  The music was ‘sting-y’ and non-descript, but we didn’t hear much of it.

So onto the quiz itself.  For question difficulty, think Mastermind General Knowledge (or even UC: the Professionals).  Subjects were unashamedly high-brow.  Questions on pop music and TV were very scarce and I’d say there was a tilt away from science and towards literature.  This fitted the contestant profile (one of the contestants – Andrew Frazer, I think – was on a winning UC: the Professionals team, another (Shaun) wrote questions for Pointless and I’m sure the other two (Carolyn and Gareth) were familiar from other ‘difficult’ quizzes).

For round 1, each contestant had 2 minutes to answer questions based on an initial category and 5 clues – you earned 5 points for getting the answer from the most difficult, then down to 4, 3, 2, 1.  The contestant could pass the full question at any stage.  This worked quite well, but the question quality was a little variable.  For example, one category was ‘name the continent from these places’, which narrowed the choices somewhat and made the question easier.  Another was ‘name the Olympic sport from these competitors’ with the answer ‘lacrosse’.  Yes – you were expected to identify lacrosse from the names of 5 native American competitors from the 1904 Games.  Aside from this, it worked quite well, rewarding obscure knowledge and a small strategy point about when is best to pass.  Graphics were OK here too – each question appeared on the screen on a triangle crashing – complete with a nice ‘thunk’ sound – from the top of the screen (with a triangle on the left pointing at the question with the number of points on it).  The lowest scorer left at the end of the round.   Before the round, Ann chats to each contestant (and name, occupation, hobbies, chat, asks ‘why do you think you’re a cleverdick?’) and at the end, there’s a bit of extra information and chat about one of the questions.

For round 2, the same style of questions were asked but on the buzzers.  If you got one right, you have first chance to answer 3 related bonus questions – one point each (this time in blocks, but again dropping from the top of the screen with a ‘thunk’), available on the buzzer if wrong.  After 8-10 of these, round 2 finished and the lowest scorer left.

The second half of the quiz is somewhat inspired by…well, Tetris.  It’s head-to-head, questions asked alternately.  Get it wrong and a triangle falls (‘thunk’) on your half of the screen.  Get it right and you clear a triangle.  There’s a white bar slowly scrolling down the screen and the first one whose ‘tower of triangles’ hits the white line goes home.

The final round is the cash round – £1,000 for the winner, but prize money rolls over so £2,000 the next day if not won, etc.  Contestant stands in front of the screen and triangles with questions on them fall down.  Get the question correct to clear them, but you have two ‘drops’ that get rid of a question.  Questions continue to fall as time ticks down (and start to stack up as you get stuff wrong and start guessing).  Keep the stack below the white line at the top of the screen for 2 minutes and you win the jackpot.  This is probably the big let-down as the questions aren’t always guessable and if you don’t know three in 2 minutes, you just get stuck and it makes for a bit of an anti-climax and a minute of really bad telly.  If the show gets a second run, this needs a big re-think – in the meantime, just put the questions that have a range of options that most people will know first.  Interestingly, the winning contestant comes back again as a defending champion – a nice touch, but we are probably denied quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals which may be better.

One problem is the tone of the show – all the contestants stake their claim to be ‘cleverdicks’ at the start (which makes them seem a little big-headed when they’re clearly not).  As each contestant drops out, Ann tells them in a really corny way that they’re not cleverdicks.  It’s not nasty – it’s quite clear that the contestants are all very smart – but Ann’s goodbyes are a bit pathetic and she looks really uncomfortable saying them (e.g. ‘you’re not a cleverdick, but I would call on you to help me with a medium sudoku’).  I hope these comments end up on the cutting room floor.

All in all, not a ground breaking format.  Interestingly, it’s not trying to replicate The Chase or Eggheads (that almost need low brow questions to help contestants win).  It’s a difficult quiz for good quizzers, but I’m not sure that’s what Sky want (or need).  I struggle to see if it will be popular enough for a second series.  It’s not as captivating as Grand Slam or as play-along as 15-to-1 (I got half-a-dozen questions ahead of the contestants in the first few rounds), but I’ll be glad there will be a challenging quiz in the same vein as these.

Also, if anyone from the production team reads this, you really need to make sure your buzzers work and have a small screen out of shot so contestants know how long they have left to answer each question.  They had issues with both of these tonight and, although I think the right person won, some of the contestants probably felt a little hard done by because these weren’t really ironed out.

Cheers Dave. Would this possibly fit on Sky Arts? I’m also fascinated by the look of the show from the description. The head to head and endgame sound as though they feel like quite a clever idea, although I wouldn’t like to judge until I’ve seen it all in action.