Weekdays, 2:30pm,
BBC One
Fern Britton ably assisted by an antiques expert leads three teams in a general knowledge quiz, doing well allows them to add antiques to their collections, each presumably worth differing amounts and presumably the team with the biggest value collection will win something.
Antiques not really my thing (although I will watch a bit of Bargain Hunt) but there’s no doubt the subject is popular on BBC daytime, and people like quizzes so in theory this should fill the afternoon slot quite nciely.
It’s very interesting to see that the early press described it as being “a different expert each week”, yet now it’s a different expert allocated to each weekday.
If they’ve filmed 25 episodes, this would be pretty easy to decide afterwards.
Enjoyable little show, not particularly innovative in any way, but the antique picking game is fun enough and Fern Britton is always a safe pair of hands.
Not too bad- here’s the jist:
-3 teams play, one is a “picker” and one is a “quizzer”
-They are shown 16 items which they can peruse. One of the items is worthless, one of the items is worth £2,500, and the others are in between (a couple of them are worth four figures, a couple are worth less than a hundred, and the others are in the middle). The items ranged from a prop from a Bond movie, to some lace, to planters, etc.
-In round 1 there are 10 questions on the buzzer. If the quizzer is right, they can pick an item to add to their collection. (The items are shown on a 4×4 grid). If they’re wrong, they’re out of the next question.
-after this round they can ask the expert for info on one of the items.
-In round 2, each quizzer gets one question to try and take an item still left on the board. There are 8 categories- one on each row and one on each column, and they can pick a question on either the row or column category the item is in.
-In round 3, they get one question again; they can either try and take an item still on the board or try to take an item from their opponents; if they try to steal the opponent who controls the item chooses any of the 8 categories for them to answer.
-After this, the team with the least valuable collection is out; their items (and any items still on the board) are then taken out of the game; their values are revealed.
-before round 4, the teams get a chance to ask about another of their items.
-in round 4, the quizzers alternate giving items in a category. If they can’t answer, give a wrong answer, or repeat an answer, their opponents steal an item in their collection.
-after three categories, the team with the most valuable collection wins; the value of the losing teams items are revealed.
-The winning team then has to pick one of their items. Items they rejected have their values revealed, and they then find out the value of the item they kept, winning the cash equivalent.
-however after they know the value of the item they picked, they are then shown and told about a mystery 17th item. They then have the option of keeping what they have or giving it back for the value of the 17th item- which can be worth a lot more or a lot less.
There’s one aspect of that that I’m wondering may not quite be accurate… but discussing it further would require spoiler warnings for the first episode! Viewing more episodes would clear it up.
Spoil away.
The bit I was uncertain was whether the price tag for the final item the players choose would actually be revealed in normal play, or if it just happened to be revealed here because it was trivially deducible; in other words, would the gamble usually be between two unknown quantities, rather than one known and one unknown.
Ah, I see. Actually not an unreasonable question.
For the benefit of those who haven’t watched the show yet, this question was answered in the second episode onwards: The value of BOTH items involved in the gamble are not known or revealed until the decision has been made (though obviously as already seen, this falls down if the item is either the Top Lot or the Worthless Lot, which are both known values).
As a further point of clarification, it should be noted that per the show’s own parlance, the single question mentioned by David as “Round 3” is actually considered to be the end of Round 2; and David’s description of “Round 4” is actually the third round.
As a game I really liked this, not complex especially but with enough intrigue to keep you on your toes throughout (although the list round is probably the low point – no need to think up questions just nick them from the Pointless board game). You could make a good old-skool board game adaptation of it.
As a show it felt a bit lifeless – that’s a big old studio with a big old not much happening in the middle of it and it takes a long time to finally get going. I love Fern usually (big up the Fern and Fred TVS Golden Age Massiv) but she’s not *quite* a natural fit for this show I don’t think – seemed a bit unconvincing with all the procedure when she needed to be a bit more authoritative and I think she’d be better with something a bit looser to work with, as she has in the past.
Was a bit confused about the addition of Charlie Ross reading out clues in the style of an Argos catalogue description but came to respect his ability to describe and build up to a price reveal. I don’t know who the other experts on board are.
Great to hear the theme from Lose a Million again etc etc.
Surprisingly OK.
Speaking of Lose a Million, I stumbled upon a Greek version of the show of all things:
https://youtu.be/5rIafN7I6es
Wowsers, nice find!
I’ve discovered the intro to it in Dutch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8kQK6BWxYc
It’s odd how much English is in here!
That wins all the style points and could be worth emulating today by, perhaps, a Dick and a Dom – thank you for finding and for sharing.
So what is the (presumably) opposite of a penguin?
According to QI, a flying fish.
When fern asked questions on British birds, one team replied crow, to which fern replied she couldn’t accept as the answer had to be more specific ,for example carrion crow.yet previously the other team replied pigeon, why didn’t they have to be more specific as there are several types of pigeon.?..
BBC1 game shows are notorious for such inconsistency, the worst is in The Link.
Half decent format, good idea using familiar ‘characters’ from BH. However as with BH after watching an episode in full subsequent episodes I just skipped to the last 10 minutes to see how the winning team went on with their item picks.
Could do with cutting from 45 minutes to 30 minutes, there is a lot of filler.
So today’s episode revealed an interesting little wrinkle in the rules: During the final Round 2 Question, when the teams are offered the option to steal an item rather than take from the board, they may not steal from a team that has just one item. This rule does not, however, apply in Round 3, which is entirely stealing (which opens up the interesting possibility of a team entering Round 3 with 1 or 2 items and losing the round three times, thereby giving up more items than they have…)
It was also revealed in a recent episode (won’t say which, to avoid spoilers), that the mystery item can top even the value of the Top Item and therefore an episode may actually have a potential jackpot above £2,500…
I think that was implied in the very first episode to be fair, otherwise there’s no point in the mystery lot at all if they’ve got the Top Lot. Amusingly there’s no point in not going for it if you have the worthless lot.
£2,500 won by the contestants every day this week so far. The mystery lot seems to have a cap of £3,000
Bit of a pity – to make it a meaningful test, you’d think they’d have the occasional £5-10k prize in there. Maybe they yet will.
I do wonder if the Mystery Lot might be A Twist Too Far really.
It feels a bit Take Your Pick in a game that doesn’t really fit that.
I am currently watching For What It’s Worth with my brain damaged partner – always looking for a bit of intelligent entertainment… sweet Jesus this is not it! Aforementioned partner writhed in agony at the loathsome condescension and insincerity of the two presenters which completely obscured any interest or value in the programme. I really thought no one could top Fern Britten in the talking down stakes but in she met her match in today,s presenter. In our collective experience this was rock bottom
As this is coming back, I can’t help but feel that you’d be able to extract a lot more tension from your end game if your top and bottom prizes weren’t guaranteed to be £2,500 and £0 respectively.
If you just said that the top lot is something “worth over £2,000” you could have multiple items worth over £2,000 and leave contestants wondering whether to swap or not, as it is as soon as you know you’re £2,500 to the good you’re just not going to swap.
As I understand it, there are several tweaks to the format this time round. We will wait an see if your suggestion, which makes very good sense, is one of them!
Great stuff, I will look forward to my fee.
I’m afraid not even if you were part of the production team…you know how it works!