Thursdays, 8:30pm,
BBC4
New series of highbrow(ish) hexagonal wordsearch quiz fun with Fiona Bruce.
The first series we respected, and it certainly had its fans, but try as we might we couldn’t really get into it – it’s a fun idea but how much you like it tends to depend largely on Can You Do The Thing? which I can’t really.
There is a suggestion they’ve made it a bit friendlier this time round, we shall see. Let us know what you think in the comments.
For anyone who can get into it, the entire first series is currently available on YouTube. My moan with Fiona in the first series was there was very little variety to what she said (most if not every episode began with exactly the same sentence) and she just isn’t as interesting as Victoria.
As someone who was on the first series, Fiona was very engaging and enthused about the format – but only off-camera. I’m hoping that side of her makes it onto the screen this time.
In fact, that could really be said for the whole show: it was a lot of fun to play in the studio, but that excitement didn’t make it onto the screen. It has potential if the producers figure out how to put it across well, and I’ll be interested to see what they’ve changed for this series.
Unlike the first series, the Hive will be a lot bigger on-screen and will stay there the majority of the time, making it much easier to playalong with. Hopefully this will help give people a bit more time to Do The Thing.
Also a funny quirk occurred to me, since the first episode is “Cruciverbalists v Ortographobes”: Both team names always have to add up to less than 37 letters so they can do the “team names in a hive” piece at the beginning of an episode. I do wonder if they have a contingency plan incase the Cruciverbalists go against the Electroencephalographers at some point.
Here’s a clip from tonight suggesting they have indeed gone big on the graphic.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0474gn4
On one of the teams tonight is a good friend of mine and possibly to some other Bar patrons, James Robinson. You might have seen him on Eggheads not long back, when his team managed to knock all 4 Eggheads out, but couldn’t quite snatch the jackpot, so give him and his team all your support 🙂
Mmm, yes that felt like a more watchable show, the bigger hive makes a big difference – even if I’m still not that good at it (*) it’s much friendlier to have a go at, and looks more visually intriguing.
I liked pointing out all the false answers in the Superhive. Also intrigued that it looks like contestants don’t seem to have to use the letters in order, so interested to know how the computer would parse a completely wrong answer.
I think the final round goes on a bit too long and you probably don’t need to remove the team who didn’t buzz and then bring them back, a bit irritating, there are perfectly good lights on the desk that do the job.
I still reckon in the round with the double answers the points should go from 6 to 2.
I still like Fiona Bruce and her enthusiasm.
I won’t guarantee tuning in every week, but I certainly feel more likely to.
(*) I suspect this might be down to the Route One way I tend to think, I’ll come up with an answer and then can’t find it and then can’t think of any others.