Let the Question see the Sport

By | July 8, 2021

Christ is that really the best we could do? Anyway, Paddy McGuinness has been announced as the new host of fairly rigorous long-running sports quiz A Question of Sport, following in the footsteps of David Vine, David Coleman and Sue Barker. Fighting Talk-ers Sam Quek (hockey) and Ugo Monye (rugby) are the new team captains, who I believe are the first female and black captains in the show’s history, so fair enough.

https://twitter.com/QuestionofSport/status/1412881154135445507

I mean, it’s fair to say I don’t think anyone saw it coming, but whilst I try and get my head around it from the BBC’s point of view they’re trying to attract a younger crowd for it, and who better to do that than 47-year-old saviour of Top Gear Paddy, although you’d think they’d try and lure Freddy Flintoff away from A League of Their Own to keep that partnership going. Still, though.

I look forward to seeing what new quizzes “inspire” rounds in the future.

Quizone

By | July 4, 2021

Here’s a fun little curio FOTB Alex bought up on Twitter yesterday, an Irish RTE kids quiz called Quizone from around 2007. In it, three teams of five school friends must find the answer to a question (a bit chestnutty, but probably quite difficult if you’re of the age) using books and “the Quizone.tv Safe Search engine” whilst one of their number races around an adventure playzone as fast as possible, also hoping to find the golden snitch bonus ball in one of the bins located around the course, and hoping their team will have researched the right answer by the time they get to the finish line. Seconds equal points, but only the first team back with the right answer gets to bank anything.

The presentation is hilariously dramatic, but the music is fairly banging and the absolute highlight is the ten-year-old kiddy politics that run through it all, and the complete lack of tact on display despite the fact you can tell they’re trying quite hard to be tactful.

Bother’s Bar Plays Badly: Revolver and Co.

By | July 2, 2021

We’ve had our eye on this for a while. Out now on Switch and Steam (20% off at time of writing, will go up from £4.79 in a week), Revolver and Co invites you to shoot robot enemies with your trivia gun – the closer you are to the right answer, the less ammo you spend and the more money you make. It also features “millennial humour”.

Does it scratch a quiz itch, or will it make you want to shoot yourself? I hope you like fairly dry numbers based questions, for the most part.

RIP Paul Koulak

By | June 30, 2021

This probably ought to get a bit more than a straight retweet as a tribute, but there we are:

For me, the highlight of this first ten years of work was this version of Variation No. 1, the tune that played on the old zipline game where they had to swim to a ship and climb the mast:

And now Romesh is doing Weakest Link

By | June 27, 2021

Anne Robinson starts her tenure as Countdown host tomorrow.

But tonight The Sun has the scoop that Romesh Ranganathan is being lined up to host a rebooted Weakest Link, intended for Saturday night and played with celebs for charity.

It’s a good booking (for years I thought it should be Robert Rinder but I can see why they’ve gone for Romesh) for this up and coming TV comic who hasn’t been associated with a new show for the best part of a week now. His pissed-off uncle persona kind of fits, and Ranganation recently won a BAFTA.

Only two things working against it: if it’s going to use the recent point-missing US one as a model, and that the Children in Need one a few years ago was a bit crap. Yes I know the appeal is mainly in the insults, but you need a decent game in order to set them up properly, hopefully the production team will have taken on board lessons.