Pucker Up, ITV Mandarins, It's Clobbering Time
Hmm. Saturday. Newspapers and linguini amitricana and sitting in bed staring at the bare sky outside. Sunshine and indolence. Did I go out? Did I heck. I've got to revise The Colossus. Again and again. And one more time for luck. As you can see, I could drive forever.
Ooh, look it's that TV I cry. No World Cup, I think and I cry a little. Instead I have to settle for this week's shinier than a crazy diamond, new quiz show.
Pokerface has been on on ITV every day this week and I have watched it.
(See here for barebones webpage ... the online game potential has been ignored by the chumps that be)
My one-line verdict: it has been underwhelming.
My one-word review: meh.
And my far more considered meditation on the nature of its lack of goodness: A few months ago I did consider phoning up to do my 30-second monologue audition piece, but such plans didn't come to fruition on account of not being arsed.
I knew the chances were slimmer than slim at best (thousands of places for 36 places: better odds than Frank Lampard scoring a goal at the moment, I know, but still far too anorexic to spend a precious pound or two). So I took up the role of Pokerface viewer and prognosticator, with the direst of expectations, and with as much enthusiasm as one can muster at the prospect of someone sticking a cactus up their bottom. When ITV do quiz shows, they do them badly, with the likes of Millionaire only coming along every 15 years.
The problem with concept peeps like Ant and Dec is that they are celebs. Concepts thought up by celebrities are, and it's scientifically proven in labs and albino mice and stuff, three times more rubbish than real programme makers. But being famous makes up the shortfall, and so our primetime schedules are adorned with frivolsome follies. Good God, do you remember Boys and Girls on Channel 4? Chris Evans, I wave my fist at yet, but at the people at Horseferry Road, I wave both my fists in pustulating rage and bare my teeth in a menacing manner too.
The Weakest Link compensates for the banter by pumping in non-stop infusions of questions. Even if I think it has descended into a tired slew of insults, it does get the balance right. Here the banter is stupid. They say what is on their minds (everyone else is crap), but they don't say what is on their minds (I'm crap as well), so it sounds silly.
Now if I was let on the show, I would go doolally. I would spit venom in all directions, deriding all the other contestants, shouting out equivalent questions and answers in rat-a-tat succession, and interrogating everyone else with other trivia questions, instead of making claims that were as heavy as clouds and as substantive as Jade Goody's brain, and I would say I know people who know and you are not one of those who know people who know know.
And that is exactly why I didn't even try to audition. I knew too much every which way: of trivia and of the trivia world. My brain is burdened with so much of both kinds of knowledge, I get constant, agonising cricks in my neck whenever I turn or tip my head inexpertly. It's a very heavy kind of knowledge, you see.
However, I would confuse them as well. It offers an opportunity for some, hey, wacky fun. Instead of the bollocks each bravado-boosted contestant spouts like a CD on repeat every single night, for instance:
"I did great! Oh yeah, I didn't absolutely brilliant. I am happy as. Near the top. No, on the top, standing proudly at the top looking down on all these insects. Got every question right, which is better than everyone else because they are rubbish and I am absolutely brilliant. I'm great, super and smashing!"
This would be me...
"I did so badly that I'm going to press the Fold button immediately. Everyone else is much too clever and brilliant. I am kicking in my testicles from the inside. Shameful. I'm a real thicky for going on this show and coming up against five potential Nobel Prize winners. These guys could actually be curing cancer at this very moment. They are that clever. Unlike me. I'm rubbish. Especially at general knowledge. Really rubbish."
And if they ask me how I am feeling I will say:
"God, I feel terrible, like I've just been gang-raped by a Cossack raiding party."
This is because I also want to be cruel and want everyone else to leave with empty pockets having confused them with my outward signs of crapness and brilliance. Possibly because it would give me jollies.
Lack of consistency will trick them into thinking I don't know anything and that I will certainly fold. Instead they will fall and receive only air-kisses from Antandec for their televisual troubles.
I am a sadistic and merciless God me. Mwuah-ha ha ha bloody ha ha. And an extremely cunning one. Ha some more.
Yes, it would be Jolly Central.
Another problem is that this show is far too obsessed with the drama of the its concept. The quizzes are just a way to get there, but little is made of them with comparison to Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, where people agonise and grapple with the manifold intricacies of their often troubled and confused minds for the sake of many, many thousands of pounds. Millionaire keeps it simple that way.
On Pookerfeeace, they come fast and are over too soon. It disrespects the quiz and the "awe" element of viewers being impressed by contestants pulling answers mysteriously and dramatically from the bleak, rambunctious tangle in their heads. The questions are also slightly too easy, as they are very listy and have three-answer choices (though they could be worse).
If I get more than three wrong in the whole 28-q show, I get very, very surprised. This suggests why someone like myself would be a persona non grata as a potential contestant: it is not challenging enough for even a regular quizzer.
The ceiling for talented quizzers is set far too low and even such background knowledge as contestants having been an "University Challenge captain" is seized upon by a gleeful Antandec as something that might intimidate other contestants into such a supremely scared state that they would rather headbutt themselves to death on their own question monitors than face the prospect of a quiz drubbing from a dreaded UC Captain. And, as you know, UC Captains know the thinner end of bugger-all.
Selling the drama that way makes it into something else. It's not a quiz show; it's a people show. I hate personality and people shows. Hate hate hate. Down with people. Down with Antandec's bloody script: the same every bloody night. If you notice what they say (and it has been the same inane deja vu-ridden, repeated yammerings) then there is something wrong with the show. Is it the same with Chris Tarrant? No, because much of that is done whilst pondering the question. Which is a far more pleasant way of doing it. That way we will forget the chatty drivel that marks much of the show.
Theoretically, you could win the million without answering a single question right and this is probably why they mentioned it in all the promotional guff, but you would be a brain dead moron to try and do so, so it has no bearing on the show AT ALL. It's that Hitchcockian device, the MacGuffin. It was like on Grand Slam; we were required to pony up a thousand each at the start just to play and this was meant to change things and make things matter. Only it didn't because we couldn't quiz any differently if we tried. And I didn't care, because it wasn't my money. It was somebody else's and I didn't have to pay it back. Ha! (Okay, I exchanged goods and services, but it was a free go really).
And then there are the fromage-fringed, one-on-one interviews done Martin Bashir and Princess Di-stylee. I really hate those. Let's go into a living room with some soft lighting and look as if we are settling down for an evening with some nice sherry. Twot off! That's precious quiz-question asking time there. Gone and disappeared into thin air. Dead and gone forever and for all time. Sickening. When I was talking about the simplicity that Millionaire has, I mean it has two discernible settings: Fastest Finger round and Contestant Hot Seat. Pokerface has the pre-programme get-together and interviews, the intro, the rounds, the folding, the loser interviews, the losers watching the climactic action, and the so on and on. Too much.
The sickeningness continued when I saw their choice of contestants. Yawn. They put a call into Hackneyed Central Castiing for a usual spread of token contestants, as per usual, i.e. shaven-headed middle-aged man, shortish 20something strawberry blonde woman, amiable 35-year-old black man and resolutely Anglo-Saxon spikey-haired youngish cheeky bloke. Where be the Asians? (Racists!!!) Where be the disabled? (Body-ists!!!!) And where be the grossly obese? (Fattists!!!) Hey, I want a far more expansive good token spread. One that's really tokenistic.
But maybe, it is not hate that I feel for Pokerface. Just indifference: Couldn't care less who won, couldn't care about the contestant interaction, couldn't care less about the show dynamics or fancy computer sounds or graphics, couldn't care less about the ending and who gets the million.
So careless was I that I switched over to Sport Relief and watched Kate Thornton watch the first ever dead twin baby birth on primetime TV. And for a second I thought it was a new programme: Live African Stillborn Births with Kate Thornton!
But don't worry! It wasn't and the baby was just a bit dopy and the whole experience made Miss Thornton look even more like the barren, burnt out husk of media whoredom that she truly is and ever will be. Crying at sleeping babies isn't quite the same as swimming the English Channel is it? (Well done, Mr Walliams, sir!) Though Live Baby Births from The Filthiest Third World Slums will surely be on the TV schedules in a couple of years' time. People might find it interesting.
Oh, UC
As for the return of University Challenge: The Professionals: there was a time when it was just starting out when I thought that bringing in the adults with decent and interesting jobs would usurp the relatively thick student version. Now it just seems you have to be attached to some fancy institution that has some semi-celebrity attached to it or an organisation most broadsheet-reading UK denizens will have heard of. The student version looks so much better when set side by side with it now.
I mean, do you think they would let a bunch of Tesco cashiers on the show? Er, not when they can get swanky, cool cachet-snuggling magazines like Prospect, The Idler and The Economist on the show? Not a chance.
The original UC at least aspires to welcome on the best contestants - no matter what their background is, class or what not, if they are good enough. On TP, it seems the producers actively search for an, ahem, certain class-specific note of recognition in teams.
Neither do I like the fact that the TP shows are shortened to have a flounce around their very upper middle class working environments at the start. It's filmed like a cheesy, company video "Come work at our bright, shining offices and meet your brilliant future colleagues and our brilliant water coolers". One word: bleargh. Now, if they put on a team of coalminers they could at least descend into some hellish black abyss and have the contestants talk about how much they hate it and yearn for the feel of the sun, or Jeremy Paxman's voice, on their skin.
The fact that they slip in appropriate questions suited to the two institutions - what I would call "bent" questions - and that two teams can cancel their champion-worthiness in the first round and thereby fail to make the top four that will contend for the title also irks mightily.
Resignation is the next step. So I just watch the show for the questions and get mildly impressed by some middle-aged guy, who if life had taken him into the slipstream of quizzing a couple of decades before could have developed into quite a tasty player. But no, it's too late now. What could have been will never ever be. Instead he/she gets a few starters right and fades into obscurity after his/her half hour of UC-ness. They never knew. A tragedy for them, a boon for the likes of me and you and everyone we know. Who do quizzes.
Now, if they are going to do these match-ups, why not ban all those useless writers (they come out of the woodwork for this one, don't they?) do some interesting match-ups: SAS versus Stonewall, the British Communist Party versus The 1822 Committee (I almost wrote Combat 18 and then I almost wrote the BNP, then I thought, they must have a dash of reality in them, but then, I did write them didn't I?), ASH versus FOREST, foxhunters versus football mascots, surfers vs clowns - these antagonistic or interesting blighters write themselves.
And after the quiz bit has finished, they can then hand over blunt weapons for the new, added-on physical combat section I've just thought up to make The Professionals an utterly essentially television watch.
Ooh, look it's that TV I cry. No World Cup, I think and I cry a little. Instead I have to settle for this week's shinier than a crazy diamond, new quiz show.
Pokerface has been on on ITV every day this week and I have watched it.
(See here for barebones webpage ... the online game potential has been ignored by the chumps that be)
My one-line verdict: it has been underwhelming.
My one-word review: meh.
And my far more considered meditation on the nature of its lack of goodness: A few months ago I did consider phoning up to do my 30-second monologue audition piece, but such plans didn't come to fruition on account of not being arsed.
I knew the chances were slimmer than slim at best (thousands of places for 36 places: better odds than Frank Lampard scoring a goal at the moment, I know, but still far too anorexic to spend a precious pound or two). So I took up the role of Pokerface viewer and prognosticator, with the direst of expectations, and with as much enthusiasm as one can muster at the prospect of someone sticking a cactus up their bottom. When ITV do quiz shows, they do them badly, with the likes of Millionaire only coming along every 15 years.
The problem with concept peeps like Ant and Dec is that they are celebs. Concepts thought up by celebrities are, and it's scientifically proven in labs and albino mice and stuff, three times more rubbish than real programme makers. But being famous makes up the shortfall, and so our primetime schedules are adorned with frivolsome follies. Good God, do you remember Boys and Girls on Channel 4? Chris Evans, I wave my fist at yet, but at the people at Horseferry Road, I wave both my fists in pustulating rage and bare my teeth in a menacing manner too.
The Weakest Link compensates for the banter by pumping in non-stop infusions of questions. Even if I think it has descended into a tired slew of insults, it does get the balance right. Here the banter is stupid. They say what is on their minds (everyone else is crap), but they don't say what is on their minds (I'm crap as well), so it sounds silly.
Now if I was let on the show, I would go doolally. I would spit venom in all directions, deriding all the other contestants, shouting out equivalent questions and answers in rat-a-tat succession, and interrogating everyone else with other trivia questions, instead of making claims that were as heavy as clouds and as substantive as Jade Goody's brain, and I would say I know people who know and you are not one of those who know people who know know.
And that is exactly why I didn't even try to audition. I knew too much every which way: of trivia and of the trivia world. My brain is burdened with so much of both kinds of knowledge, I get constant, agonising cricks in my neck whenever I turn or tip my head inexpertly. It's a very heavy kind of knowledge, you see.
However, I would confuse them as well. It offers an opportunity for some, hey, wacky fun. Instead of the bollocks each bravado-boosted contestant spouts like a CD on repeat every single night, for instance:
"I did great! Oh yeah, I didn't absolutely brilliant. I am happy as. Near the top. No, on the top, standing proudly at the top looking down on all these insects. Got every question right, which is better than everyone else because they are rubbish and I am absolutely brilliant. I'm great, super and smashing!"
This would be me...
"I did so badly that I'm going to press the Fold button immediately. Everyone else is much too clever and brilliant. I am kicking in my testicles from the inside. Shameful. I'm a real thicky for going on this show and coming up against five potential Nobel Prize winners. These guys could actually be curing cancer at this very moment. They are that clever. Unlike me. I'm rubbish. Especially at general knowledge. Really rubbish."
And if they ask me how I am feeling I will say:
"God, I feel terrible, like I've just been gang-raped by a Cossack raiding party."
This is because I also want to be cruel and want everyone else to leave with empty pockets having confused them with my outward signs of crapness and brilliance. Possibly because it would give me jollies.
Lack of consistency will trick them into thinking I don't know anything and that I will certainly fold. Instead they will fall and receive only air-kisses from Antandec for their televisual troubles.
I am a sadistic and merciless God me. Mwuah-ha ha ha bloody ha ha. And an extremely cunning one. Ha some more.
Yes, it would be Jolly Central.
Another problem is that this show is far too obsessed with the drama of the its concept. The quizzes are just a way to get there, but little is made of them with comparison to Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, where people agonise and grapple with the manifold intricacies of their often troubled and confused minds for the sake of many, many thousands of pounds. Millionaire keeps it simple that way.
On Pookerfeeace, they come fast and are over too soon. It disrespects the quiz and the "awe" element of viewers being impressed by contestants pulling answers mysteriously and dramatically from the bleak, rambunctious tangle in their heads. The questions are also slightly too easy, as they are very listy and have three-answer choices (though they could be worse).
If I get more than three wrong in the whole 28-q show, I get very, very surprised. This suggests why someone like myself would be a persona non grata as a potential contestant: it is not challenging enough for even a regular quizzer.
The ceiling for talented quizzers is set far too low and even such background knowledge as contestants having been an "University Challenge captain" is seized upon by a gleeful Antandec as something that might intimidate other contestants into such a supremely scared state that they would rather headbutt themselves to death on their own question monitors than face the prospect of a quiz drubbing from a dreaded UC Captain. And, as you know, UC Captains know the thinner end of bugger-all.
Selling the drama that way makes it into something else. It's not a quiz show; it's a people show. I hate personality and people shows. Hate hate hate. Down with people. Down with Antandec's bloody script: the same every bloody night. If you notice what they say (and it has been the same inane deja vu-ridden, repeated yammerings) then there is something wrong with the show. Is it the same with Chris Tarrant? No, because much of that is done whilst pondering the question. Which is a far more pleasant way of doing it. That way we will forget the chatty drivel that marks much of the show.
Theoretically, you could win the million without answering a single question right and this is probably why they mentioned it in all the promotional guff, but you would be a brain dead moron to try and do so, so it has no bearing on the show AT ALL. It's that Hitchcockian device, the MacGuffin. It was like on Grand Slam; we were required to pony up a thousand each at the start just to play and this was meant to change things and make things matter. Only it didn't because we couldn't quiz any differently if we tried. And I didn't care, because it wasn't my money. It was somebody else's and I didn't have to pay it back. Ha! (Okay, I exchanged goods and services, but it was a free go really).
And then there are the fromage-fringed, one-on-one interviews done Martin Bashir and Princess Di-stylee. I really hate those. Let's go into a living room with some soft lighting and look as if we are settling down for an evening with some nice sherry. Twot off! That's precious quiz-question asking time there. Gone and disappeared into thin air. Dead and gone forever and for all time. Sickening. When I was talking about the simplicity that Millionaire has, I mean it has two discernible settings: Fastest Finger round and Contestant Hot Seat. Pokerface has the pre-programme get-together and interviews, the intro, the rounds, the folding, the loser interviews, the losers watching the climactic action, and the so on and on. Too much.
The sickeningness continued when I saw their choice of contestants. Yawn. They put a call into Hackneyed Central Castiing for a usual spread of token contestants, as per usual, i.e. shaven-headed middle-aged man, shortish 20something strawberry blonde woman, amiable 35-year-old black man and resolutely Anglo-Saxon spikey-haired youngish cheeky bloke. Where be the Asians? (Racists!!!) Where be the disabled? (Body-ists!!!!) And where be the grossly obese? (Fattists!!!) Hey, I want a far more expansive good token spread. One that's really tokenistic.
But maybe, it is not hate that I feel for Pokerface. Just indifference: Couldn't care less who won, couldn't care about the contestant interaction, couldn't care less about the show dynamics or fancy computer sounds or graphics, couldn't care less about the ending and who gets the million.
So careless was I that I switched over to Sport Relief and watched Kate Thornton watch the first ever dead twin baby birth on primetime TV. And for a second I thought it was a new programme: Live African Stillborn Births with Kate Thornton!
But don't worry! It wasn't and the baby was just a bit dopy and the whole experience made Miss Thornton look even more like the barren, burnt out husk of media whoredom that she truly is and ever will be. Crying at sleeping babies isn't quite the same as swimming the English Channel is it? (Well done, Mr Walliams, sir!) Though Live Baby Births from The Filthiest Third World Slums will surely be on the TV schedules in a couple of years' time. People might find it interesting.
Oh, UC
As for the return of University Challenge: The Professionals: there was a time when it was just starting out when I thought that bringing in the adults with decent and interesting jobs would usurp the relatively thick student version. Now it just seems you have to be attached to some fancy institution that has some semi-celebrity attached to it or an organisation most broadsheet-reading UK denizens will have heard of. The student version looks so much better when set side by side with it now.
I mean, do you think they would let a bunch of Tesco cashiers on the show? Er, not when they can get swanky, cool cachet-snuggling magazines like Prospect, The Idler and The Economist on the show? Not a chance.
The original UC at least aspires to welcome on the best contestants - no matter what their background is, class or what not, if they are good enough. On TP, it seems the producers actively search for an, ahem, certain class-specific note of recognition in teams.
Neither do I like the fact that the TP shows are shortened to have a flounce around their very upper middle class working environments at the start. It's filmed like a cheesy, company video "Come work at our bright, shining offices and meet your brilliant future colleagues and our brilliant water coolers". One word: bleargh. Now, if they put on a team of coalminers they could at least descend into some hellish black abyss and have the contestants talk about how much they hate it and yearn for the feel of the sun, or Jeremy Paxman's voice, on their skin.
The fact that they slip in appropriate questions suited to the two institutions - what I would call "bent" questions - and that two teams can cancel their champion-worthiness in the first round and thereby fail to make the top four that will contend for the title also irks mightily.
Resignation is the next step. So I just watch the show for the questions and get mildly impressed by some middle-aged guy, who if life had taken him into the slipstream of quizzing a couple of decades before could have developed into quite a tasty player. But no, it's too late now. What could have been will never ever be. Instead he/she gets a few starters right and fades into obscurity after his/her half hour of UC-ness. They never knew. A tragedy for them, a boon for the likes of me and you and everyone we know. Who do quizzes.
Now, if they are going to do these match-ups, why not ban all those useless writers (they come out of the woodwork for this one, don't they?) do some interesting match-ups: SAS versus Stonewall, the British Communist Party versus The 1822 Committee (I almost wrote Combat 18 and then I almost wrote the BNP, then I thought, they must have a dash of reality in them, but then, I did write them didn't I?), ASH versus FOREST, foxhunters versus football mascots, surfers vs clowns - these antagonistic or interesting blighters write themselves.
And after the quiz bit has finished, they can then hand over blunt weapons for the new, added-on physical combat section I've just thought up to make The Professionals an utterly essentially television watch.
posted by That Quiz Guy at 4:44 PM
1 Comments:
I'm disappointed. You missed the chance to slag off Deal or No Deal. Please do so in future.
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