There's always another quiz format, and I've only just caught up with this particular monstrosity presented by Jamie Theakston. Theakston seems to have caught an unlucky streak recently, what with this and The Search. Still - he does have an unfathomably popular London breakfast show.
But back to The People's Quiz which claims to be some kind of series long attempt to find the best quiz champion in the country. Each week, the same people come back to battle against one another to get a chance of getting through to the final where one person will walk away with £200,700. Theakston told us that this was the BBC's biggest ever prize. Quite where the cash is coming from (I rather suspect that it's from BBC Worldwide rather than from 1500 licence fees - at least I hope that's the case) or the relevance of that last £700 is not explained.
As is now compulsory in these programmes you get some pointless on-screen trash talking between contestants at various junctures. But the biggest crime the programme commits is the vast numbers of presenters it sees fit to employ. You see, the aforementioned Theakston doesn't actually ask any questions. Instead a panel of quizmasters: William G Stewart, Myleene Klass and Kate Garraway. Quite what the last two are doing here is hard to fathom. Klass is evidently there simply to wear low cut dresses, while Garraway is trying to be some kind of Anne Robinson-alike. Frankly you could ditch the pair of them as all they're doing is reading questions from a screen. Indeed Stewart could present the whole show by himself without any difficulty and it'd much improve the programme if he did.
The set is a typical post-Millionaire affair with lots of lights and dark blues. These kinds of sets are as much a cliché today as the old cream sets with contestants sitting behind a desk were in the eighties. Try something different.
You also can't help but notice that the audience members have been hyped to within an inch of their lives with constant pointless cheering, and even pantomime booing of one contestant. In fact, I rather detected either some terrible sound mixing, or more likely, some artificially added applause at various junctures - it's hard to explain in words, but through the surround speakers, bits of applause simply didn't match up. In any case, they audience was too "big." On The Price is Right, you could understand the feverish behaviour - any audience member could potentially be picked as a contestant. Not so here.
We also get spurious video diaries of some of the contestants, and much of the banter has a scripted feel to it.
All in all, a disappointing effort. The questions aren't even that hard.
Posted by adambowie at April 28, 2007 6:45 PM