Monday evening, as everyone must know, is the BBC's quiz night. I, for one, am more than happy to spend half an hour in the company of Victoria Coren Mitchell trying to work out which hieroglyph to choose to try and get the music question. (My go to hieroglyph is The Horned Viper).
The quiz either side I can take or leave depending how quizzy I feel, but the real gems of the evening follow on at 9pm over on BBC4. Call My Bluff followed by Face The Music!
These quizzes from 50 years ago are a delight. Call My Bluff, chaired by Robert Robinson, has one team captain, the bow-tied Frank Muir taking on the other team captain, Paddy Campbell, in a word definition game. It is funny and the whole family can play along. One of the interesting things is that Paddy has a speech impediment, a relatively severe stammer. These days he would have to be lauded for his bravery and people championing the cause of having more people on TV with disabilities and impediments. They must have equality. Yet here we were half a century ago, quite happy watching Paddy, perfectly accepting his stammer and just revelling in the word play provided by the two captains and their guests.
Face The Music looks somewhat twee and probably somewhat elitist to many as the whole programme is based on classical music. There'll be no-one commissioning that sort of quiz going forward. Joseph Cooper hosts with Regular panelist Robin Ray and assorted guests, who include the likes of Joyce Grenfell and Joan Bakewell. A round where you have to guess a piece of piano music from the clatter of the keys as no sound is produced may be followed by one piece of music played in the style of a classical composer. Can you recognise both the tune and the composer? Yes they do look a little smug when they get the answers right, but then, when a viewer gets one right there is a frisson of superiority over the general TV viewing audience. Is there a name for that, as there is with Schadenfreude?
For me though there are some major plusses to both programmes. They are gentle, no shouting, no loud music, and they expect that the audience has a reasonable level of intelligence. They are an absolute treat and hopefully we are going to get a long run of them.
1 comment:
We dip into the Monday evening TV quiz most weeks. We also watch The Chase on +1 most nights. I've applied to go on. I'm in touch with a chap who was on The Chase a couple of weeks ago (he got 10 correct answers in his cash builder round but still got sent home by the Chaser). He's offered to coach me. We'll see.
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