The joy of quiz shows like these isn’t that you can answer
all the questions, but the immense pride you feel if you answer any of the questions. With University
Challenge, the breadth of subjects which are covered every week means that the
majority of viewers will find something that they know the answer to. The show
is an entertaining watch. Admittedly it can get off to a slow start, with bonus
questions (asked to the team who has correctly answered a starter for ten)
taken at a leisurely pace. But as the half-hour show progresses, the pace grows
more frantic. Jeremy Paxman takes on the role of condescending school teacher,
growing more irate each time he has to implore a team to hurry up with their
answer. He has perfected the angry “come on,” as well as the scoff at team
members’ incorrect and ill-informed stabs in the dark. It would be easy to see
Paxman as over-the-top, but in actual fact he augments the entertainment value
of the show. As a man best known for giving an unparalleled grilling to the
country’s most powerful men and women, there is no let-up from Paxman for these
lowly students.
Perhaps the enjoyment of University Challenge for me
personally comes from being a student myself. There is a definite, though
friendly, rivalry between students at different universities. As a result,
successful participants can take on a cult status. Captains of recent winning
teams, such as Gail Trimble (Corpus Chirsti, Oxford, 2009) and Alex Guttenplan
(Emmanuel, Cambridge, 2010) have become well-known overnight for their dominant
performances in the quiz. The University of York’s team captain from 2011,
Andrew Clemo, led the team to the final (ending in a defeat by Magdalen
College, Oxford). In the process, he became a BNOC (‘Big Name on Campus’), and
his cult status was confirmed as a Facebook fan page entitled ‘York Clemo’
racked up over a thousand likes. Normally, students might not be interested in watching
University Challenge. But that all changes when it is your university being represented
and the team can become heroes overnight.
University Challenge is the obvious first step for those
eager to find more engaging and intellectual television. But in the last few
years it has been eclipsed by the emergence of a hidden gem. Only Connect is
not a show many stumble upon. Its brilliance comes from its uniqueness. The
show is unfailingly pretentious. But while other shows might try to cover up
such qualities, Only Connect embraces them, makes them unthreatening and uses
them to enhance the show’s watchability. This is best shown in rounds one and
two. Each round sees six possible questions, which in series one to three were
represented by the first six letters of the Greek alphabet. At the beginning of
series four, host Victoria Coren told the viewers that the show had received
complaints that the Greek letters were ‘too pretentious.’ And so she revealed
that they were to be replaced by Egyptian hieroglyphs, which have remained in
place ever since.
This is only one of the show’s quirks. Each team has three
members, often with a fairly tenuous (but necessary) connection, which gives
the team their name. Former series champions include the Crossworders and the
Rugby Boys, as well as the more obscure Epicureans (fans of the teachings of
the Greek philosopher Epicurus). Unlike University Challenge, the teams do not
take on a cult status, primarily because the viewership is less partisan. But
like any successful programme, it has to have a cult hero. Only Connect, in
fact, has two: The Connecting Wall, and Victoria Coren.
The Connecting Wall is by far the show’s best round. It’s
popularity has seen it given an online spin-off, with the functionality to make
your own and play along with the teams. Each team is presented with sixteen mixed-up
clues, which can be sorted perfectly into four groups of four, each group having
a connection. The difficulty lies in identifying the connections, and getting
around any overlaps. In this week’s show, for example, two of the groups were ‘Superheroes’
surnames’ and ‘Types of internet ad.’ The clue ‘Banner’ could fit into either
(Bruce Banner being the Hulk’s alter ego, and a banner ad being a common
internet advert). But there is only one perfect solution, meaning to work your
way around the overlaps is the key to success.
But the highlight each week is Victoria Coren, who does a brilliant job of presenting the programme. She
is the schoolmistress to Jeremy Paxman’s headmaster, quipping at the teams’
failures to find the right answer. Watching the show, it is easy to forget that
Coren has the answers on the card in front of her. She convincingly portrays
the omniscient quizmaster who thought the questions up herself, with each one
more devious than the last. But the icing on the cake is her brilliant monologues at
the beginning and end of the show, and between the rounds. Coren comes out with
some frankly obscure remarks. In this week’s series opener, she at one point
questioned whether the show had really been re-commissioned for another series
or if it was all a dream. She later revealed a fantasy of wrestling with a
naked Michael Portillo. The reason that this style comes off is the lack of a
studio audience. There is no awkward background laughter. Coren’s comments are
followed by silence. She is able to move on, seemingly unaware that anything
she has said is out of the ordinary. At times it can be a close call, but once
the viewer understands the style of humour then the remarks become consistently
hilarious. For any good TV show, the presenter has to have a likeability
factor. Coren provides this in abundance.
While it is true that two television shows cannot reverse
the trend of TV ‘dumbing down,’ it is good to see that there is still variety
on the screen. While others might watch TOWIE, give me University Challenge and
Only Connect any day of the week. These are two shows that are worth a watch.
They won’t be to everybody’s taste, but for many the old favourite University
Challenge, and in particular Only Connect, will come as a breath of fresh air.
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