It was the grand final of this series of Only Connect the other night. For those that haven’t seen it Only Connect is an impossibly hard quiz show played between two teams that win nothing more than a glorified paperweight at the end of the series. For my money it’s the best quiz show on TV. I play along at home and if I get five questions right (as in before the teams guess them) I think that I’m doing pretty well, a bit like when you watch University Challenge or Mastermind. Answering a few questions right leads me to think for some reason maybe I could have a go at this programme, for what it’s worth.
Anyway, for the grand final the questions were a bit harder. Didn’t get a single answer right, even the music question (which I can often get). Probably best to stay at home and watch from the comfort of my sofa, rather than end up looking like a knobhead!
Only Connect has been consistently the best quiz show on TV for a while (and this has nothing to do with Victoria Coren-Mitchell).
The joy when you get a question right is phenomenal.
The Connecting Wall is my favourite (and often most successful) bit –
Amen to that.
There’s only really the cringeworthy singalong bits I don’t like.
I love the scrunched vowel-less 4th round.
Some people don’t half know some obscure stuff and their brains work in astonishing ways.
I’m a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, but I had no idea on the recent picture round with the solitary cyclist, six Napoleons etc.
If I ever get a five pointer in round one, I’m ecstatic. Or at least I assume I would be should I ever get one…
Intellectual Monday nights with Mrs b with a glass of wine are gone for another year now.
Managed a managed a 5 pointer twice before – both in the “what’s the last thing” round
The subjects?
The 4 Stroke Engine cycle
and
the lyrics to Reasons To Be Cheerful
This quiz show really does cover all bases
I assume the first one had “suck” first?
As to the lyrics for RTBC3, who knows?
Not “suck” (sadly) but Induction
The lyric bit for RTBC started: Hammersmith Palais
(My brain is hard-wired to respond with The Bolshoi Ballet)
Mine immediately thinks of The Clash.
Summer, Buddy Holly
The working folly
Good Golly Miss Molly and boats.
Hammersmith Palais
The Bolshoi Ballet
Jump back in the alley and nanny goats.
After that my memory clouds over.
I’m assuming we all got the Joy Division one right recently after two clues when neither team did after four!
I can’t remember from one episode to the next which questions I got right, but I know I got that one. Although I now can’t remember their name before(?) Warsaw.
Another one I remember getting fairly quickly (and again, I don’t think the team did) was the ‘Dub Be Good To Me’ one.
Warsaw followed Stiff Kittens. I was a bit disappointed not to get that after one clue.
I tend to find VCM’s closing monlogues to the camera cringeworthy. They usually mention Michael Portillo.
I’m looking forward to the summer, when This Week finishes and Portillo is sent back into the dustbin of history I hoped he’d been sent to in 1997.
He’s been commissioned for a new series on BBC 2, it’s called Great Right Wing Dicatatorship Railway Journeys.
First episode he gets to ride on the narrow-gauge that runs from the back of the National Stadium in Santiago all the way to the Villa Grimaldi.
He could do that series these days without even venturing outside Europe.
We could possibly enter an Afterword team.
hur
There’s this and Uni Challenge to balance out the fact that nearly all other quiz shows reveal the terrifying ignorance of the great British public. And you know what group of people are consistently rubbish? Teachers.
-“I’m an English teacher, I know all about books”
-“Who wrote Wuthering Heights?”
-“Jane Austen…. no, JK Rowling*”
(*always pronounced wrong…. harrumph)
Civil Servants seem to do better than most.
The key to winning University Challenge is to have a team whose degrees cover the widest range of subjects as possible. If you have three Chemical Engineering students in your quartet you’ll lose. Maybe.
The son of a friend of mine is a member of this year’s University Challenge champion team from Edinburgh University. No, honestly – it’s true!
Not necessarily true. If you have four scientists they will have a smattering of arts knowledge. If you have four arts students they will know absolutely nothing about science.
And never, ever have Feargal Sharkey in your team.
Field his cousin instead, and hope for a round on bionics.
https://youtu.be/ysG96dUtGh4
I’m waiting for Monk D’Wally D’Honk to turn up in the connecting wall.
(Comment added purely because I’m amused by the notion of two threads with identical names appearing in Recently Updated. Adulthood is also available)
PS.
Hooray!
I remember when fun used to be thread mountaineering – using comments like pitons to scale the heights.
Some genius once started a thread called Recently Updated. Hilarity ensued… well, for me anyway. Simple things amuse Jim Kerr, Charlie Burchill and yer granny on bongos
I watched it once.
Victoria Cohen-Mitchell.
Jeez.
The ‘getting the answer right before the teams do’ – you may not be aware that most TV quizzes add buffer time before the team appears to answer specifically in order to flatter viewers at home. A tactic that has been proven to boost ratings as those at home are encouraged to think they might be in with a chance.
You swine! Damn
Also, you lose five points for interrupting Paxman with an incorrect answer.
Which is a bit fucking much in the light of his previous career.
I did not know that. Blummin’ ‘eck! It works though, doesn’t it?
It really does. Richard Osman let the cat out of the bag and when you know it, it becomes obvious – why on earth would contestants who know the answer pause so long? But if you remove the pauses, apparently it makes the home audience feel thick and they start to switch off.
It’s the same with Pinter plays.
Ha! A guaranteed switch off in Bartleby Towers. Whatever happened to Charter 88?
I like ‘Wish You Were Here’. Is it still on?
Judith has left the beach.
The past is orange.
I agree with the AttackDog (which is always a wise idea) – Victoria can be deeply annoying. Those smug monologues are a drag… But I enjoy the rest of the show.
Woof!
Different strokes for different folks I think VCM is a perfect host for the show.
I agree with all of that. Hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Shouldn’t the “best quiz show on TV” have more questions that the average punter can answer?
I can see why Pointless is (or has been) a very popular programme as you can answer the questions and nearly get a pointless answer. I think that OC works because most civilians won’t get too many answers and when you do you feel dead smart. To be fair the questions that I struggle with are the lateral ones, literal questions are much easier for me.
There’s nothing better than going for a walk in the early morning in the park with a dog. Well… I usually help myself to someone else’s dog (because they’re so trusting) and the owners are too bleary-eyed and half-awake to notice. Dogs owners are reprehensible people generally so I don’t want to *be* one of them but I’m quite happy to nick their stuff. Some of them don’t even clean up their mess made by their mutts. This very morning I saw three glistening lumps of disgusting dog shit neatly laid out in a line. And then there was another one just like it.
(Pause)
Let’s meet the teams.
The best quiz finishes one week and the best panel show starts the next… roll on Taskmaster. I’ve a feeling Lou Sanders is going to make a very entertaining contestant.
Absolutely cannot abide the show, or the host.
I don’t wish to detract from anybody else’s enjoyment of it & totally believe in ‘different strokes’ & all that, but at some gut level, I detest it. It’s visceral.
I guess it’s because it seems to ooze with a type of self satisfaction not seen since the days of Robert Robinson in his pomp & VC seems to be his heir apparent.
I’m aware this may well make me seem like a philistine or blockhead, but in my defence I never miss University Challenge ( & do pretty respectably) but that’s different in nature. As Only Connect usually runs before it, the sound stays on mute until we are sure it is over &
‘Paxo’ is beginning.
They were running them on different nights for a while and now they’ve brought them back together. For one hour a week BBC2 pretends it does what it used to do, instead of just being a dumping ground for random crap from the other channels.
Do you only get one channel on your TV?
Do you only ask rhetorical questions?
😘
But surely the smug self satisfaction, from the host at least, is ironic and knowing. As far as I’m concerned it’s just a very good quiz which (unusually) you need to work things out for as well as just have general knowledge. I appreciate that a lot of the knowledge required is arcane but nowhere near as much as University Challenge and there the host is truly obnoxious without a hint of irony. For the record, I got the first question of the OC final right and thought it wouldn’t be as hard as in previous years….. but that was it until a few stabs at the connecting walls (paused of course!).
The two teams in this years final actually seemed quite lacking in smugness and just up for the challenge unlike some others along the way.
Yeah this is surely correct. VCM has been a professional poker player so you need to hold your own against the lads. She has an ironic slightly surreal sense of humour which is right up my street.
*Buffs fingernails on lapel* I was on it, many years ago.
I was the emergency fourth member for my sister, brother in law and their friend. When the latter dropped out, I found myself in a concrete bunker of a studio outside Cardiff. We won one, lost the second by a whisker. I was making up the numbers for the main part, but got a link or two about paint colours and rooftop gigs. I also dropped a bollock on a Penny Lane lyrics sequence and can’t listen to that song without wincing.
Victoria CM was lovely, chatting with all and sundry and nipping out for a gasper every break we got. She gambled all night in Cardiff casinos, grabbed about three hours sleep and then shot four episodes a day. Good on her.
Hero!
I love her introductions that are never explained or asked about further:
“John is a civil servant who once arrested for assaulting the Pope!”
She smokes? How disappointing …
But respect to @TrypF
Uh? Why disappointing ?
Means she smells awful (and may experience an early painful death)
Why is that a problem? Realistically, you’re not going to meet her. …. Sorry.