University Challenge (also featuring Only Connect and other BBC quiz shows)

What's lost in the jungle/drum&bass thing is that after that they were asked a question about the creator of House music and deliberated whether it was The Prodigy or Fatboy Slim.

that was a lol for sure

The P Hitchens article is hilarious, how can anyone be so lacking in self-awareness?

in summary: shameful these young people aren't aware of the recent events of 60 years ago, too busy listening to slob music.

(archive link if anyone wants to annoy themselves without giving the dm clicks: https://archive.is/lxs4m )

if he'd stuck to "questions too woke" then it would be a standard anti-BBC mail article, but nooo he has to go for the "I don't understand this question and now everything seems unsettling" - truly the one true tory beliver in a world of cynical grifters

He wrote an almost identical one when Paxman left, with the same whining about how asking questions about Artemisia Gentileschi is pandering to the woke lefties.

i got a five-pointer on OC last week but can't remember which.

Internal angles 55.9°, 63.1°, 62.6°

also something on UC which neither of the teams knew, but can't remember what.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon

OC was characteristics of the Bermuda Triangle

I got it at the same point because the sum of the angles is >180 suggesting most likely it's on a sphere (or oblate spheroid).

i didn't even add it up, it was the first triangle with a name i could think of

I made it as far as looking at Hitchens's face before I bailed from that article. Dear fucking christ.

they were asked a question about the creator of House music

kinda intrigued by who University Challenge thinks is the creator of house music tbh

Frankie Knuckles. There may well have been some hedging in the "often refered to as one of the originators of house" mold mind, tho they do state pretty categorically that the term comes from the Warehouse iirc.

At least we can all agree that Fatboy Slim was indeed the wrong answer to that question

hard questions and two very good teams tonight i thought

Don't know if there's room on this thread for Pointless chat, but I think Sally Phillips has been my favourite replacement Richard that I've caught so far. She has a lovely easy wit.

I thought I'd discussed it here, but perhaps somewhere else. I like her too. I also liked Alex Brooker, Stephen Mangan and Andi Oliver. All naturally engaging folk.

Thought I'd seen it being talked about somewhere, took a punt on this thread!

Andi Oliver was good, agreed. Not sure I saw any of Brooker. I find Mangan off-puttingly smarmy.

ucl very impressive

pointless answers for 'actors in the last episode of cheers' included Norm and Cliff and Carla. all members of the main cast for as long as it aired.

(um, maybe spoilers)

I liked mangan even though I don't think I knew him from anything else. I was just glad to see Giles go. I hate that man almost as much as I hate j Lithgow.

Wait, none of those are actors

sally phillips has been on my strong strong crush list for about twenty years

mangan has been on my shitlist since he made an ass of himself on camera walking about abandoned pigsheds in north mayo and saying shit like "gord imagine my mamma was raised in a hovel like this" u buffoon

Also he’s a Spurs supporter

"I have a weird set of loyalties, following England in football and Ireland in rugby"

"Kylie, you are AMAZING!!!"

Look, if these are the worst things that can be said about him, I'll take them. Considering what craven, creepy weirdos most people in British entertainment seem to turn out to be, like.

<quietly>i don't like House of Games</quietly>

Mangan is good on (Portrait|Landscape) Artist of the Year on Sky Arts. but whether he's better than Frank Skinner (who did the early series) is another question.

House of Games very much relies on the personalities of the contestants. If the people are too stupid and/or annoying, we only watch the rounds we really like -- Distinctly Average, Where is Kazakhstan, I'm Terrible at Dating, the music intros round -- and skip the rest. Even if the guests are good, there's a couple of rounds we usually skip. That said, I usually skip the final round on Pointless too, unless it's a category I care about.

Mastermind got weird yesterday. Not seen that happen before. It was all above board wasn't it.

How do you mean?

Everybody tying, the person with the weakest first round winning. I suppose it is possible to have much better general knowledge than for the subject one has crammed for. no closing comment from the winner though maybe having to go for a tie breaker question swallowed that time.
Certainly don't remember seeing the 4 way tie at least numerically
spoilers

Oh, ok, that didn't seem suspicious at all to me.

It's gonna happen at some point, it's been going a long time

almost seemed like she ground to a halt when she hit the score. but maybe she had just revised her subject and left her general knowledge though not sure how you revise that.

If she was able to keep track of her score as she's playing then she's already not paying enough attention to the questions. I've seen people lose from better positions than that through just not having a wide enough general knowledge. Or through nerves. Or all manner of other reasons. You wouldn't even believe the reason I basically bottled it and looked an absolute idiot on telly with the final in my grasp, but it was absolutely above board.

We watched house of games for the first time ever, it was one of the few things not in dutch on the tv in our antwerp holiday flat. (The existing netflix logins had been CANCELLED - 'this device is not in your account plan'.) Anyway I'm not a snob- ok I am a snob but I've enjoyed e.g. pointless, the chase. this was utterly devoid of intellect or entertainment. it was like a show for simpletons and it wasn't even trying to be funny - there were just no jokes, good or bad, no amusing between-rounds chat a la taskmaster.

Well, it really depends on the quality of guest/celeb contestants.

We did play the "House of Games" "board game" version one christmas, and it felt quite natural to take time answering rather than butting in quickly, which is the one thing noteable on the TV show: how they take their time when there's three others who could "get there first"...

I quite like that it's generally comedy-free, there's definitely space in my brain for "quiz show that's boring but watchable and not starring bradley walsh". It does seem like something that should be on a cable channel that's accidentally been transmitted by the BBC.

Speaking of "utterly devoid of entertainment", and I'm not sure if this is the right thread for it, but David Mitchell's Outsiders, the Taskmaskter ripoff, must be one of the worst shows I've ever seen. Consistently unfunny, and it's paced like a home movie, just rambling, and inaudible dialogue, and people giggling at each other's jokes. I've seen Warhol movies with better plots.

outsiders does feel like some stop-gap thing they did during lockdown when people could only meet up if it was outdoors (there's some talk on the "ricky don't..." comedy thread)

can't believe the Osman toleration going on here, we should be tough on Osman and tough on the causes of Osman IMO, in particular his emetically twee detective stories

yeah, but there's none of that on HOG.

Outsiders - is that a challengey thing? it's never been on long enough on my TV to find out...

My mam is always amused when HoG has someone like Mark Billingham or Val McDermid on it. "Oh look at him, all pally with the proper crime writers."

I am actually going to go further and say his books are pretty good and non-emetic. Twee? Sure. But they are for sure better than Mark Billingham's books.

I mean, I also find him offputtingly smug, and would never actively choose to watch HoG, but the books are pretty decent.

lots of football questions this week have boosted my score no end

<quietly>i don't like House of Games</quietly>

Aside from the aforementioned small handful of genuinely good rounds, its appeal mainly lies in feeling like you're much smarter than minor celebs.

someone keeps a list of every single round and all the scores and some of the top names are surprising.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kIJ9TYm2SFDN0UCibSCw01_KqkZH9tMDLwzJs6bCq3g/htmlview#

Angela Barnes
Natasha Raskin Sharp
Ed Gamble
Rob Deering
Simon Hickson
Glenn Moore (R)
Steve Pemberton
Mike Bubbins
Shaun Williamson
Justin Moorhouse

i think that is slightly skewed by the fact that some games score more than others but Angela is the only person so far too win every day. everyone else there is 4 wins and a second assist from glenn who is 4 wins and a 3rd

(actually i think i was pleasantly surprised by Natasha being up there, and not really surprised by Angela)

its appeal mainly lies in feeling like you're much smarter than minor celebs.

And, whoah! Some of them are very minor, aren't they??? Sometimes wonder if their definition of 'comedian' is 'did stand-up once'.

One time only, I'd heard of all four contestants on HoG. Almost fell off the sofa. Usually, first job on hearing the music: press the 'i' button on my remote. Second: Google names.