School's Out
Synopsis
The easiest half hour on television, because you were taught all the answers at school.
Well, Danny Wallace reckons so, anyway. Fortunately it's not quite that easy. That would be a bit dull, and thankfully this show isn't. Far from it.
Three celebs play, introduced with amusing extracts from their school reports. We're pleased to report that the celebs are actually people we've heard of, which makes a nice change. The first round is a "quickfire" general knowledge round, which gets everyone warmed up nicely. For the second round, Danny brings out a fictional school timetable, from which each contestant picks a day, and then gets questions on that day's subjects. "Double periods" indicate a more difficult question for double points. Some of the questions involve films of current school pupils asking questions/setting problems for the celebs and then providing the solutions, which is a nice touch.
The third round brings in a woman named Virginie who tested the celebs on their French to excellent comic effect. It's a bit of a shame that the round tests exactly the same things across the series. However, it is very funny trying to watch the celebs dredge up their French lessons from 15+ years ago and the well-casted teacher is sexy/scary enough to fit the role perfectly. And they have some fun with the subtitles too.
Next is the homework (or project) round, in which the celebs are tested on a subject they have been given in advance. Here's a clever touch: the celebs write their answers on cards, and there's a penalty for writing nothing at all, thus we're at least guaranteed something more amusing than a mere pass. The second series features an introduction to the round by means of a relevant clip from a schools' programme from the 1970's (usually 'Watch'). The clips are worth seeing, if only for a laugh at how amazingly dated they are!
The project round was originally the final round, but with the expanded timeslot for the second series, a new round was added at this point in which the celebs attempt to play recorder alongside the School's Out Orchestra (a group of real schoolchildren). This round has its own running joke with Danny taking "requests" for the song to be played, which is always "Y.M.C.A.".
The top scoring celeb goes on to the endgame, where the timetable comes out again. The celeb goes through the week, answering one question from each day, including at least one double. £300 per correct answer goes to a school of their choice, with an extra £500 bonus (for a conveniently round total of £2000) for getting through the entire week. If there is one criticism here it's that the original 90 second time limit was way too generous (or the questions were a bit peasy) so there was no tension here at all. Fortunately they've addressed this in the second series by shortening the round to 60 seconds, while simultaneously upping the value of each question to £400.
Despite that, the whole thing does work. Danny Wallace is in his element here (certainly far more so than in his primetime debut, the tedious He's Having a Baby), the quiz is neatly constructed, the graphics and production values are very good and, best of all, it's genuinely funny. It is, if you'll pardon the expression, old-school family entertainment in the best sense. And we don't even have to use the "could try harder" line, because actually a lot of the charm of this show is that they don't try too hard. There would surely have been a temptation to do this as a post-watershed show with more "adult" humour, and we suspect that would have ruined it.
Instead, we've got a good-natured and very entertaining half-hour studio-based quiz show in prime family viewing time, and there aren't enough of those. Excellent work.
Trivia
From the "you wait years for one to arrive..." department, this show debuted less than 24 hours after More 4's similarly curriculum-themed That'll Test 'Em. (21, as a matter of fact.)
The motto on the school crest in the series is "Edocere Erudire Delectare", which translates as "To educate, inform and entertain", Lord Reith's statement of intent for the BBC.
Inventor
Hugh Rycroft and Jeremy Salsby
