People's Quiz

Synopsis

Nationwide contest to find the country's leading quiz player and give them £200,700. However - twist ahoy! - all the questions and answers to the initial rounds are published in advance to generate some kind of level playing field. Except not the 200,700 the pre-publicity has led you to believe.

It's The Quiz Factor and pretty much as good as you can imagine that being. In the early audition stages, people were invited to answer ten questions correct in a row. The questions were mainly fired off from researchers, unless you were "a character" in which case you got to face the quiz gods that are William G. Stewart, Myleene Klass and Kate Garraway. And if you were successful when facing a researcher, you got your bit on telly with Kate Garraway's voice overdubbed asking a question. Anyway, success meant going through to the next stage, an edited out telephone qualifier and the successful people from THAT went through to a boot camp stage where they were split into three age groups and individually tested, answering as many questions as they can against the clock. The top eight from each group go forward to the main game proper.

But before the main game proper, the 24 people battled it out in an off-screen fastest finger first competition to determine the order they make it on to the show. Ten people play in each episode, one person from each episode goes through to the final, one is knocked out of the competition completely. That means eight return for another go and two new people join them the next week.

The main studio show has three rounds, of which the first is Only the Strong Survive. Our ten contestants start in the green zone (i.e. their buzzer podium is green). One person is asked a question, if they get it right they nominate the next person to get the next one. If they get it wrong their podium turns red and they're out of the round and the person next to them clockwise faces the next question. After two minutes, whoever is still in the green faces a first on the buzzer question. The correct answer puts them through to the next round. Everyone else is back in play and the game begins again, and continues until four people have qualified.

Those four play the Brain Chain, the Four-in-a-Row round from Going for Gold writ large. The person who qualified for the round first gets to make the decision as to whether to go first or last (strategically it's best to go last) and then the order of play is determined by reverse order of qualification.

Each player is given 90 seconds to get as large a chain as possible of correct answers. However, they must shout "bank", sorry, "save" before the next question is asked to save the chain. A wrong answer breaks the chain and they have to start again from zero. The longest saved chain wins.

Whoever has the longest chain gets to play Do or Die and they must select one of the other nine contestants to take along with them (and in true X Factor) style, the three judges will give their opinion on who the weakest players were. The winner will go through to the final, the loser is knocked out of the competition for good. The winner of the main game will pick first from twelve categories - behind five of them is a Q, the other seven nothing. A buzzer question is asked on the category, whoever gets it correct gets to find out if there's a Q behind the category. If there is, they're one-third the way to ultimate victory. If not, never mind, pick another category and try again. The first to win 3 Qs is the winner.

It's a surprise the haven't figured in some way to put in a phone vote element, really. Although rather less surprising when you note they've recorded all the episodes except the final in advance.

Whatsmore! One of the final places will be determined by a sister "Wildcard" show.

"Let's play for the wildcard."

What to do when you have a slightly ponderous Saturday-night quiz which due to its format you can't possibly stop showing before its really rather long run finishes? Why, you devise a sister show to take up half an hour of prime BBC Two early-evening real estate, of course!

The premise of the People's Quiz Wildcard show is to give those of us who failed at, or didn't bother to turn up to, the exciting nationwide auditions for the National Lottery People's Quiz another chance at getting a place in the grand final and just maybe winning the £200,700 grand prize. Will it uncover the Goran Ivanisevic of the middle-brow quizzing world?

Here's the format. It's a bit complicated; bear with us. The idea is to win a round of quizzing, hence becoming the champion, and then to win as many more rounds as possible, hopefully building up an unassailable score and becoming one of the five highest-scoring champions who at the end of the series play for the wildcard place in the People's Quiz grand final. So, the pool of nine waiting players is asked a multiple-choice question, answering on keypads. The two quickest correct answers are introduced to us via an astonishingly irritating voiceover which, as well as the standard information, also gives us their 'Quiz Credential' and 'Wildcard Fact'. Joy. Which of them will face the current champion is decided by the previous champions, in whose interests it is to pick the most formidable-looking opponent, that the champion might be defeated and hence prevented from winning more rounds than they have. Those who don't get the chance to play in one show return the next day, with new blood added to fill the gaps (except at the end of each week, when they all clear off to make way for nine new contestants – so bad luck to you if you join on a Friday).

The quizzing duels follow the ever-popular, if blatantly unfair, last-person-to-answer-incorrectly-loses mechanic. Beginning with the challenger, the players are asked ninety seconds of rapid-fire questions, with a wrong answer passing control to the other player. Whoever is in control when the time elapses is the winner; the loser leaves the show, unless they've won enough rounds already to join the previous champions. Interestingly, if a player doesn't know the answer, they can pass control voluntarily to their opponent in the hope that they get it wrong and control is passed straight back. What's baffling, however, is that this option is taken by saying "switch", while saying "pass" is taken as an incorrect answer. Why anybody would therefore pass on a question is unclear, but under the pressure they sometimes do.

One cycle takes about five minutes, so with this repeating for half an hour every day for several weeks, things get a tad repetitive and about a hundred rounds will have been played before the end of proceedings.

The game throws up some interesting tactics. (Interesting when compared to the tactics we're used to at six o'clock on BBC Two anyway: "Well, it's worked so far, so I think I'll go first, Dermot.") For instance, when the current champion has overtaken the scores of the previous champions, it becomes in their interests to choose weak opposition for the current champion who, being ahead of them anyway, can't harm their chances of finishing in the top five, but can act as a kind of filibuster to stop anyone new threatening their places. If a champion appears unassailable, and is near the ten wins after which they retire, should the waiting contestants perhaps get the qualifying questions wrong on purpose, biding their time until the way is clear for them to have a good run themselves? Luckily, they don't do this, since it would grind the show to an embarrassing halt.

The final episode disappointingly consisted of more of the same quizzing duels, with the reigning champion at the end of the regular shows facing off against the fifth-place previous champion, then the winner of this playing against the fourth-place finisher, and so on up to the match against the first-place contestant, the winner of which receives the wildcard slot in the main show's final. (The same idea as one of the rounds in short-lived Channel 4 quizzer Number One, fact fans.) In a sop to fairness, initial control in these duels was decided with a question on the buzzer (normally an outrageous swerve), but as proceedings got nearer to the giant cash prize on offer for the winner, the iniquities in the format only seem more important.

Notable by their absence from the lowly Wildcard show are the 'Quiz Gods' from the main Saturday programme. As it turns out, Jamie Theakston can read out questions perfectly well on his own thanks very much. Not having Myleene Klass's expert opinion on quiz matters interjected into proceedings mean each show gets through the questions at a fair lick, one of the plus points of the show. In fact, the whole affair rattles along quite amiably really. The banter from the previous champions makes a change from William G. Stewart's faux-misogyny, and half an hour is much more bearable than the fifty-five minutes the main show is stretched to. Just get rid of that voiceover for the next series. What's that? There's not? Oh, never mind then.

Champion

Stephanie Bruce

Alan Morgan (Wildcard)

Music

James T. Lundie

Trivia

After the opening episodes received a critical slating, The National Lottery removed its name from the programme's titles, and pulled its draws from the show. The show's website began to give recaps of each episode, but these stopped after three games.

Web links

People's Quiz website

Wikipedia entry

See also

Weaver's Week review and final review

Weaver's Week "Wildcard" review

The National Lottery Live

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