Only Connect Page 49

All light entertainment shows search desperately for a hook to define themselves with and this is theirs, depressingly. They've got a few, odd bios of the nerds playing, getting them to sing. Like in Pointless these hooks have got much longer as it's gone on, the presenters usually want to show off more or just take over. But yes this editors thing they've settled on is embarrassingly bad, it doesn't help that Victoria, as good as she is, doesn't quite have the charisma she seems to think she has. Paxo wouldn't let it happen on UC a proper quiz show.

Quote: Kenneth @ 30th January 2019, 12:00 PM

Memo to the producers of Only Connect: Stop the two question editors from shoehorning their names into Victoria's opening and closing banter. It's cringe-worthy and lame. No one gives a f**k who they are. The jokey references to them are neither clever nor amusing. Every time their names are mentioned it's like the show is being shat on. If they are so desperate for glory, put them in a little sound-proof, and preferably air-proof, adjudication box.

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I'm guessing it's not them writing them but her, it sounds like her platitudinous style, but of course they could edit them out if they wanted.

Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 31st January 2019, 4:49 AM

But yes this editors thing they've settled on is embarrassingly bad, it doesn't help that Victoria, as good as she is, doesn't quite have the charisma she seems to think she has.

I'm guessing it's not them writing them but her, it sounds like her platitudinous style, but of course they could edit them out if they wanted.

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Yes, dead pan maybe alright for poker playing but it leaves her delivery dead in the water - as the tumbleweed rolls by (can you get it on water?) and a church bell tolls mournfully in the distance.

There were none of these "extras" when I started supplying questions, but I noticed it start to build up (the editors?) and now it is a request (not an enforced requirement) that you supply the trivia that she uses after each Connection. Of course, if you DO supply the trivia your question is more likely to be used in borderline cases say with another question supplier. Now it seems it has extended to a jolly at the end of the programme, which suggests to me that it IS the editors that are supplying it - I haven't been asked!!

Speaking of editors, I also notice that ALL THREE previous ones are now suppliers of questions, and along with the regular names that appear in the closing titles you see what I mean about "The Clique", because I think some of the Connections used of late have been too specialist or absolute crap - yet when I supply them they have to abide by the "unwritten rules", which pisses me off severely.

Double standards abound!!

Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 31st January 2019, 4:49 AM

All light entertainment shows search desperately for a hook to define themselves with and this is theirs, depressingly. They've got a few, odd bios of the nerds playing, getting them to sing. Like in Pointless these hooks have got much longer as it's gone on, the presenters usually want to show off more or just take over. But yes this editors thing they've settled on is embarrassingly bad, it doesn't help that Victoria, as good as she is, doesn't quite have the charisma she seems to think she has. Paxo wouldn't let it happen on UC a proper quiz show.

I'm guessing it's not them writing them but her, it sounds like her platitudinous style, but of course they could edit them out if they wanted.

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Shaun Pye co-writes her odd closing remarks I think? I agree that they are too meta to be amusing.

Every TV and radio programme is broadcast in the hope and expectation that a certain type of person will enjoy it.

I'm not sure who "Only Connect" is aimed at.

Broadly speaking, it's aimed at the highly intelligent viewer but that is speaking very broadly indeed.

Taking a somewhat narrower view, it's clearly aimed at highly intelligent people who are not appalled by the pretentiousness of the category headings, who find Victoria's introductory remarks amusing and who are able to resist the temptation to hang themselves (or at least change channels) as she introduces the contestants, and who are temperamentally unlikely to search out her address and go round and murder her for having the contestants sing excerpts of songs that happen to be mentioned during the course of the quiz. Why the blankety blanking blank she does that is totally, absolutely and utterly beyond me.

The questions themselves are well worth tuning in for but the programme as a whole is reminiscent of the sort of thing the very worst programme planners at the BBC used to come up with in the days before ITV was invented.

Someone at the BBC needs to take "Only Connect" by the scruff of the neck and drag it through the second half of the 20th Century into the 21st.

Strewth mate, no worries with the questions and the dubious adjudications and the singalongs. It's just the bookends banter of "our question editors Marmaduke McDingleberry and Hugh Waddingcombe-Smythe (ot whatever their names are)" is so irksome. Almost has me longing to hear Richard Osman saying "hiya".

Quote: TheBlueNun @ 31st January 2019, 4:18 PM

Shaun Pye co-writes her odd closing remarks I think? I agree that they are too meta to be amusing.

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Wha? Do tell.

Surely there's no reason why funny things can't be meta?

Quote: Paul Wimsett @ 1st February 2019, 10:49 AM

Surely there's no reason why funny things can't be meta?

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Surely indeed.

However, nobody has suggested that funny things can't be meta: the suggestion was that Victoria's remarks were too meta to be amusing.

Similarly, to describe something as being "too close for comfort" is not to suggest that nothing comfortable can exist in one's immediate proximity.

Equally similarly, to describe something as being "too good to be true" is not to suggest that nothing that is true can also be good.

I rest my case.

Quote: Rood Eye @ 1st February 2019, 12:34 PM

Surely indeed.

However, nobody has suggested that funny things can't be meta: the suggestion was that Victoria's remarks were too meta to be amusing.

Similarly, to describe something as being "too close for comfort" is not to suggest that nothing comfortable can exist in one's immediate proximity.

Equally similarly, to describe something as being "too good to be true" is not to suggest that nothing that is true can also be good.

I rest my case.

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'KIN HELL. You a barrister or summat? (You lost me after "However,...................")

It seems to me that she's trying to mimic the "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" formula with her derogatory comments, as chairperson, about the show, her "Let's meet the teams" after a jokey introduction, her bringing in jokes on a regular basis involving Michael Portillo (a la Lionel Blair) and her convoluted tv/radio show announcement at the end (last week's, having just caught up with it following a 10 day sojourn in Tenerife, was "coming up next is another of Michael Portillo's chat shows in which he interviews a famous British ex-pat who's visiting from abroad. This week Ben Elton's here from his home in Australia. That's Michael Portillo Ben,s Over next on BBC2")

As long as she's not shoehorning the question editors' names into her bantz, no worries. Although I do sometimes, skip straight to "on my right..." Sometimes, of late, the scripting of the bantz seems very laboured.

Quote: Kenneth" Post ="1198468" date="12th February 2019, 11:54 PM

I do sometimes, skip straight to "on my right..."

I record it and always skip straight to the first question. I have no interest in the contestants as they all appear to have been cloned from somebody totally uninteresting.

I watch the Connections round and the Sequences round, then I delete it before the Connecting Wall appears.

I don't like the Connecting Wall: it's like a game of Hungry Hippos - frantic fun for the players but next-door-to-f***-all fun for spectators.

Quote: Kenneth @ 12th February 2019, 11:54 PM

Although I do sometimes, skip straight to "on my right..." Sometimes, of late, the scripting of the bantz seems very laboured.

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I do that all the time now and on to the first question as I find I have absolutely no interest in the cringeworthy intros., which are becoming tiresome and yes, she is not a natural - unlike her father and perhaps that is the problem - she thinks a gift of the gab is a given.

SPOILER ALERT

I'm sure Chappers tagged on the end of a post asking if any of my questions were on their last night, and the answer is yes, BUT YET AGAIN (Grrrrrr) they slightly altered the two they used.

Not going to be able to explain it without, if anybody hasn't watched it yet.

The Beatles one I had the initial letters of their names reversed whereas they changed it to shifting the initial letter along one - for the life of me I cannot see why and I think it spoiled it as my first two were Rohn and Gaul, which was a sort of red herring in suggesting it might have been about ancient names/areas of the world.

Then we come to the number of "i" sequence in the US states. For some reason they decided to number them 1,2,3 & 4, which in my eyes made it too easy. Yes/No? Would my original have been too hard? I don't think so when you see some of the really arcane questions or you need to be a professor of everything.

Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 5th March 2019, 7:19 AM

SPOILER ALERT

The Beatles one I had the initial letters of their names reversed whereas they changed it to shifting the initial letter along one - for the life of me I cannot see why

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I also fail to see why they changed it. It made the question unusually and unnecessarily difficult.

Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 5th March 2019, 7:19 AM

SPOILER ALERT

Then we come to the number of "i" sequence in the US states. For some reason they decided to number them 1,2,3 & 4, which in my eyes made it too easy. Yes/No? Would my original have been too hard?

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Numbering them certainly made it easier. Leaving the clues unnumbered would have made it a better question - more difficult but by no means more difficult than is usual on "Only Connect".