Matthew eats… University Challenge

University Challenge is a television institution. It feels like it would be a true sign of end times if it was ever axed. Of course, it once was for a brief time, and I can only imagine the horrors that swirled around.

To add to its gravitas, it had only ever had two hosts; Bamber Gascoigne and then Jeremy Paxman, both doing the jobs for decades. For Paxman, his encroaching Parkinson’s disease saw him finally bow out in 2023. His replacement is Amol Rajan. He has now had almost a full run to bed in, so how is he doing?

Ok, let’s start with the positives. His arrival hasn’t led to a change in format, as that would be sacrilege. We do have a new set, which initially looked alarmingly 80’s but has now settled. He is an eloquent questioner, managing to avoid Paxman’s mangled pronunciations of scientific terms. We also see a splash of his private passions – bonus rounds on jazz or hip hop see him brighten up considerably.

And now the negatives. In early episodes, he rushed through the questions. Thankfully they were basic enough in the early rounds for the viewer to just about cope, but it did skew some of the opening matches, allowing the losing team a better opportunity to secure one of the top 4 runner-up spots then those who came later down the line when the pace had settled. His attempts at banter also fall flat; Paxman got away with it by presenting himself as some dowdy headmaster being exasperated by a particularly wasteful child. Rajan seems to think he can still pass for being a student himself and that he is in some glorified Student Union bar.

Having said that, he has grown on me. Although the transition isn’t faultless, he hasn’t ruined (or even tarnished) the show. Rather like a monarch new to the throne, he has made a wise move in grasping that the institution is bigger than him. Will it be a decades-long tenure? Who knows. But if he continues to mature into the role, it would be a shame for it not to be.

Matthew eats… Bullshit

I don’t envy anyone trying to invite a new quiz show format. It feels like everything has been done, with either ever-escalating prize money or increasingly niche concepts. And then there is where to pitch your general knowledge level required. Do you go basic or highbrow?

So kudos then to Netflix’s Bullshit, which seems just original enough to cut through. The concept is that a contestant answers 10 questions to win $1 million dollars. Except the questions are quite hard – some you might know, but to have the knowledge span necessary is impossible. But the key isn’t knowing the answer – it’s convincing your opponents you do.

You see, there are three other players trying to take your spot. They are asked after each question if they believe you really know it or are ‘bullshitting’. If you do know the answer, no problem, regardless if they believe you or not you can face the next question. But if you are wrong, and all three say you are wrong, you are out.

So what’s to stop your opponents calling you out every time in the hope you are right? Well they will only be next to play if they have made the most accurate guesses as to if you are telling the truth or not. So if they believe you are telling the truth, then they have the incentive to back you. Essentially, this is poker in quiz show format, where you can either choose to fold or go all in on your gut instinct in whether someone is as smart as they say they are.

I am quite simply hooked. The viewer can essentially play two games at once, one as the contestant answering and bluffing their way through the questions, another as the opponent trying to suss whether the contestant is bluffing.

Any drawbacks? Well as a Brit, there is the slight overbearingness that American game show contestants can have, with everybody so intense. Having said that, I think far fewer Brits would have the gall to bluff strangers. Still, it would be fun to see someone give it a whirl. As concepts go, it is refreshingly strong. Or is this just a bluff?

Matthew eats… Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

At the turn of the century, the biggest show on TV was no doubt Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Millions were hooked by a deceptively simple format – answer 15 general knowledge and get a million pounds. You had help along the way but it was limited. Drama was cranked up by the host and the first time someone won the million it felt like a landmark moment.

Then it faded. People got bored of it, and attempts to liven it up only made it worse. The introduction of a timer on the opening questions and trimming back of them felt like an unnecessary fast forward to the tenser points. People no longer had that period of calm that the first few questions gave you. Also, the ‘switch’ lifeline, where you could change the entire question, felt like a cop out. The whole point of a quiz is to show what you don’t know as much as what you do.

But now it is back, in largely its original form. Chris Tarrant has been replaced by Jeremy Clarkson and there is a new ‘Ask the Host’ lifeline. But the race against time has gone, as has the switch lifeline.

I got surprisingly addicted to it all over again. It helped that the first player was incredibly smart, although I felt a high level of smug of knowing the £500,000 question when she didn’t. Having said that, her knowledge of Greek mythology was far superior to mine. But that is the joy of a quiz, you switch from feeling the smartest person in the world to the dumbest.

I also warmed surprisingly to Clarkson as host. He is more scathing than Tarrant, yet gets away with it by staying just on the right side of wit. He is also surprisingly warm and generous with his support when he needs to be.

In some respects it is a shame they stripped the show over the course of an entire week instead of maybe showing a couple of episodes over a number of weeks. It meant I wasn’t able to watch all of them and lost the narrative of some of the players, which is always a problem for the obsessive viewer like me. There is now reason why they couldn’t do say an episode twice a week for six weeks or so, or even just one for roughly 10.

I have fallen back in love with it anyway. Maybe on a dark, cold night where nothing else is on (Wednesdays in particular look sparse for me) I might catch up with the few I missed. And who knows, I might even apply myself. I could use a few grand.

Matthew eats… Only Connect and University Challenge

There are always accusations that TV is dumbing down. In fact, even the concept of TV itself was seen as such. When you consider the amount of reality and constructed reality TV shows out there, it is hard to deny yourself from agreeing with the charges being laid down. I doubt John Logie Baird envisioned shows like Celebs Go Dating or Tattoo Fixers when he invented the TV.

But to make the case for guilty you have to ignore the plethora of intelligent dramas, genuinely eye-wateringly good documentaries and even a recent upswing in quality in comedy. That’s not to say there isn’t dross – there certainly is – but it is balanced by high quality, if you know where to look.

Take quiz shows. Yes, there is the banality of Tipping Point and the ilk, but it banish this drama is to ignore two brilliant ones – Only Connect and University Challenge. The former is a fiendish test of lateral thinking that requires a wider breadth of knowledge, even a strong understanding of pop culture is needed. One episode seamlessly included a question of Alexis Carrington’s husband on Dynasty. The latter is a more straightforward general knowledge quiz, but one dominated by high culture. People who don’t know their Venus’s from their Aphrodite’s, or their Rembrandt from their Vermeer, need not apply.

Putting the two on side-by-side is a genius move, an hour of either revelling in your own intelligence or being struck by those of others. Everybody has one they prefer – UC is more in my lane in types of question, although I prefer the style of presenting of OC – but the two camps are rarely at war.

They are two related yet different beasts. I see them as a pair of maiden aunts. University Challenge is the one who can quote Paradise Lost and spends her weekends at museums, and has a strong snobbery towards pop culture but will dip her toe into it just so she can complain about its existence more accurately. Only Connect meanwhile is the one who indulges in a liquid lunch and has no qualms about watching a bit of Made In Chelsea and listening to Drake, but has the bad habit of being a bit of a flirt. Both see themselves as the matriarch of the family, and everybody humours each one by saying she is.

I do think University Challenge could learn from Only Connect in terms of presentation and attitude. Victoria Coren Mitchell genuinely loves the teams who are playing and the questions, revelling in everything the show does. There are even sing-a-longs and questions about celebrity marriages. University Challenge seems almost staid in comparison. The prevailing snobbery towards pop culture means popular music questions are all but non-existent by the quarter finals, and there is an obsession with classical literature that will always favour the private/public school educated over the comprehensive. Jeremy Paxman could do with dialling back the sneering as well.

Both in their own way reward the smart and knowledgeable. Anybody who believes in an active mind will delight in them as a relief against the soaps that compete in the timeslots against them. They will always cult obsessions, but they were always intended to be. But what a happy cult we are.