Friday night’s new big-money quiz show One Question (Channel 4) has a tantalisingly simple concept – answer a single question and win £100,000.
Of course, it isn’t as easy as that, with contestants given 20 possible (and plausible) answers which they must narrow down to the correct one.
They can ask host Claudia Winkleman for clues or lifelines along the way but that will eat into their prize pot.
Many modern quizzes … have rules so complicated you almost need a degree in mathematics to keep up.
On the positive side, I appreciated that the concept could be grasped within seconds of hearing it.
Many modern quizzes have a tendency to have rules so complicated you almost need a degree in mathematics to keep up. One Question’s ‘Answer this, win that’ idea felt almost daring in its simplicity.
Unfortunately, that’s where my positivity ended.
The scourge of modern-day quiz shows
What I didn’t count on was how mind-numbingly tedious it would be watching contestants try to answer a single general knowledge question.
Basing a quiz on a single brainteaser sounds great on paper, but how do you fill an hour-long time slot?
What One Question has done to pad it out is the scourge of modern-day quiz shows – the need for contestants to overexplain every… single… one of their answers ad nauseam.
In the past, contestants would simply shrug and say ‘dunno’ or ‘pass’ if they were stumped.”
In the past, they’d simply shrug and say “dunno” or “pass” if they were stumped.
These days, viewers are treated to the backstory of why they’re clueless or why they know a bit of general knowledge.
The show gets even more drawn out if you’re clever enough to know the correct answer from the start because then you have to sit through about 30 minutes of contestants inanely discussing 19 wrong answers.
Sure, they might win £100,000, but I’ve lost something much more valuable – the will to live.