Thursday 22 June 2006

Tasty TV - Quiz Shows

Quiz shows (Part 1)
(n.) The perennial plant of the TV garden.
Currently dear viewers there are a narrow, but generally high level of quality quiz shows to service our trivial needs.
The king, without doubt, is Sale of the Century (M-F 9 7P) (I know its "Temptation" but who is kidding whom?). TV Tasty still turns on Sale occasionally to fill the 7pm gap and if you can grit your teeth as needed for Ed on occasion, it's still a fine bit of TV crumpet for what it is. And if you're like TV Tasty (well I guess you can dream) you have the nights where you run red hot and think "I should go on this show! Where did I put Skinny Nixon's number? Perhaps John So can text it to me"; and then you have the nights when you think, "Have I developed Alzheimer's?"; and THEN you have the worst nights when you realise, "I am being given a trivia pasting by my Significant Other".
I draw our attention this week however to a newer set of Quiz shows. I speak of the "Einstein Factor" (Sun 2 630P), "Rock Kwiz" and "Spicks and Specks" (Wed 2 830P). TV Tasty says make sure you have a look at any of these three that you haven't yet sampled. There could be a quiz on it next week.

TV Tasty Knows Pick of the Week:
Clearing a swathe through most of the sad offerings, I draw your attention to "West Wing" (Thur 2 830P).
Yes, it is a sugary sweet idealistic soap on one level with dialogue that would never actually happen, let alone in an office or the White House where everyone shares the same brand of dry humour. On another level though it offers some decent brain food, well drawn characters, hypothetical situations that are involving, production values as lush as you'd find and the drama unfolding like a warm blanket. The repeats currently being shown on the ABC are without ad breaks and the 1.5 hours uninterrupted really does justice to the writing, acting and very snappy dialogue. If you can shout yourself the time, you will be rewarded.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Has anyone been watching Sale the past couple of nights? The current champ has an amazing grasp of general knowledge, plus she knows a lot of popular culture questions. She's not ridiculously pre-empting (which might be her undoing), but she knew an answer to an extremely obscure question; "What did the N stand for on the inscription on Jesus's cross?" (part of INRI) to which the answer is Nazareth. How she knew this without having a theological degree astounds me. But even more impressive is that this was one of the questions that they ask in the end bit - "get 10 questions right and get $50,000", when the pressure is really on. How she pulled that one off I'll never know.