You may well have noticed that a new quiz show started this week on BBC 2....Revenge of the Egghead. Starring CJ De Mooi as "The Egghead" in question, this airs weeknights at 6pm on BBC 2.
I have caught up with the first two episodes and my general opinion of Revenge of the Egghead is that I certainly won't be sticking with it for very long. The main problem with this show is the fact that it seems nothing but a vehicle for the antics of CJ De Mooi. On his original run in Eggheads he provided good entertainment value, at times, and created himself a somewhat "pantomime villain" persona.
The format of the show is quite simple. CJ takes on 5 players on each episode of Revenge of the Egghead who each begin with two lives. they are asked straight general knowledge questions in turn by Jeremy Vine and each is worth £200. As soon as a player gets a question wrong CJ is given the opportunity to press his buzzer and if he is right, the contestant is then placed on the "hot spot" where they are given a multiple choice question by CJ (who apparently wrote it "himself"). If they fail to get it right they loose a life., loose both lives and they are out.
A claxon sounds towards the end of the game at which point any remaining players face CJ for the money. CJ is given 10 GK questions to answer and the opponents then have to beat his score on 10 different questions.
Revenge of the Egghead after just two episodes is dragging already. The novelty of a new quiz show can usually sustain my interest for at least half a dozen episodes but a number of factors contribute to this being fairly mundance.
Firstly, Revenge of the Egghead lacks the fun, question quality and all round excitement of The Chase. The final portion of Revenge of the Egghead comes no where close to The Final Chase and I can imagine the format will result in some pretty boring games.
CJ himself has totally ramped up the arrogance for the show and it no longer comes across as fun. A number of people have commented on his ability as a quizzer to carry off such a show, especially compared to other quizzers on Eggheads itself and The Chasers, but I shall refrain from that line of thought suffice to say that the show has not really been open to decent quizzers as contestants from the experiences I have heard of.
Overall I cannot really see myself changing my mind on Revenge of the Egghead but I would love to know the thoughts of others on this show?
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ReplyDeleteHi Dan - glad to see you back.
ReplyDeleteSorry - couple of silly typos in the first version of this comment -
As I said in my review in LAM, this isn't really my kind of show anyway. However it is interesting to speculate how much appeal it will have. I do know a significant number of people who used to watch Eggheads mainly to moan about CJ. Whether they'll enjoy this so much without CJ having Daphne to react to, I really don't know.
What is interesting about this show is CJ putting himself on the line in the final part of the show. What I mean by this is that CJ, along with Judith, was often rated one of the weakest Eggheads. He might well take issue with this, but in his own book he does explain how hard he had to work to improve his general knowledge during the show - and full credit to him that he did put in the work. Even so, he still has some weaknesses, and admittedly just on the evidence of the first show on Monday, some glaring weaknesses. He scored 7 out of 10, on a set in which I scored 9, and I reckon any good league quizzer would have had at least 8 on. I've only seen that one show, and maybe he just had a bad day. He still won.
Of course, you make the point that we probably won't be seeing any decent quizzers as contestants. I'll be honest, I haven't heard of anyone's experiences in applying for the show, so I can't really comment. It's not exactly uncommon for prize quiz shows to weed out anyone who might be too good, but I bet at least a couple of teams will win some money during the show's run.
I really don't know if it will catch on our not. On the surface it certainly seems to have some of the ingredients which I think that fans of Eggheads and The Chase like. But as I said in LAM, for all I know the public might well just decide that it's too like one or other, or that it's not enough like ne or other, or that it's just not for them. Time will tell.