Fifteen to One

Fifteen to One returned to our screens on Saturday. Despite being advertised for a Monday return I assume that Channel 4 were hoping for a mass carry on audience from the Grand National as Sandy Toksvig fronted the first episode of the rebirth of Fifteen to One in that slot. The show now runs for 60 minutes and is run in the same format as the William G Stewart Era.

So is it good to have Fifteen to One back?

I think the main idea here is that it was very unlikely that the remake was ever going to recapture the original. It was more of a case of how close could it get to being a top notch tea time quiz show. The answer? Pretty close!

It will take time to settle in but the over riding impression I got from the firs episode of Fifteen to One was it was too long. The first 25 minutes, including 2 add breaks, dragged with 90% of the questions being chestnuts. The other 10% were "stoppers"...hard questions thrown into the mix which made you feel a tad sorry for the contestants lumbered with the toughies.

The show certainly became more engrossing in the second half and the final battle between the three contestants was very fun indeed. Fifteen to One in the 60 minute format suddenly shoots to life after 30 minutes. That is not to say there aren't plenty of questions as there are and the talk with contestants isn't overly long. You still could easily chop another 15 minutes off this without loosing any questions or quality.

In all I was fairly happy with the show and will stick with Fifteen to One of course as there were plenty of questions I didn't know and also gained some new areas to explore in my revision. My one worry is that this will be lost when running against the current big hitters of The Chase and Pointless but hopefully not! Where else could it be scheduled though? 6-7pm to run against a ratings-falling Eggheads? That would make more sense to me!

Finally, one of the plus points of this show is going to be seeing the masses of folk from the quiz world who have applied. Already one show one Nic Mortimer stormed to an impressive victory showing not only great knowledge but also great game playing. Anthony Fish was a little hard done by but the game is there to be won and Nic very much deserved his Fifteen to One to win. Fingers cross that he makes the final!

Let's see what the next few weeks brings.....