Weaver's Week 2009-11-08

Yes, Zoe Ball is back on the magic tellybox, for the first time in far too many years. She's working with Jamie Theakston, who has fronted two of our favourite one-series wonders during the current decade: Beg, Borrow or Steal and The Search deserved far longer runs than they got. Jamie and Zoe were almost inseparable in the late 1990s, when they hosted Live and Kicking, and then went on to celebrity chat show The Priory.

In this quiz, the objective is to find the person who is best at doing those mildly diverting little brain teasers on a certain hand-held computer thingummy. However, watching people playing computer games only just worked on Gamesmaster, and we can be sure that neither Dominik Diamond nor Patrick Moore wanted anything to do with this show. Instead, the players are given silly things to do, and some of them are set to music – a tinkly jingle plays at the start and end of each part.

Well, maybe not. Five contestants appear on the set, and our hosts talk to three of them. Which three? It doesn't matter, the others will have a quick chat before the opening round, which we're running into at a rate of knots.

Round one is Calculation, and (according to the scientific burble that accompanies the show) is designed to test the part of brain that focusses on mathematical operations. In turn, the contestants sit in an orange chair that goes round and over their heads. Have we suddenly tuned into Zoe's previous series Class Of... Design School 1966 by mistake? No, because this chair is a bit special. It contains some speakers: out of some will come voices speaking numbers and mathematical operations, out of the others will come some "distracting" music. Do people really perform worse when they're hearing oompah bands play down their lugholes? Anyway, the contestants get ten sums, and three seconds to answer each puzzle. Correct answers earn points, and these are totalled up on the Brain Score Board at the end of the round.

Next comes the show's recurring challenge, the Co-ordination round. At various intervals throughout the show, each of the contestants will invited to turn a digital eggtimer so that all of the virtual "sand" runs from the top to the bottom. Simple, just put the white bit at the top and the blue bit at the bottom. The special difficulty is that the contestant has to do this while strapped to a gyroscope that's spinning and turning them all the while. A perfect performance will see the sand drain in 20 seconds, and that's worth 300 points; the points drain away to zero if the task's not complete after 90 seconds.

Only one player does this before round three, the Memory round. This tests the bit of the brain that does something or other, we know they said what but we can't remember. This round falls into three segments. In part one, the contestants are shown ten pairs of pictures: someone who claims to be a famous celebrity (though we only recognise about half of these people) and a regular inanimate object. The challenge is to remember the pairs, and associate two people with their nominated object. Four questions like this, 20 points available, and 5 seconds to think.

Two more contestants play the gyroscope thing either side of the commercial break, and there's a trick question for viewers to ponder while fast forwarding through the adverts. Then it's into round four, recognition. This one falls into two parts. Part one asks the players to identify three shapes they see in a picture from eight possibilities. Some of the shapes are similar, but not the same. Three questions in this part, 60 points per question, and ten seconds to answer.

The second part is spot-the-difference. Rather than have the two pictures appear on screen side by side, the two are shown one after each other, with a brief period of grey screen between the two, so that it's not entirely obvious. Just two of these differences, again 60 points at stake, ten seconds to retrieve some of them.

Almost inevitably, round five – Risk – comes at the end. It makes sure the show goes out with a bang, by inflating a weather balloon until it bursts. With a literal bang. Literally. Everyone in the studio is issued with ear defenders, the contenders are given goggles and earplugs to wear, and Jamie and Zoe retreat behind a thick plastic screen. The contestants must stand around the balloon, keeping their thumb on a button until they think it's fit to burst. The contenders are given guidance on how much air the balloons take on average, and how much previous balloons have taken.

As in the other rounds, there are 300 points up for grabs: anyone holding their button when the balloon bursts gets nothing, the players who released score based on the ratio of when they went compared to when the balloon burst. For instance, if the balloon goes pop on 6000 litres and a contender lets go on 5000, they score 5000/6000*300 = 240 points. Simple. So simple that it's beneath the viewers.

However, there are little things that we think stand to be improved. It's right to place the gyroscope challenge in little bits through the show, but we don't reckon it actually makes any sort of good television: the gyrocam is just a blur, the long shots don't show the egg-timer in enough detail to see how the contestant's faring. Nor are we convinced by the final round, it's almost as if they had drawn "Zoe and Jamie", "Promote the sponsor's product", and "Have a gimmicky ending" from the format tombola.

Psychologists will no doubt have something to say about the theories expounded by Britain's Best Brain. This column knows next-to-nothing about psychology, and we will not expound on topics we know so little about. We do know something about game shows, and this is a good – but not utterly outstanding – example.

We begin with City of the Week, St Louis. Word of the Week follows in the next starter, it's "Crack", and the Girton side secures a full house on tongue-in-cheek mini biogs of English monarchs. Fact we didn't know: turquoise takes its name from Turkey, where it was originally found. Geekery of the Weekery comes in the phrase "Your bonuses are on the physics of Star Trek". The first visual round is of teachers of Defences Against the Dark Arts in the Harry Potter movies. It's all Greek to us, but not to Allanah Brown-Kerr, who has helped Girton to a 100-0 lead.

St George's tip off with the next starter, remembering (inter alia) that ε is the fifth Greek letter. There's no escape from the stars of Only Connect, a show where they tend not to have runs of four questions that completely fox the panel. Thumper can get as worked up as he likes that people don't know doggerel, it won't help at all. Nor will giving quotes that are unfavourable to the humble pun. We're impressed that St George's remembers the phrase "information superhighway", which enjoyed a brief vogue of popularity in February 1994. Thumper's prejudice that no-one reads "the nonsense" of Marshall McLuhan any more is confirmed as St George's record nul point on a set of bonuses about his writing. The audio round is on animals from Carnival of the Animals, and takes Girton's lead back up to 115-50.

The stars of The OC return by tracing out a capital delta (Δ) on the map of Europe, and it helps St George's pull within ten points. They tie the game with the next starter, a musical term, but fail to take advantage of the bonuses. Who wrote "Ecce homo"? It takes forever to dredge this out of the collective memory, but it falls to Girton's knowledge banks. We're impressed that people remember the biblical character of Ruth from her mother-in-law, Naomi; less so that St George's only seem to know one French river – it comes right in the end, and the sides are level.

St George's re-take the lead with the next starter, but again fail to take advantage of the bonuses. Again, Girton take the next starter, and the first bonus puts them in the lead. Indeed, they get all three, so St George's needs two correct answers. A missignal is precisely what they don't need, they do get another starter as Mr. Tilling sounds like he's gonna blow, the gong sounds, and Girton has won, 170-160.

Phew. Where did Girton go right? A decent bonus conversion rate – 16/27, no missignals, and four starters from Becca Cawley. St George's got one more starter, but their bonus conversion rate was only 11/30. Jonathan Sturgeon answered five starters correctly. The overall correctness rate: 47/85.