Postcode Challenge
Synopsis
Whilst the rest of the ITV network puts up with current affairs (England/Southern Scotland - Tonight with Trevor McDonald, Wales - Wales This Week, Northern Ireland - Insight), viewers in Northern and Central Scotland are treated to this local quiz show on Mondays at 8pm.
24 neighbours from the same or similar postcode are split up into four teams of six to answer general knowledge questions for a cash prize, which is determined in the second half of the show.
The teams are made up of a main contestant ("team captain") and five of their neighbours ("team members"). The captain answers questions directly to Carol whilst the neighbours answer via keypads.
There are four rounds in all with one team knocked out in the first three. In the first, the captains answer multiple-choice questions on keypads. The team members whose captain answered correctly the fastest are then given a multiple choice question of their own, and a majority correct answer on this second part takes the team through to the next round. The second round is the same principle reversed: the team members answer questions on their keypads, and the captains then answer the supplementary question.
The third round is a head-to-head affair in all players answer five multiple-choice questions. Afterwards, the team members are banished from the studio (via a woefully out-of-place Star Trek visual effect) while the captains' right and wrong answers are revealed, and whichever team's captain got fewer right will go home empty-handed.
The winning captain's team then returns to the studio, and go through the money ladder, their progress determined by how many got each successive question right. To progress up the ladder they need at least one person to have got the first answer right, two to have got the second and so on. The highest jackpot prize possible is £25,000 - a decent prize on regional television, it has to be said, though it's unlikely to be won very often and the next rung down is only ten grand. Half of the money goes to the captain whilst the other half is shared amongst the five neighbours.
As with (almost) any format, there's good and bad elements here. On the credit side, it's a properly-intergrated team quiz and not just individuals playing in turn, and the idea of having a captain with special responsibility is a good one. The music is rather generic quiz show fare but at least it's not loaded with fake tension like some (these days, most) game show scores we could mention. On the debit side, Smillie is rather mediocre as a host, the contestant introductions go on for ages (we didn't time it, but we reckon it was about three days) after which the players still feel rather anonymous, and ultimately it's just another drawn-out multiple choice quiz, and haven't we had enough of them for the time being?
All in all, we're split on this show. Some of us think it's OK whilst the rest of us consider it stupendously awful (the ghost of Caledonia MacBrains, anyone?). And on closer detail, it looks as though the thumbs down have it. But at the end of the day, anything's got to be better than a report on some inane topic such as models invisible to the naked eye... with Coleen McCloughlin.
Trivia
Sponsored by The People's Postcode Lottery, already played in the Netherlands and Sweden.
Recorded at BBC Scotland, Pacific Quay, Glasgow - next door to STV!
Web links
Official website - includes details on how to apply for this series.
Pictures
We actually Googled these postcodes to find out who they belonged to. We have no lives.