The Quizeum
Contents |
Host
Griff Rhys Jones
Co-hosts
Regular panelists: Janina Ramirez, Lars Tharp, Kate Williams
Broadcast
Modern Television for BBC Cymru Wales, shown on BBC Four, 25 March 2015 to present
Synopsis
Two teams of expert panelists are taken round the country's greatest museums. They play games and take challenges inspired by the wonders around them.
Filmed in the actual museum, The Quizeum asks experts to look at objects in the collection, and tell us something about the item. What was it used for? Where does it come from? When was it made, how was it made?
Yep, this programme spends half-an-hour talking about the most interesting objects in a museum. There are ways to break up the show - one round is a Call My Bluff contest, picking between two unlikely attributions, and another round sends the teams on a Treasure Hunt quest to locate an object from a written clue.
Various antiquities are gathered at the table.
As a quiz, it's weak: Griff Rhys Jones awards points at random, and there's no proper competition between the sides. This isn't fatal, early series of The Book Quiz were just as louche with the points, and far more watchable than the stern quiz.
Mostly, The Quizeum is half-an-hour of art historians enthusing about these old relics. The consensus was that they were a bit too enthusiastic, the pace never lets up and - unlike Antiques Roadshow - we viewers never get a moment to contemplate the art on display.
Continuity between episodes was provided by regular panelists - we wouldn't catch all of Janina Ramirez, Lars Tharp and Kate Williams on the same episode, but one or two appeared all through the series.
Inventor
Griff Rhys Jones, credited as "The Quizeum Curator".
Web links
See also
Codex, which played games inspired by the artefacts rather than discussing them in detail.
