Weaver's Week 2025-02-09

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What were we doing at 10.31 on the morning of New Year's Day 2018?

[checks diary] Nursing a hangover, same procedure as every year. We certainly weren't setting a meme in motion.

Contents 1 Pictionary 1.1 Whisper North and Paramount Global Content Distribution for ITV, 23 December 2024 – 5 February 2025 2 University Challenge second round stats blast 3 In other news 3.1 Quizzy Mondays

Pictionary

Whisper North and Paramount Global Content Distribution for ITV, 23 December 2024 – 5 February 2025

The show where Mel Giedroyc invites players to draw something. No, not Draw It!, the other one. No, no, waistcoats away, that was Win, Lose or Draw.

There's absolutely no messing about on this show: Mel delivers a short line to camera, we get the shortest title sequence in history (literally the letters of "Pictionary" forming up) and then we're into the programme. She explains the rules:

One person draws, and their team-mates try and guess what it is. And at the end, the team with the most points goes on to play for up to £1000 and a holiday. Woo!

Team captains for our sample show are Scarlett Moffatt and Jeff Brazier, a pair of familiar faces who have been on a lot of telly shows over the past decade and more. Each captain's joined by two members of the public who have applied as a pair – two sisters, or a romantic couple. Other captains include comedians Angela Scanlon and Brian Conley, sports folk Jeanette Kwakye and Eddie Kadi, and established stars Denise Van Outen and Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen.

Round one is "sketch or steal". In turn, one of the players steps up to Mel's podium, where there's an electronic tablet for them to draw. What's on the tablet appears on a video screen above the drawer's head. Fifteen seconds to convey an idea or thing, and 100 points if the team can name the thing on the card within the time – with as many guesses as they can fit in. Run out of time, the opponents can pilfer half the points with their one guess.

Things you find around the home is the first category. On the signal, Scarlett begins to draw: a long rectangle, then a curl coming out of the top, a cross-piece on the curl. "Sink!" shouts one of her team – and it's right! One hundred points safely in the bank.

And play passes to the next team. Mel begins every round with the show's best attempt at a catchphrase, "Fifteen seconds on the clock. Ready? Sketch!" What is that thing: washing machine? Oven? No, it's a dial – clock, kitchen timer? Thermostat!

Six of these things you might find around the home, a wide variety of drawing abilities, a wide range of drawing styles. Then we get a quick look at the scores. And then we're into round two. The points are doubled, the idea remains the same: 200 for a right answer in fifteen seconds, 100 if it's passed over. Specific rules come out during the game: arrows are allowed, colours are possible (but it'll take a moment to change colour), but there's no speaking and no letters.

After the advert break, it's "Choose Your Words"; each team are given a list of five words, and pick three for the other side to draw. Can they pick words that the other team cannot draw? Better hope so: each correct answer is worth 1000 points. Not a misprint: One Thousand Points. Whichever team does better in this round will win the game, no further questions. The first half of the show was a massive tie-break for the second half.

Needless to say, this scoring format is not one we like. It's as if Bullseye had its category board round, and then made Pounds For Points so that one point was worth £20, and the average question would go for a grand. It's as if Strictly Come Dancing had all the Saturday night flummery, all the sequins and voting and bad puns, and then the top two went to a Sunday dance off to decide the absolute winner.

We expect – we require – a game show to tell a story. First round, let us meet the players. Pictionary barely does that, we have brief and perfunctory and insubstantial chats with the players. Alexander Armstrong on Pointless gets a lot out of people in thirty seconds; Lee on The 1% Club can work wonders with a few remarks; here Mel is given about three seconds.

First round, meet the players. Second round, build the narrative, let us work out who's winning. Third round, if the underdogs are going to pull off a come-from-behind win, they've got to really and truly earn it, and not emerge 3-2 winners courtesy of some objectionable judging.

Anyway. Back to the game. The third round has 1000 points for a correct answer. The team get a communal clock of 60 seconds; if they're completely flummoxed they can pass and come back if there's time later.

The losing side get a consolation prize – a Pictionary board game, so you can re-live this defeat in the comfort of your own home. The winning side play Cash For Pictures – identify up to six items in a minute-and-a-half. Three right is worth £500, five right is £1000, and six right adds a luxury break at a resort (and Mel is sure to announce the prize with a description full of advertiser's copy). For this round, the team is joined by the celebrity from the other side, so there are three people trying to guess.

Adjudication on Pictionary is harsh and petty to the point of vindictive: they don't accept "jetty" for "pier" at the beach, don't allow "stelescope" for "telescope", don't take "cup of tea" for "tea cup". On this episode, they didn't accept "mop and bucket" for "mop and bucket", which rather suggests the producers don't have an isolated microphone for each player – maybe that would require them to employ a second adjudicator.

There's absolutely no energy to Pictionary – the applause is quite clearly out of a can, Mel's hushed voice makes it sound like we're trespassing in a rich person's house – and the time's up jingle the loudest thing on the show. There is a certain beauty to the shot direction, and the set is homely, and Paul Farrer's music is of his usual quality. Visually, it's a very static show with only a handful of camera angles (contestants on their sofa, wide shot of player and display board, tight shots of player and Mel, and a couple of wide angles of the studio).

Pictionary went out at 2.30 in the afternoon during the depths of winter. For most of its run, the opposition has been Animal Park on BBC1, sport or Susan Calman's The Boss on BBC2, full-length Tipping Point on the Watch channel, Nice Cup of Tea and Sit Down movies on Channel 5 and Talking Pictures, and Countdown on Channel 4. There isn't much energy on any of these shows, but we do get to see cute animals, well-drawn characters, nice Scottish women, and the friendly faces of Susie and Colin. Why would anyone choose to watch Pictionary?

And in the end, not many people did choose to watch Pictionary. Viewing figures were reported to be about 450,000 – not tremendously far below the slot average, and not tremendously more than Countdown was getting. The experiment was worth while, ITV hasn't lost anything by making this series – and it's gained a useful half-hour filler programme for awkward slots in daytime.

The greatest thing a television show can do is quit while it's ahead. The second greatest thing it can do is quit while it's behind, and we expect that will be the fate of Pictionary.

Now, who can we talk to about this new idea we've got where people mime things to each other without saying a word..?

University Challenge second round stats blast

This week's edition was won by Warwick, who overpowered Oriel Oxford 215-110. Six of the first eight starters fell for the midlanders, Thomas Hart on particularly strong buzzer form. When Oriel did get starters, the bonuses weren't in their ballpark, and the result was clear by the second picture round.

The lineup for the quarter-finals is therefore complete. We can look at the relative strengths and weaknesses of all the teams. We'll start with the whole-game stats.

As before, colours are averages of all 48 teams through the series, green represents the best performance, white is in the middle, anything with a tinge of red is below average. "1" is the first-round win, "2" the second-round win, we've not included UCL's first-round defeat.

Bristol and Imperial stand out with very green rows, the top four scores, and the only sides to get right 70% of their questions (starters and bonuses combined) throughout both matches. On the negative side, Darwin Cambridge came through with rather few correct answers, while Open won both games with barely-average scores.

Looking at the bonus rates:

Christ's Cambridge jump out as being strong on the buzzer, very average on the bounses. UCL and Warwick may not have heard so many, but they've been consistently strong answering the bonuses.

Individual buzzer stats:

Darwin Cambridge rely on just one buzzer – that of Harrison Whittaker. By comparison, Queen's Belfast have had two different players turn in very strong performances, and sides like Open and Imperial have strength across the team.

(These figures are +10 for getting a starter right, each correct bonus gives a point to everyone on the team and one further point to whoever buzzed, and -5 for an interruption penalty.)

At this stage of the contest, we can also show where teams are strong and weak, by assessing their performance in various categories. The categories we've chosen are:

• Fine art (painting, architecture, classical music)
• Entertainment (pop music, film, tv and radio)
• Geography (places, geology)
• History (anything about the past that doesn't fall into another category)
• Leisure (cookery, sport, video games)
• Linguistics (different definitions of a word, languages)
• Literature (written word, drama, poetry)
• Philosophy (includes religion, politics, economics, and other studies of humanity)
• Science (physics, maths, biology, chemistry)
• Other (anything that doesn't fit these categories, or covers more than one subject within a starter or a bonus set)

This isn't a perfect measure, and we'll discuss why these categories are imperfect next time. For now, let's see where the teams' strengths lie:

We show the combined score from the first two rounds: Bristol have all their Geography questions right, 73% of their History questions, and 50% of the Leisure questions.

The most important columns are Science, which accounts for 22% of questions; and Art, 16% of questions in this category. Broadly speaking, Entertainment, Geography, History, and Literature are about 10% of questions; Leisure, Language, and Philosophy about 7%; and we class 3% of questions as Other.

A side strong in Art and Science – like Bristol and Imperial – looks set to do well. One weak in both of these areas – like Darwin Cambridge – may struggle. Open's weakness on science questions looks like a grave difficulty.

Based on the transmission order, we expect the next round draw will be:

• Imperial vs Christ's Cambridge, could be another commanding win for Imperial.
• Queen's Belfast vs Warwick, which seems to be the closest of the opening matches; Warwick's consistency might just give them the edge, but we fancy Queen's on the buzzer.
• UCL vs Open, difficult to see UCL not winning this, Open need to be a terrier and nip at their heels and could just come away with the bone.
• Bristol vs Darwin Cambridge, looks like a buzzer-fest, Bristol's strong all-round performance may see them through.

We'll update these stats in four weeks, after the first part of the group phase is complete.

In other news

Remember CBBC's Got What It Takes?? The show where mothers help their talented offspring to perform, and eventually to qualify for a vote amongst their peers? No, you probably don't, it's a CBBC show and nothing worthwhile ever comes out of normal, innocent CBBC.

A finalist in the first series, Lola Young struck us as a talent to watch. Nine years later, we're chuffed to see that Lola sits atop the singles chart, "Messy" is the most-streamed and most-loved tune of the moment. She also gets the Got What It Takes? top prize, performing on the main stage at Radio 1's Big Weekend.

All good things come to those who wait. So, it appears, will another run of You Bet!, the Mulhern-Willoughby stunts show piloted on ITV last year. There are many areas for improvement, we hope and expect that the producers will address some of them.

No danger of more Family Fortunes, not after allegations of inappropriate and intimidating behaviour were made against host Gino d'Acampo. Ten episodes were recorded last year, and would probably have gone out in the spring or summer; we assume they'll never be shown. Repeats of d'Acampo's episodes were removed from ITV2, and replaced by other ITV programmes.

Quizzy Mondays

Who are these people? We've only heard of two of them! Another edition of Celebrity Mastermind featured normal people contestants, for some reason. Ivan Milatović won the show, after achieving perfection on his specialist round about Diego Velasquez, and then scoring so many points on general knowledge he was assured a tie-break before getting anything wrong. Best general knowledge came from Mickie Wynne-Davies, knocking up a round dozen, but she'd been flummoxed by the specialist round on Gilbert & Sullivan.

The last Only Connect quarter-final fell for the Teatotallers, who beat the Introverts by 24-11. Questions simply fell in that direction; the Introverts didn't spot pairs of words in alphabetical order, Teatotallers made merry with people who received swords (including Carly Rae Jepsen). And while the Introverts were close on the words used by Ed Sullivan to introduce The Beatles, Teatotallers were able to pick up for a bonus. A bonus to the person who set the walls, where knowledge of West Side Story added to the joy.

Who has the voice of Wales? Y Llais starts to find out (S4C, Sun). After about ten million years on a shelf, One Question finally emerges (C4, Fri). The East Enders weekend across the BBC includes Bridge of Lies Eastenders Special, The Weakest Link Eastenders Special, and Gladiators If We Mention Eastenders It'll Keep Bradley Quiet Special (all BBC1). ITV hits back with Wheel of Fortune Couples Special and The Masked Singer Grand Final.

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