Weaver's Week 2025-03-30

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More by accident than design, we have a bundle of radio reviews coming up. Later, two comedy pilots from Northern Ireland, but first it's radio's toughest music quiz.

Contents 1 Counterpoint 1.1 Radio 4, review of the final on 23 March 2 Sound Mate 2.1 BBC Radio Ulster, 1 February 3 Hot Takes 3.1 Nice One for BBC Radio Ulster, 8 February 4 In other news 4.1 Quizzy Mondays

Counterpoint

Radio 4, review of the final on 23 March

The knockout music quiz is brutal, with many good quizzers falling in the heats. The semi-finals accounted for Eleanor Ayres – the finalist on Mastermind and BBC Brain and Only Connect made an unfortunate choice of specialist subject, and that ended her challenge. Another semi-final pitted Diane Hallagan against Mohan Mudigonda, and if we tried to list the quiz accomplishments of that duo we would be here all night. All defeated contestants are eligible to apply again in a few years, so those three could be our finalists circa 2028.

Our finalists are:

• Jonathan Brick from Watford, whose first concert was The Corrs in 1999
• Jim Maginnis from County Armagh, whose first concert was the Royal Ulster Philharmonic in 1969
• Sarah Trevarthen from Manchester, whose first concert was Cud at The Zodiac in Oxford

Sarah, lest we forget, herself made the final a few years ago. Round one is the moderate starter: two points when you get an assigned question right, one for picking up a bonus from someone else. We start with all sorts of classical music: Brahms, the conductor Simon Rattle, the heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It's a reminder that Counterpoint is about music in all its forms; later questions cover French chanson, the musical Dear Evan Hanson, music by the House of Games regular Rebecca Lucy Taylor, and a very brief piece by Maurice Ravel.

Points fly hither and thither in the opening round. When they've totted up the scores, Jim has 4, Jonathan 5, Sarah 8. This is an important ordering, as the contestant in the lead gets first dibs on five specialist subjects. These topics have been cooked up by the producers, and – as we're reminded every time – the contestants have had no prior warning of them. No chance to swot up on The Best of Frothy Jazz!

After the others make their picks, Jim has a choice of three topics, rejects "Make the connection" and "It's a kind of magic" in favour of "Music by numbers". The titles of Adele's most recent albums, Beethoven's seventh symphony, the lucky number one, all are correct answers. Jim is then asked about the age of Ricky Wilson from The Kaiser Chiefs and Best Young Artist, which is also the number of strings on a harp. 47 the answer that Jim didn't guess; Paul jokes that it would have been worth the winner's silver salver on its own. But this is Jim's only error, 12 points takes his score to 16.

Jonathan picks "Phrases and idioms". Spandau Ballet to Samuel Taylor Coleridge – but "an albatross around your neck" isn't something the young competitor knows. He does recognise the idiom represented by snatches of "One day like this" and "Grease is the word" – more Elbow Grease. Eight points in the round brings his total to 13.

Sarah takes "Job titles and occupations". The obligatory question about The Beatles, they are to Counterpoint as Little Billy Shakespeare is to University Challenge. Can she remember "The liquidator"? Too right. The Coldplay hit "The scientist", the indie band English Teacher; the only gap in Sarah's knowledge is of painters. Twelve points for a total of 20.

The quickfire buzzer round closes the show, and things can change quickly. As much as we love Counterpoint, the chairman's script could use a little work – two "quick"s in succession sounds inelegant. (That said, Radio 4's student quiz The 3rd Degree has suffered from a similar repetition at the start of every episode for over a decade, and they've done nothing about it.)

Through the round, Jonathan proves to be very very good on the buzzer. We mean, seriously good. If there's a question he knows, Jonathan will buzz in and take it. Sarah is able to pick up on some that are perhaps a little more obscure, and Jim is rather frozen out – though when he buzzes, he's right.

Sarah loses a point when she suggests that the people of Stoke-on-Trent are going to erect a statue to Robbie Williams; no, it's going to be a statue to Lemmy of Motorhead. Jonathan gets many questions right, including a mention of the god Apollo.

Sorry, that's the deity of music, not the brooding dark-haired Gladiator. Sarah nips in with a guess on the Respighi tone poem "Pines of Rome", and this proves to be an absolutely essential buzz. The final scores show Jim with 19 points, Jonathan 24, and Sarah is our winner with 25.

Sarah Trevarthen thus adds Counterpoint to her BBC Brain title, the mark of a great Radio 4 quizzer. Congratulations to Sarah, and special thanks to question-setters Stephen Garner, Alyssa Mattinson, and Lilian Crawford.

Sound Mate

BBC Radio Ulster, 1 February

The first in a short series of two comedy pilots, this one is hosted by Aaron Butler. The continuity announcer warned us of strong language and adult humour. The host is joined by competitors: Dave Elliott and Alan Irwin were one team, Justine Stafford and William Thompson the other side.

The first round plays clips of two notable figures from history, and asks what the connection is. Barack Obama and Ian Paisley?

They both hate Republicans, an accurate answer, funnier than any of the scripted lines, but not the answer they're thinking of. Turns out that they're thinking of the time Rev. Paisley was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Northern Ireland peace process in 1998, and Dr. Obama won it for international diplomacy eleven years later.

"Bleep It Out" is the next round: we hear a piece of audio from the archive, with a phrase bleeped out. What, we're asked to ponder, were young men launching themselves into on Valentine's Day in 1982? And is it something we can talk about on the BBC before the radio watershed? Baking with self-raising flour, perhaps. Ah, nothing so modern: back in 1982 they were still selling red roses.

Another clip asks for the secret of the Super Santa of 1974. Rather than risk being seen as a ripoff of Blankety Blank, the host goes straight for three options – one of which is completely implausible. And, apparently, the correct answer is that Super Santa had the best laugh: sounds like the merest titter if you ask us.

"Words Gone Wrong" is next, near-misses in a category. The prompt is "Disney movies", starting with "The Hunchback of Notre Dame Judi Dench" and going somehow further down from there. Or for "television series", we'll have "CSI: Dungannon". Decent idea, but it didn't really hit the mark.

"Sound off" asks the panel to deliver a piece of vitriol about something in their life. Dave Elliott has a short rant about the idea of life coaches. All very cathartic to deliver, and delivered in a funny style, but we do seem to have strayed a little from the programme's brief.

"What's that sound?" asks the next round. The panellists have all been blindfolded – this looks brilliant on radio – and are to identify some noises made by chairman Aaron live in the studio. Can they tell the noise of him opening a bag of cornflakes from the noise of opening a bread bag? Is that a slinky by the microphone or some sort of beads?

For our money, this is a far better round, something we can play along at home, and laugh at the bizarre ideas put forward by the players. And we get to marvel at how one of them knows the sound of a rubber glove.

The final round is "Make That Sound": one player is given a list of sounds to make, the team-mate is to identify them. "Baa!" Sheep. "Baaaa!" Er, goat? The other team gets musical instruments: piano is easy, but how would one do the sound of a harmonica?

At the end of the show, points are awarded, a winner is declared, and nobody cares. That's the hallmark of a comedy panel show, people given silly things to do with the aim of making us laugh. Sound Mate sagged in the middle, but we'll remember the entertainingly bizarre opening round and the increasing silliness at the end.

Hot Takes

Nice One for BBC Radio Ulster, 8 February

The second and last of our Northern Ireland pilot shows, hosted by Paddy Raff.

The basic idea is that they've commissioned an opinion poll, asking loads of people loads of questions about loads of things. Before that, they've got to introduce the teams. The teams were comedian Emer Maguire and weather presenter Cecilia Daly against comedian Michael Fry and videographer India Sasha. And then we hear some occupations that took part in the opinion poll, and some of the categories they were asked about.

"Let's get to it, I'm parked on double yellows" says Paddy. Yes, let's get on with it: we're four minutes into the show and you haven't even begun to ask a question yet. Honestly, it's as if we're listening to the news bulletin and they spend forever telling us about the correspondents we'll hear from; just get on with it!

Emer and Cecilia pick a topic, and pick an occupation to go with it. Professional drivers and holidays. "You are on a packed holiday flight and in the middle seat. Do you stake your claim to both arm rests; or neither arm rest; or something different?" A point is awarded if the team can predict what the most common answer was amongst professional drivers Emer gives a long and rambling discussion of her experiences with taxi drivers, the other team are asked their thoughts, and eventually – almost four minutes in – we find that the drivers would suffer in silence.

Michael and India take their choices: relationships and teachers. "You are on a date, and your partner orders the most expensive item on the menu. Do you smile and hope they split the bill; or order something expensive to even it out; or something else?" Again, both sides get to give their thoughts, or failing that are allowed to speak into the microphones, before we find the teachers would smile and hope to split the bill. The one teacher in the audience says she'd order something expensive. Way to undermine the format!

Halfway through the show, and with the scores locked at 0-0, we'll have the same round again. And we wonder how many other shows like this we've heard and seen over the years. Opinion poll programmes are really easy to commission, and surprisingly hard to make compelling. When we turned the show on, we didn't care whether creatives will salute a magpie. After almost ten minutes of conversation, we still don't care whether creatives will salute a magpie.

We've heard a lot of words, some of them were amusing, too many were not. We got to know something about India, how she's missing a limb and really doesn't want to take her hand off the wheel. But other than that, it's a lot of not very much.

The show is drawing towards a conclusion. Before the show, Cecilia gave a "hot take" on the roads. Did she say that women drivers are more courteous; that pedestrians wearing headphones should be arrested; that drivers who don't indicate are probably being followed? The other team have a discussion to try and work out which is the real outrageous opinion and which is posturing? Michael and India's discussion is short and to the point, and reaches the correct answer.

And, after we hear India's thoughts on disability, the show draws to a conclusion. The second round was much more interesting than the first. There's a full format in guessing a celebrity panel's mildly shocking opinions; basically a competitive version of Radio 4's Heresey.

The show just about passed the six-laugh test, the biggest came in a discussion of whether India might be left handed. We're not enamoured of Hot Takes, but we're not prepared to write the show off – the whole point of a pilot episode is to work through some of the difficult points. But, as it stands, we can't see a long future for the show.

In other news

Winners at this week's RTS Awards were Junior Taskmaster (in the Comedy Entertainment category), The Traitors (Entertainment), Ant and Dec (Entertainment Performance, for Saturday Night Takeaway).

Only one award is more prestigious: the BAFTA Television Awards. Our game show nominees are:

• House of Games (3) (best Daytime programme)
• The 1% Club, Taskmaster, Would I Lie to You? (Entertainment programme)
• Ant and Dec for Saturday Night Takeaway; Claudia Winkleman for The Traitors (Entertainment performance)
• Race Across the World (Factual Entertainment)
• Dragons' Den; Love is Blind; The Traitors (Reality)

We also have two nominees for Memorable Moment: on Strictly, Chris and Dianne waltz to "You'll never walk alone"; and on The Traitors, "Paul isn't my son..."

BAFTA Craft Awards have also published their nominees:

• Nikki Parsons (Strictly Come Dancing; in Director, multi-camera)
• Andy Devonshire, Rebecca Bowker, James Dillon, Dru Masters (Taskmaster); Ben Archard, James Tinsley, Siggi-Rosen-Rawlings, Mathieu Weekes, Martin Adams, Jimmy Barnett (The Traitors); David Bishop, Joe Phillips, Catherine Land, Jen Townsend, David Arch, Ian Masterson (Strictly Come Dancing) (all nominated for Entertainment Craft Team)

Craft Awards will be presented on 27 April, the Television Awards go out on 11 May in a special programme on BBC1.

Quizzy Mondays

Shorter and sharper specialist questions on Mastermind; perhaps the producers have concluded that the first round is to educate the viewer, the later phases are for the players. Robin Dunford took the films of Marilyn Monroe, knew he was behind with a few incorrect answers, and passed with abandon; to score 18 in a semi-final is a tremendous achievement beyond most people's abilities. Jane Northen had the ironclad battleship HMS Warrior (a question explained the ship's name was recycled before the vessel); a good guess on a question starting on the buzzer in specialist, wrong in general knowledge, and that left her third with 24 points and some passes.

Ian Grieve took the band The Clash, demonstrating a strong command of his subject, and a great general knowledge to finish on 24 points and no passes. Take note of that score, we have a hunch that it'll be higher than at least one winning score across the semis. But it wasn't higher than John Robinson and his total of 26, helped by a Perfect Round on the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Could have been higher, John had a bit of an error spiral in the final moments – but after he'd crossed the winning line.

A draw on University Challenge. Just like last week, then. Darwin Cambridge and Bristol were neck-and-neck through a tricksy contest, where Bristol took an early lead, Darwin overturned it into a fifty point lead, only to be pegged back, plenty of cries of "ten points between you", and at the end zero points between them. A couple of very narrow misses, Bristol offered "San Jose" on a starter that was looking for a song; Darwin offered "bayonet" on a bonus looking for the place it was from. These things even themselves out.

On the numbers, this was Bristol's to lose – they took ten starters to Darwin's eight, and had one fewer penalty for an incorrect interruption. But Bristol were again loose on the bonuses, converting just 38%. Darwin made exactly two-thirds, which is more than we'd expect given their previous record and the subjects of the questions. Darwin are improving against their earlier performances, in a round where the questions get harder – this almost never happens!

The personal battle of the super-buzzers resolved: Harrison Whittaker got seven, Ted Warner five. And it was Harrison Whittaker who gave the correct answer to the tie-breaker starter, thus going to the semi-finals. Queen's Belfast are next for Bristol, if we understand the draw correctly.

It's the final of Y Llais (S4C, Sun), The Voice of Holland of Wales finds its champion. Alexander Armstrong is back to host Have I Got News for You (BBC1, Fri) with some of his Pointless friends. The Hit List and Pointless Celebrities return next Saturday (both BBC1), and BBC4's Kenny Everett tribute night includes a classic Blankety Blank. We'll be back next week, with the annual Eurovision Song Contest preview on the agenda.

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