IT used to be that what every celebrity wanted, after the big hoose in Surrey near the golf club, was a quiz show. Regular money, not too taxing, do a run of them in a day and take the rest of the week off.
Travel programmes then replaced quizzes as the must-have career accessory. Now, judging by the number of new ones being launched, quizzes are back in fashion. Given the high failure rate there will likely be more. For every Blankety Blank and Deal or No Deal there is a WonderBall, the BBC Scotland quiz so bad even students would not watch it.
ITV and the BBC are betting big on The Tournament (BBC1, Monday-Thursday 2.15pm, Friday 1.45pm), and Sitting on a Fortune (STV, Sunday, 7pm). The evening show is hosted by Gary Lineker, the current face of sport on TV, with Alex Scott, the woman most likely to succeed him, fronting The Tournament. While they fight it out to see who has picked the better quiz, contestants go about the usual business of answering general knowledge questions for money.
The Tournament has echoes of The Weakest Link in as much as it is a knockout show with chats between presenter and contestants, but there is no Anne Robinson-style snark here. Different times call for friendlier approaches. As for Lineker, he told the Radio Times this week that filming the quiz had been an uplifting experience. “It was lovely to be able to give life-changing amounts of money to contestants,” he said. May the best quizmaster win.
It was only six years ago that Nadiya Hussain won the Great British Bake Off and made the transition from punter to presenter. She is now a firm fixture in the schedules, and as major a television presence as Mary Berry, formerly a GBBO judge, who launches her new six-part show, Mary Berry: Love to Cook (BBC2, Thursday, 8pm) just before Hussain does her stuff.
The idea behind Nadiya’s Fast Flavours (BBC2, Thursday, 8.30pm) is that we have all been doing so much cooking during lockdown that we are becoming bored of the old familiars. Enter Hussain with a mission to “throw the rule book out of the window”.
She is not kidding. Her first dish is one that everyone thinks they do just right: mac and cheese. Simple, right? Hussain supplies her own twists though, including adding smashed up cheese puffs to the sauce to provide a tasty crunch. I’ll definitely be stealing that tip, if the cheese puffs survive in the cupboard for long enough. Definitely not a show to watch on an empty stomach.
Anyone who witnessed the 2019 arrival of Inside Central Station (BBC Scotland, Sunday, 9pm) could tell straight away it would be a banker for the new channel. All human life sweeps through train stations. They are witness to the beginning and middle and end of stories. By some station or other we have all, like Elizabeth Smart, sat down and wept (even if it is just over the missed six o’clock to Ayr).
Now back for a third series, Inside Central Station has settled nicely into its groove. When we return to Scotland's busiest station the place is getting moving again after the Covid upheaval, during which passenger numbers plummeted from 100,000 travellers a day to 3000. Among the crowds are a couple who married in Glasgow 30 years ago and have brought their daughter to the city to celebrate her graduation. Other families and groups of friends are reuniting after a long, Covid-induced, time apart.
Produced by STV Productions for BBC Scotland, the programme takes a determinedly cheery and chummy tone. Staff are introduced with their first name only, as if we are friends already, and I have never seen an episode that has featured anything nasty. In the first episode of the new series, some lads becoming a bit moany on being told alcohol is banned from trains during the Euros is as “real” as it gets.
Snafus happen, as we see. In one, a driver is missing and the passengers are directed to another train, but then the driver turns out to be there after all. By and large this is the story of experienced hands quietly getting on with it, on big days and regular days. One staff member, enjoying the atmosphere as crowds turn out for the Euros, says: “This is what makes this place a legend.”
Who remembers Little House on the Prairie, the much loved TV staple of the 1970s and early 1980s? Laura Ingalls Wilder: Prairie to Page (PBS America, Friday, 8pm) looks at the extraordinary life of the woman who, for many, defined pioneer life in small town America. Watch this and find out how much, if at all, the real Laura, who died in 1957, aged 90, resembled her fictional counterpart. If you think Ma, Pa, Laura and the rest of the clan had it tough at times ...
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