Unfortunately, because I downloaded this episode rather than watching it live, some of the meta messing with the audience that this episode did to real time viewers was a bit lost on me. So unlike with the earlier "Dead Line" I knew what this episode was (or perhaps what it wasn't) before I saw it. In and of itself, I'm afraid it's a second episode where I caught on to what was happening to quickly for my own good and guessed from the film references what would happen at the end.
Lee Mack's brand-new BBC quiz show sees 3 teams of 3 players compete against each other for a chance to win a cash prize. The three teams, a choir, two parents and their daughter and a man, his girlfriend and his ex, answer general knowledge questions and win cash. But within one of the teams the tension is palpable.
I generally write my reviews without spoilers and will try to do so again here. I do remember really really enjoying the "Dead Line" twist, including the real world tweets that played into the episode. I didn't get a chance to participate in that this time, which was unfortunate. Also, I thought that the sexist humour of 70's shows like "On The Buses" would be rife for a post-modern appraisal and that Pemberton and Shearsmith would be ideally placed to have their cake and eat it too in that world, but alas that's not to be. What I did get to see was a well-produced episode with Lee Mack performing admirably as the quiz show host, he's so natural you have to wonder whether it was all scripted or he was adlibbing much of it. It didn't perhaps feel quite like a real quiz show though, it was a little slower and less professional than they appear, and I struggled to imagine that anyone was genuinely thinking that the show would be real.
Unfortunately, as with last week, I zeroed in on what they were doing pretty quickly and was left waiting and hoping for a bit more than the episode actually provided. "Oh, they're doing ....." a movie I can't tell you without giving it away, I thought, and indeed they were. It wasn't bad, Lee Mack provided some good comedy moments to it, but I'm again left with an episode that doesn't quite meet my lofty expectations for the series.
