The Guide #238: The overlooked underdogs of British quizshows that are still worth a stream
The quizshow will never die.Nuclear war could rid the earth of all living creatures bar the cockroaches and still, a shiny floored half-hourer hosted by Stephen Mulhern will somehow be airing on the emergency broadcast system.Quizshows have been airing on British screens since 1938, when a televised spelling bee was broadcast on the BBC, and they have remained remarkably resilient.Today they seem a good accompaniment to an era where everyone seems to be tapping away at puzzles on their phone.Scroll down the channel guide of your TV and it won’t be long until you find a quizshow (and that one will almost certainly be The Chase).
The format remains completely irresistible to commissioners,Relatively cheap and endlessly replicable, it serves as perfect filler for teatime TV,If one fiendishly high-concept quiz doesn’t catch fire it can be quietly cancelled without too much bother, knowing another will be conjured up in short order,If it really catches fire, in the manner of Pointless, Tipping Point or The 1% Club, primetime and the hallowed celebrity special awaits,And if it really catches fire, then well, you have something that can trundle on for decades (The Chase is now almost old enough to vote) before being regurgitated endlessly in repeat form on Challenge.
But beneath those big hitters exists an entire ecosystem of quiz programming: clever quizzes; insultingly easy quizzes; specialist quizzes (praise be to PopMaster, the TV version of which has just been commissioned for two more series); quizzes whose rules are impossible to follow, quizzes that are little more than fastest finger first (or literally Fastest Finger First),There’s something strangely pride-inducing about the British quizshow landscape, where excruciatingly difficult Mensa-level puzzlers like Only Connect can sit alongside a gameshow where people yell as loudly as possible at a telly,So in this week’s Guide we’re celebrating some of the less talked-about quizshows, including some that were cancelled before their time, but can still be played along with at home on streaming,---Impossible BBC iPlayerThis Rick Edwards-hosted brain-frazzler lasted eight series (plus two celeb ones) before quietly getting shuttered towards the end of the pandemic,Still, it remains popular enough that its repeats receive regular daytime rotation, as well as people on social media and in the letters pages of the Radio Times calling for it to return, (although the latter might just be Edwards writing in).
You can see why – it has a great, tricksy concept: contestants are given three answers to a question, one correct, one wrong, one impossible (ie.so wrong it could never be the answer); get the correct one and you add to your prize pot, get the wrong one and you don’t; or get the impossible one and you’re out of the game.This format is cleverly embellished on in each round, building to a corking final round.The people are right on this one: bring it back, BBC.---Puzzling with Lucy Worsley/Celebrity Puzzling Channel 5If in doubt, add celebs.
That was the rule Channel 5 followed with this series, which first emerged in civilian form in 2023 with happy historian Lucy Worsley tasking members of the public with verbal and visual brain-teasers.It only lasted a series, and that would usually have been that, but in this post-House of Games landscape, Channel 5 spied an opportunity and reframed it as a celeb face-off hosted by Jeremy Vine.Carol Vorderman and Sally Lindsay are team captains leading some fairly mid-tier famouses into battle, but the games – missing word rounds, cyphers, anagrams – are reliably good.If not quite as wildly inventive as House of Games, it’s a very solid stand in.---The Finish Line BBC iPlayerCurrently airing on BBC One, this visually very silly quizshow is also deeply enjoyable – and at times surprisingly nail-biting.
Five contestants race each other on giant, garish, motorised podiums by answering questions in turn.Answer a question correctly and your podium starts moving towards the finish line, get one wrong and it stops.The enjoyable wrinkle is that podiums keep moving even when other contestants are answering their questions, ratcheting up the tension and prompting those contestants who are trailing behind to answer their questions in a mad rushed panic.Roman Kemp, who definitely has designs on Mulhern’s light entertainment crown, hosts (with side-kick Sarah Greene).---The Answer Trap Channel 4Another prematurely cancelled show, this one hosted by Anita Rani (picture above) and reminiscent of Only Connect in its cheerful cleverness.
Teams of contestants are given a grid of answers and have to place the correct ones into one of two possible categories (like “mononymous footballers”, or “impressionist painters”).But sneaky “trap” answers have been placed in the grid by the show’s resident Trappers, University Challenge breakout Bobby Seagull and champion quizzer Frank Paul, who are playing their own parallel contest to collect the most incorrect answers.Had someone come up with it a few decades earlier, The Answer Trap would have happily aired on More4 for years and years.As it is, there’s only a single series to gorge on, though if you enjoyed it, one of its creators is also behind the podcast Here’s What You Do, which sets three new fiendish quizzes each episode.To read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday
Dr TikTok: patients diagnose chronic illnesses with anonymous commenters’ help
TikTok users increasingly say the app has steered them toward diagnosing medical problems not yet identifiedMalina Lee, a 31-year-old wedding baker based in San Antonio, Texas, joined TikTok during the Covid pandemic lockdowns in 2020. Like many people at the time, she was bored and began using the platform to pass the time and advertise her business. She didn’t expect a cancer diagnosis.Four years after Lee joined the app, a commenter with the username “PickleFart” told her that her neck looked asymmetrical in a way that could suggest she had a goiter – an enlarged thyroid gland – and that she should get it checked out. The anonymous amateur clinician turned out to be right – Lee had thyroid cancer, received treatment quickly, and, less than a year later, was cancer free
AI companies know they have an image problem. Will funding policy papers and thinktanks dig them out?
OpenAI made a surprise announcement this week – not an update to ChatGPT or another multibillion-dollar datacenter – but a policy paper that called for a reimagining of the social contract based around “a slate of people-first ideas”. It’s the latest move in an aggressive effort by the major AI players to reshape the narrative around their industry, as polls show public disapproval of AI increasing.OpenAI’s 13-page paper, titled Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age, follows its surprise acquisition of tech-friendly podcast TBPN and its announcement of plans to open a Washington DC office that will feature a dedicated space called the OpenAI workshop for non-profits and policymakers to learn about and discuss the company’s technology.OpenAI’s rival Anthropic has meanwhile announced its own thinktank, the Anthropic Institute, which similarly proclaimed an intention to explore how the growth of AI would disrupt society.As disruptions from AI become more tangible and calls for greater scrutiny of big tech companies grows louder, the industry appears to be both recognizing the widespread discontent and looking for ways to reframe the debate
‘Too powerful for the public’: Inside Anthropic’s bid to win the AI publicity war
This week, the AI company Anthropic said it had created an AI model so powerful that, out of a sense of overwhelming responsibility, it was not going to release it to the public.The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, summoned the heads of major banks for a chat about the model, Mythos. The Reform UK MP Danny Kruger wrote a letter to the government urging it to “engage with AI firm Anthropic whose new frontier model Claude Mythos could present catastrophic cybersecurity risks to the UK”. X went wild.Others were more sceptical, including the noted AI critic Gary Marcus, who said: “Dario [Amodei] has far more technical chops than Sam [Altman], but seems to have graduated from the same school of hype and exaggeration,” referring to the CEOs of Anthropic and its rival, OpenAI
‘It has your name on it, but I don’t think it’s you’: how AI is impersonating musicians on Spotify
Jason Moran, a renowned jazz composer and pianist, got a strange call from a friend last month. The friend, bassist Burniss Earl Travis, was curious about Moran’s new record that he saw on the music streaming service Spotify.“It has your name on it,” Travis told him. “But I don’t think it’s you.”Moran said he doesn’t use Spotify or put his music on the platform, preferring only to use the site Bandcamp, so this didn’t track
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home targeted with molotov cocktail
A 20-year-old man allegedly tossed a molotov cocktail at the home of Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, before the sun rose on Friday, according to statements from San Francisco police.The suspect, who allegedly threw the fire bomb at the $27m Russian Hill residence around 4.12am, has been arrested but not identified. The same person allegedly threatened to torch OpenAI’s headquarters in the city. No injuries were reported
Amazon to finally launch Leo satellite internet in ‘mid-2026’, says CEO
Amazon has said its long-awaited satellite internet rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink will finally go live in “mid-2026”.The chief executive, Andy Jassy, said in a letter to shareholders that the technology company was “on the verge of launching Amazon Leo” and had secured “revenue commitments from enterprises and governments” for the scheme.Originally conceived in 2019 as Project Kuiper before being renamed last year, Leo now has 200 low-orbit satellites in space, with Jassy promising “a few thousand more” in the years to come.While on track to make Leo the second commercial satellite presence in space, the plans would still leave it far behind SpaceX’s Starlink, which has nearly 10,000 satellites in space and aims to have as many as 42,000 operational in the future.Jassy promised Leo would incorporate the successful Amazon Web Services cloud computing software into its function, writing: “Leo will seamlessly integrate with AWS to enable enterprises and governments to move data back and forth for storage, analytics, and AI
History beckons for I Am Maximus as Red Rum’s record comes in to view | Greg Wood
Cardiff stages thriller while Women’s Six Nations favourites show strength
Is Gout Gout faster than Usain Bolt? Australian sprinter sets sights on Jamaican great’s 200m record
Rory McIlroy targets even loftier goals after winning back-to-back Masters titles
Rain puts dampener on Gather Round despite AFL’s hype and schmoozing | Jonathan Horn
The Masters 2026: McIlroy retains title after thrilling final round – as it happened