Britain's QI gets some love from a critic

[alfonzos]

Saturday, November 28 - Los Angeles Times

[Brig Bother]

[quote name=\'alfonzos\' post=\'231438\' date=\'Nov 30 2009, 11:34 PM\']Saturday, November 28 - Los Angeles Times[/quote]

Awesome.

I remember going to see some of the first series being filmed, and the warm-up was convinced it was going to be as big as Have I Got News For You (the popular topical news quiz that's been running over here for about 20 years) and I scoffed a bit, but it has actually taken hold.

The show does have a scoring system, but as so much is cut from the recording (certainly when I went to see it there was a solid 2.5 hours of material to make a 27 minute show from) the end result doesn't always reflect what happens on the show. They can get away with this because no-one's really watching it for the game, but you tend to score 1-5 points for a quite interesting response and you lose ten if you fall into the obvious traps.

[alfonzos]

I apologise if this has been posted before. The search engine won't accept "QI" because it's only two letters. Anyway, OI has a channel on You Tube with clips.

[CarbonCpy]

Since this thread got bumped, this is as good a place as any -- John Hodgman is a big QI fan, which apparently played a part in his getting added as a fifth chair in an episode in this series.  If there was ever a man more suited for an American version of QI, I'd like to meet him.

(Incidentally, if you've ever wondered why it hasn't shown up over here, TV Squad managed to get a short interview with John Lloyd over just that very subject.)

[TLEberle]

[quote name=\'CarbonCpy\' post=\'235297\' date=\'Feb 1 2010, 05:51 PM\']Since this thread got bumped, this is as good a place as any -- John Hodgman is a big QI fan, which apparently played a part in his getting added as a fifth chair in an episode in this series.  If there was ever a man more suited for an American version of QI, I'd like to meet him.[/quote]Joker, Names of Hobos and a triple.

[Sodboy13]

[quote name=\'CarbonCpy\' post=\'235297\' date=\'Feb 1 2010, 07:51 PM\'](Incidentally, if you've ever wondered why it hasn't shown up over here, TV Squad managed to get a short interview with John Lloyd over just that very subject.)[/quote]

I can't believe PBS passed on this series.  Wait, no, yes I can, because PBS can make NBC's planning seem competent and cohesive.

As for BBC America, they're clearly too full up running Fox reruns of Ramsay's (vastly inferior American) Kitchen Nightmares, or promoting Series 7 of Top Gear as "new" when Series 13 had just completed airing in the UK, to plug something with intellect and sharp humor into their schedule.

Wasn't Garth Ancier in charge at NBC when the network decided to drive Weakest Link off a cliff by stuffing it with celebrities?