Is it really that time again? Oh dear...
The end of the year brings endless quizzes and polls, in magazines, newspapers... and of course on TV. The two biggest ones (it seems to me) are The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, Channel 4's highly comedic effort, broadcast between Christmas and New Year, hosted by Jimmy Carr and boasting such panelists as Jonathan Ross, Rob Brydon, Noel Fielding and the ubiquitous Russell Brand. The other is the BBC's The Big Finish, broadcast on New Year's Eve itself, hosted by Graham Norton and featuring teams made up of reality show judges, soap actors, and sports people you've never heard of. And it's for charity.
The BBC's effort does sound immediately duller and probably more worthy. Well, except for the teams... But, of course, anything hosted by Graham Norton is far from a serious affair. The Big Finish may have a great deal less spontaneous humour or mad bantering between the teams, but it still has Norton's occasionally cruel comments and... well, it had the Zimmers, they were fun. Possibly the major problem is that, coming after Channel 4's effort, it inevitably covers much of the same ground; actually, an even bigger problem is its lack of interactivity: the teams have to buzz in most of the time, or answer immediately otherwise; whereas Channel 4's moved through rounds that allowed the viewer to play along.
Ultimately the two quizzes are for different audiences, but for someone watching both it would seem that the BBC version is more brainless late-evening entertainment, whereas the Channel 4 version, while descending into deeper levels of madness, is in some ways the more serious quiz.
At the end of the day, though, they weren't on at the same time, leaving such a direct comparison feeling almost futile. Oh well...
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