World's silliest quiz show

Press, 11 October 1988, Page 19

World's silliest quiz show

A.K. Grant

on television

Is it right or proper to use a sledge hammer to crush a butterfly upon the wheel of life? Too right it is. One doesn’t get that many chances to use a sledge hammer. "Step Right Up,” (Thursdays on Two) 'is undoubtedly the world’s worst quiz show. No, I withdraw that. It is not the world’s worst quiz show. It is merely the world’s silliest and most irritating quiz show. It starts off in an irritating way with the quizmaster, Grant Dodwell, grooving away with his back to the camera at the top of some stairs. And it goes downhill from there.

The rules require contestants to rush up and down parallel flights of stairs. These rules are impossible to comprehend, impossible that is for everyone except my 11-year-old daughter, who claims to understand them. Since she is my daughter I believe her. But even she couldn't explain them to me in a way which made any sense.

When the contestants are not rushing up and

down stairs they are being wrenched and pulled about to face the camera by Grant Dodwell. Most of the programme consists of this pushing and shoving. I can only assume that all these physical assaults on contestants occur because the producers haven’t laid on enough cameras to shoot Dodwell and his participants in a natural sort of way. The effect is

extraordinarily amateurish and primitive; it reminded me of those pictures of early 8.8. C. radio broadcasts with a singer warbling away, her head inside a huge wooden horn. One realises that quiz shows are el cheapo territory, but there must still be some standards and a set design which requires the quizmaster to manhandle contestants to meet difficulties arising from a lack of cameras does not meet those standards.

Dodwell himself is obliged to run up and down the stairs a lot. I can’t really see why; there is no vital obligation on him to deliver the questions a few inches below the contestant. Perhaps he just likes running up and down stairs. But it doesn’t work. All the rushing about does not conceal, indeed it emphasises, the general vacuity of proceedings. TVNZ is gearing itself up for what is called "strip programming” of quiz shows; i.e. there will be a quiz show of some kind in the same slot most

nights of the week. Presumably they are doing this because they think TV3 is going to do the same. A fairly dismal prospect if true, though it does mean that everybody in the country will have been on a quiz show sooner or later, struggling with questions like “What is the capital of Sydney?” or “What was George Bernard Shaw’s middle name?”

TV 1% is not being idle, either. Its strip programming of quiz shows is exactly what the term implies: its show will be called “Get Your Gear Off!” and every time a contestant gets an answer wrong he or she will be required to remove an item of clothing. In the new deregulated era that is almost upon us, some of them may end up stark naked, grappling with questions like “Why are your teeth chattering?” or “Don’t you ever take any exercise?” It does, I must admit, sound a bit crass, but when it comes to crass "Step Right Up” will still be able to give it a good run for its money.